Summer Stone Fruit Galette (at last!)

After that go-round with the apricot cake that had started out as a galette I couldn't get them out of my mind, galettes. I've always loved our American-style fruit pies in a pie dish, and I have a pie dish, and like doing a lattice. But the thinness of the galette seems to ensure 2 of the most important characteristics of a fine pie- a bottom crust that has some crispness, and an ample surface area for the thickened and intensified juices of the fruit to spill over and gum up nicely.

We're still working on that one week's shopping, albeit slowly (Boutique Shopping a la Ellinka post)- enough of the fruit in the pyramid has gone nice and ripe.

In the heat, they perfume the veranda

While I was in San Francisco my mother laid a newspaper clipping on the counter (we keep them later in manila folders and randomly pull things out) of a picture perfect blueberry pie and there was a little cornmeal in the crust and I used the crust for a galette not of blueberries but of rhubarb- brief of season and so beguilingly, mysteriously astringent with a little whisper of bitter (and unknown in Greece). It was truly ideal. Now my mother can't find the clipping and key words are not producing it online, but it was easy enough to remember: 

In the bowl of the food processor I put a generous cup and a half of flour, a tablespoon or two of sugar, 1/3 C of yellow cornmeal and 3/4 of a C (180 g) of salted butter (had it not been salted I'd have added a small spoonful of salt). when we blend this with a pastry blender. Common wisdom says to aim for pieces the size of small peas, but as we will add the water later pulse by pulse, the butter will continue to get cut up smaller and smaller, so I pulse until the butter is the size of large lima beans. This is where I was too hasty before- the ice water (Really, it is not so much trouble, It's worth getting out a couple of ice cubes to cool it down- cold crust made of cold things stays more crispy and is much easier to work with). I just needed about 3 Tablespoons (40-45 ml), drizzled in while pulsing on and off. It will look crumbly and like it is too dry to hold together, but pinch a little and you'll see that it does just fine.

See how it still looks a little dry?

I gathered the dough into a small disc and wrapped it in plastic and set it in the refrigerator to chill while I set about preparing the fruit. I simply gathered everything that was getting soft (perhaps some 20 pieces- nectarines and apricots in a mix), cut the fruit off the pit directly over a bowl so as to not let the juices go to waste. There were about 4 or 5 cups of fruit pieces, to which I added 3 or 4 large spoonfuls of flour, then sugar to taste (half a cup/100g?). I find vanilla extract is alluring and delicious with stone fruits, bringing out the essence of their floral beginning. Bitter almond is also a good choice- this to conjure the essence of the seeds inside the apricot pits. Or try hard liquor- dark rum is lovely with any fruit and leaves such a rich aftertaste. Soon we'll want to ready a hot oven- 200 C/400 F.

I shook a little handful of flour between my fingers over the counter top and rolled out the cold dough quickly, lifting it with a dough

A marble rolling pin stays nice and cool.

scraper or spatula to make sure it isn't sticking and adding more flour where it was sticking. The result is a lopsided round of dough with jagged edges- perfect for our purposes. I did not roll it too thin- it needs to be sturdy enough to transfer to the baking sheet and to contain the heavy fruit. I folded the (again very well-floured) dough in half, then half again to make a quarter of a round which is easier to move to the parchment lined baking sheet. There,  just unfold it, and pile the fruit into the middle:

Our spontaneous, casual summer pie, all crisp ragged edges and oozy fruit

You can see how rough the sides are- no matter at all- this adds to its charm. I then folded the edges over the filling, repairing large holes with scraps of dough. For me, an indispensable final touch is to wet the dough with water (not the fruit juices!- the will turn black and bitter as tar in the oven), and throw sugar over it in large spoonfuls here and there. The natural large-crystalled brown sugar is ideal for this- it is coarse enough to keep some sparkle in the hot oven, and has a delicate but very definite flavor. It bakes very hot until it takes on a lovely color- half an hour or more? They need a bit of watching. The kitchen swells with its butter and fruit fragrance.

This is not the galette I have been writing about- see it is red- it's the rhubarb galette from California. See the sugar crystals though? That's just regular white table sugar. With the other sugar I mentioned it's even sparklier and more mellow tasting. The galette you saw here before baking went into a pastry box just minutes after coming from the oven, and was taken to the beach, where it was refrigerated and dug into with forks straight out of the box the next day, very un-photogenic but not less delicious.