I have made this twice, and it was appallingly delicious both times.

Adapted from Simple French:

Step One: Live your life so you always have a tart crust in your refrigerator waiting to be rolled out. (I haven’t fully attained this state yet, but it’s a sound goal.)

Take a cast-iron skillet. Pour in half a bottle of marsala, half a cup of sugar and a teaspoon or so of ground cinnamon. Bring to a simmer and stir until the sugar dissolves.

Take a paring knife. Halve, core and peel pears and place the halves round-side down in the pan until the pan is full of pears. (Might take half a dozen or so.)

Simmer the pears for ten minutes or so.

Remove the pears, turn up the heat, and reduce the contents of the skillet until you have a syrup.

Put the pears back in, round-side down.

If you can stand the wait, you should now let the skillet and its contents cool down to room temperature. If you don’t do this, then the crust will melt like crazy when you try to top the tart, you’ll look like a silent-movie comic and the tart will be homely. (This is not all bad, because then you can challenge me for the “Clown of Ugly Tarts” title.)

Preheat the oven to 400DegF or so.

Roll out the crust.

Dig through your cupboard until you find a plate whose diameter is a couple inches bigger than the diameter of your skillet. Use the plate as a template for cutting a disk of crust.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you will: At fast-forward speed, burn your fingers while placing the crust on top of the blazing-hot skillet and trying to poke the edges of the crust down into the boiling syrup so it will form a lip when the crust is inverted. The crust will melt and the syrup will stick to your fingers and you will become a comic book super-villain.

Put the skillet in the oven and bake for half an hour or so, until the perforated crust that remains is a lovely golden brown.

Remove from the oven and put the skillet down someplace heatproof and where there’s elbow room.

Now: Take a heatproof platter that’s a bit bigger than the skillet. Put the platter upside-down over the skillet. With a pot-holder in each hand, grab the platter and skillet from both sides. Take a deep breath. Yell “Opa!” and flip the stack over, praying that the hot juice doesn’t spray out, burn your hands and cause you to drop everything. (This has never actually happened to me, but I always pray.) Lift the skillet off the platter.

No matter how homely you were sure the thing was going to be, it will instead be arrestingly beautiful. I have no idea how this works.

Serve with crème-fraîche or a half-and-half mix of whipped cream and sour cream.

Image CC-BY by nordique