Here is my confession: I do not love Thanksgiving food. It all seems heavy, mushy, salty, kind of wet. Aside from the mashed potatoes, I can do without it. To be honest, I’m not even into turkey. Which is all kind-of a good thing, because this year, for my Thanksgiving delight, I got the stomach flu. For most people this would be catastrophic; an immeasurable disappointment. But for me, eh, not so big a deal – at least, no bigger than having the stomach flu anytime would be.

In preparation for this holiday, before I knew I would have the sickness, I planned to make something that I would like. Something that, even if everyone else turned up their noses to, in deference to pumpkin and pecan pie (yech), I would look forward to eating on this day of orange and brown food.

I made a beautiful ginger, pear, and cranberry tart. A galette, to be more specific. A galette is a sort of rustic “free form” pie. It doesn’t require a pie pan or a fluted tart pan, or any pan, for that matter. Because I am a person who does not like to dither with details, a galette is the way to go. I don’t want to spend time painstakingly creating lattice tops or pinching crusts into a perfect ruffle. A galette is supposed to look rustic, to look like it came from your grandma’s kitchen and not from a store with a glass showcase. This is my sort of thing.

To start, I peeled five pears – a mix of bosc and bartlett, and diced them into bitesized pieces. I put the pears into a stock pot with a cup of sugar, a tablespoon of fresh minced ginger, two tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon of cornstarch, and about a cup and a half of fresh cranberries.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/nov/30/203603/

I pre-cooked it because I wanted to release some of the juices, lest I have a sloshy tart. And while I, myself, may have been a sloshy tart once or twice in my life after too many hours at The Red Lyon Tavern, I do not like such a quality in my dessert.

While the fruit cooked, I whipped up one pie crust. I went with an all butter version (as opposed to one that requires crisco or lard) because I wanted it to be rich and flavorful to counteract the tartness of the filling I intended to put in it, but you can use whatever pie crust recipe works best for you.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/nov/30/203604/

Once the fruit was softened and the liquid was bubbly, I removed the pan from the heat and let it cool a bit. In the meantime, I floured a pizza pan. In hindsight, I wish I’d done the whole thing on parchment, but that thought didn’t occur to me until too late. I transferred my crust to the pan, and I used a slotted spoon to remove the filling from its pot, so as to leave most of the juices behind.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/nov/30/203605/

I ladled the filling into the center of the tart, leaving a healthy ring around the edge, and then I sprinkled a little more sugar and some corn starch on top, for good measure. And then, I just folded the crust up and over the filling, in sort of a half-hazard pleating pattern.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/nov/30/203606/

Bake at 350 for at least an hour, until the crust is firm and golden, and the exposed fruit is starting to brown and shrink just a little.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/meganstuke/photos/2010/nov/30/203607/

I promise I didn’t serve it on this terrible pizza sheet. I slid it onto a pretty cake plate with a cover for safe carrying. But I didn’t manage to snap a photo of that part. Blame my oncoming sickness.

To me, this is a perfect Thanksgiving dessert. A little something tart and fresh after the creamy and starchy traditional meal. Even with The Plague, I managed to eat a piece and enjoy it. It was the only thing I ate on Thanksgiving, but if you’re going to only eat one thing, in my estimation, it’s the right choice.