NYTimes Pear-Pomegranate Pie

My Thanksgiving dinner host sent me the link to this recipe on NYTimes.com. I told her that I would bring that to the dinner. And I eventually did - after a few hurdles. First, I nearly burned down my apartment and my first batch of homemade pomegranate molasses. According to Alton Brown, you're supposed to boil pomegranate juice with sugar and lemon juice until you get a consistency of a thick syrup - which was a big mistake. By the time the syrup cooled, I got a rock-hard black thing instead. The second try, I learned my lesson and turned the heat off when the juice looked like a normal syrup.



Then I moved on to the pie. I prepared all butter pie crust from this recipe on SimplyRecipes.com. I have used this recipe so many times with great result. But this time, somehow the butter separated from the crust and spilled over. Fortunately, I lined the pie dish with a baking sheet. The crust came out flaky and delicious. But still, by the end of the baking time I got a pull of melted butter all over the baking sheet... I'm blaming it on the Organic flour and Organic butter I started using from WholeFoods. The things you have to endure to try to eat healthy...



I followed the recipe exactly for the pear filling. I quartered 6 pears, cooked 3 at a time on a stove top with the pomegranate molasses. I sliced the 2 remaining pears and tossed them with all the other ingredients to make the pie filling. Everything was fine until it's time to check for its doneness after baking.



Those quartered pears were still not completely cooked even after 10 extra minutes in the oven. I didn't want to over cook the crust so I took it out of the oven and brought it to the dinner party.

The pie tasted great despite the fact that there were great giant hunks of pears to chew through. It was perfectly seasoned and sweetened. The crust light and flaky. The next time I try this, I'll just chop up all the pears and cook them all in the syrup before baking.