The joy of the galette
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
"flat, round and quintessentially French." Great British Chefs
This not terribly prepossessing photograph is the remains of last night's dinner - cold from the fridge. I should have taken a photograph last night but didn't. Anyway it was a dish that gave me great joy and satisfaction for a number of different reasons.
Perhaps the main reason, was because in complete contrast to my previous night's dinner - the very disappointing pasta and romanesco dish - this was really, really nice, and didn't look too bad either.
The other reason was that it used up a number of leftovers. The most notable, of course, being, almost the last of that massive amount of hummus.
In this, also pretty poor photo, you can just see the base created with the hummus in the bottom left corner. I whizzed it up with a tiny bit of yoghurt - just to get it to whiz really because it was pretty thick. I whizzed it because it still had some pretty large pieces of almonds in the mix and David had not seemed to like this when I left them whole in my other hummus experiments.
Perhaps the brainwave - and not involving leftovers - was the next layer of virtually caramelised onions that I had cooked in oodles of butter and a bit of oil, plus a glug of balsamic vinegar and maybe a teaspoon of sugar. Slow cooked in a frypan and just left to do their thing with the occasional stir. It probably took about half an hour whilst I did other things.
I sliced the tomatoes and left them on a plate to lose at least some of their juice because tomatoes do tend to ooze a lot of juice and leave everything soggy as a result. On top a scattering of parsley from Monika's huge bunch. And a sprinkling of the butter and oil I had drained from the onions. Maybe I should have added cheese? But I didn't. Cooked at 200ºC in a fan oven with most of the heat coming from the bottom. Pizza setting in my oven.
The pastry was kind of leftover too - but then I deliberately have a store of appropriate sized lumps of pastry ready for a quiche or whatever.
I suppose it could have been baked in a quiche tin, but the joy of the galette is that you don't need a tin, just a layer of baking paper on which to place your round of pastry, top with your layers of filling and then pull the edges up and over, just pinching them together as you go. I did give the pastry an eggwash, but you don't have to really. No real washing up from the finished dish other than the plates from which you ate, because you just slide the paper and the galette on to a plate to serve - or indeed leave it in the tray in which you cooked it.
Of course you can tizz up a galette in all sorts of ways with fancy pastry, fancy toppings and fancy fillings - sweet or savoury - as in this Pear, chocolate and almond galette from Meera Sodha/The Guardian, however, you can also go the other way, as did Delia with her simple fruit galettes, in which you basically just plonk some fruit on pastry - maybe with a bit of sugar and spice - before folding over the edges.
Galettes, however, began a whole lot earlier than Delia.
The word comes from the Norman 'gale' meaning a flat kind of cake. So we assume the birthplace of the galette is Normandy - and certainly its neighbour Brittany has galettes - but they are different, being a kind of buckwheat pancake - about which I have spoken before. There is also the Galette des rois - also 'done' before, which is more of a cake. Which leads to this statement from the Great British Chefs website:
"Provided a dish is flat, round and French, there’s a good chance it’s been referred to as a galette at some point."
And in Medieval times it was incredibly simple - as in the Galette Pérougienne as described by Mimi Thorisson on the American Library in Paris website. It's a recipe so simple, and apparently so delicious that it exists to this day - a tourist attraction I'm guessing - in its namesake village of Pérouges, near Lyon. Sweet pastry, topped with just sugar and butter and that's it.
Although - sugar? Did the poor have sugar? Well yes from sugar beet I guess. Or maybe they used honey. And if you gathered fruit - either from your own tree, hedgerows or nearby trees, then the topping would simply be the fruit - as with Delia.
I'm guessing that the very early savoury versions were simply topped with cheese.
These days, of course, galettes are much more multicultural - with the Middle-Easterners and Mediterranean people being particularly big contributors to the genre - as with this Beetroot and feta galette with za'atar and honey - Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley/The Guardian - quintesentially Middle-Eastern really. Or Ottolenghi's more way out Peach and chilli galette as found on the delicious. website.
There is one more kind of galette - French origin - whereby you just pile things up in a circle without the pastry as in potato galettes, and this Baked tomato galette with goat's cheese, tapenade and pumpkin seeds - Andy Waters/Great British Chefs, which is far fancier, as indeed this type of galette tends to be.
For me they are a joy, because they are simple, almost foolproof and perfect for using up bits of this and that. Beware of tomato juice though. Jamie suggested sprinkling some uncooked couscous over the pastry or your base mixture before putting the tomatoes on top. Ottolenghi tends to slow roast them first - or you could sprinkle with salt and leave them to drain on paper towels. I was quite pleased with mine however. Yes it was a bit sloppy but not overly so.
You will find, when searching for recipes for galettes, that some are actually quite complicated, because of the complication of the separate elements - a special kind of pastry, a specifically composed base mixture, partially cooked toppings and maybe fancy things to sprinkle on top, but it doesn't have to be like that. Puff pastry will do - or bought shortcrust, although if you have a mixer it takes a mere minute or two to make shortcrust pastry. The base could be a bought dip, or ricotta or cottage cheese mixed with some other stuff and the topping can be just sliced vegetables. Or go the Delia way and just pile in the fruit. If only we had gooseberries here.
So have fun experimenting and cheer yourself with how clever you are when you take the first bite.
YEARS GONE BY
August 22
2024 - A google doodle - rendang
2022 - Allsorts
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2017 - Nothing
2016 - When is a sardine a sardine?
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