“Ingredients are not sacred. The art of cuisine is sacred.”
Tanith Tyrr
It was a savoury chicken galette waiting to happen, or maybe wanting to be baked. It’s a result of blogger interactions, loads of food talk, some food cravings, events missed and repented, flavours virtually thrown into the air and talked about….
I missed a picnic a few weeks ago with the Delhi food bloggers bunch. There was so much talk about food, what who was making, baking, getting, that I had pangs …not hunger pangs but pangs of missing out on something good! The Great Cookaroo threw in yolks after yolks to make her to go pastry cream from Dorie Greenspans Baking with Julia. I had the book on the shelf. A favourite from a favourite food blogger who gifted it to me from Bangalore. {Thank you again Suma!}
Then there was talk of pickled green garlic pesto which immediately threw my tastebuds in overdrive … that sounded drop dead delicious. I wanted some! My chance soon came as a bunch of us met again at the Ty.phoo Tea & Food pairing event. Sangeeta carried a bottle of pickled green garlic pesto for me.
Smothered on a toast the next morning, it had a comforting homey feel! It had all the hints of the green chutney sandwiches my dad often made … beautiful flavours that teased the palette. As I sat in the kitchen, the laundry machine whirring punishingly in the background, I reached out for Baking with Julia! The book is a winner. Read it, bake from it, drool over it, learn from it. I wanted to bake something savoury that morning, and settled for Cheese & Tomato Galette!
The galette dough was done in seconds, a Flo Baker recipe from the book. Don’t you love a dough that comes together in a heartbeat, is fuss free, smooth, pliable and uses pantry staples? I didn’t even need to rest it since it held beautifully, winter ensuring a fridge like cold kitchen. {Feedback from batch #2: An overnight rest in the fridge yields a pliable nice dough too.}
I used everything I had on hand! Pickled green garlic pesto, mozzarella, chicken salami, then some roasted onion balsamic jam, cherry tomatoes, smoked sea salt, pepper. Finished it off with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and fresh garlic greens.
The green garlic pesto was a bit spicy / chili for the younger fellow, but hit all the right spots with the daughter and husband who love everything chili! You can find the recipe for the Pickled Green Garlic Pesto {or lehsun ka achaar} on Sangeeta’s blog. Use extra virgin olive oil to get a more pesto like feel to it {as she did for my batch}, and reduce the chilies if you don’t like it too hot! BTW, Sangeeta does great personalised diet plans too, so do stop by if you need one!
You can do pretty much anything with a ‘pastry canvas’ like this. To keep the younger one happy, I made a second lot with roasted bell peppers and onions {roasting done in the Philips AirFryer, 10 minutes was all it took}, topped with sliced chicken sausages marinated briefly in a honey-mustard-garlic mix. Keep it vegetarian with roasted veggies, caramelised onion & garlic jam and feta, maybe tomatoes. It’s smooth, fun to roll out, and even more fun to ruffle over the filling to give it the characteristic galette feel.
Recipe: Savoury Chicken Galette
Summary: A simple, crisp and delicious pastry base which can go sweet or savoury. This savoury rustic pie can hold varied combinations of toppings, vegetarian or non vegetarian, and is great for picnics, snack boxes. The savoury chicken galette can be assembled ahead of time, or even baked ahead and rewarmed in the oven briefly. Recipe adapted minimally from Baking with Julia. Makes 4 6″ galettes.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour
Ingredients:
- Galette dough
- 80ml ice cold water
- 45ml buttermilk
- 120g plain flour
- 25g cornmeal [makki ka aata]
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 90g butter, chilled cubed
- Suggested toppings {a combination of any of the following}
- Green garlic pesto {recipe here}
- Mozzarella
- Caramelised onion & garlic jam {recipe here}
- Chicken salami, sausages etc
- Cherry tomatoes, halved
- Sliced and roasted bell peppers
- Sliced onions {roasted with the bell peppers}
- Green garlic stalks
- Smoked sea salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
Method:
- Galette Dough
- Place the flour, cornmeal and salt in bowl of food processor. Pulse briefly to mix, then add chilled butter and pulse briefly until you get an uneven mix from peas to breadcrumb size bits.
- With the mchine running, pour in the buttermilk, followed by most of the chilled water and process until a soft, moist dough forms.
- Remove, divide into 2, press into flat disks and chill for at least 2 hours.
- Assembling
- Preheat the oven to 200C.
- Divide each disk into two and roll out to about 8″ circles. I cut the edges round with a pastry cutter, though you could just leave it uneven.
- Line a shallow platter with the rolled out pastry hanging over the edges, fill it up as you like, beginning with mozzarella, then gently fold the edges over the filling around the sides.
- Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, garlic greens etc over the filling and bake for about 30-35 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden.
- Transfer to a cooling rack, leave for at least 10 minutes, then slide off with a wide spatula. Serve warm or at room temperature with a scattering of garlic greens, fresh herbs etc.
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Also find me on The Rabid Baker, The Times of India
This cheesecake pie was affirmation yet again of how good quark can be in desserts. The verrines are simply unbaked, eggless, layered desserts in glasses – fresh cherries, slivered pistachios, a dollop of nutella, quark whipped with cream and sweetened mildly … and then repeated.
