Fruit « (y)our food choices™

Galettes are one of the easiest things to bake at home. It’s basically a rustic free-form pie. No edges to crimp. No exact measurements of the size and shape of the rolled out crust. And, no worries that the crust will fail and the juices from the pie will overflow. They’re supposed to bubble over a bit.

This recipe is easy to whip up any day of the week, and it’s delicious. We’ve used this recipe since the cookbook and PBS show, Baking with Julia, was first published. We’ve adapted the pastry recipe, omiting the original corn meal (we didn’t have any in the pantry!) and replacing it with oat flour. Oat flour always reminds us of steel cut oats and breakfast and we love it’s nutty flavor.

You can use just about any fruit in liu of blueberries. Exact measurments are unecessary for this style of baking. So have fun with it and include your currious budding epicures. These are hands-on treats!

Blueberry Galette
adapted from Baking with Julia

Pastry
3 tablespoons kefir or yogurt
1/3 cup ice cold water
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup oat flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
7 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 14 pieces

11 ounces blueberries, rinsed, dried, and stems removed
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoon turbinado sugar
2 tablespoon honey

Mix the kefir and water together, set aside.

In a food processor add the flours, sugar, and salt. Pulse a few times. Take off the lid and add all the butter. Pulse a few more time. You’ll want the consistency of very course sand. You may need to break the butter up with your hands a little. Through the feed tube, with the machine running add most of the liquid. Turn the machine off. Remove the lid and check to see if the dough comes together. If more liquid is needed, pour the contents out in a large bow and finish mixing by hand.

Divide the dough into two pieces. Wrap each piece in plastic wrap. Squish until it becomes a round disc. Set in the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Once the discs are chilled, Carefully unwrap the disc onto the plastic wrap and place another piece of plastic wrap on top of the dough. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough, moving the disc a quarter turn each roll, and flip the dough over and continue to roll. Roll the dough out to about 10 inch diameter, about 1/8 inch thick. Place the rolled dough onto a cookie sheet and place in the freezer for 5 minutes.

Remove the disc from the freezer and remove one of the pieces of plastic. Place the disc on a parchment lined baking sheet with edges. Remove the other piece of plastic. Do the same with the second disc, on the same baking sheet or another one. Place half the blueberries in the center of each disc. Pinch off pieces of butter and put on top of the blueberries. Add a drizzle of honey and sprinkle 1/2 the sugar over the berries. Fold over the edges and press the sides in a little to form to keep its shape. Sprinkle the rest of the sugar around the edge of the pastry.

Place the tray in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove the pan from the oven. Allow to cool before serving.

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We eat a lot to steel cut oats. Though primarily thought of as breakfast food, they end up in a lot of other dishes in our repertoire. They’re nutritious and delicious when prepared well. Far tastier than their pre-cooked, rolled counterparts. While we really never tire of the straightforward flavors of the oats, our breakfast bowls have morphed over the years into something entirely different from the bowls of mush we grew up on. The oats’ neutral, nutty flavor opens them up to endless flavor pairings and we’re having fun experimenting with them.

Bananas are another pantry staple. And they regularly get to an overripe stage that renders them total mush, destined to the freezer to become sweetener for future smoothies. But the good ones often find their way into a bowl of breakfast oats along with toasted walnuts or almonds. Their natural sugars and creamy texture are ideally suited to a bowl of porridge.

We recently used overripe banana to sweeten a batch of oatmeal. Added to the pot at the beginning of the cooking process, the bananas break down into a sweet sauce that scents the oats with a subtle tropical fruitiness. No added sugar necessary. We garnished the bowl with toasted pecans, a big dollop of Greek yogurt and a sprinkle of toasted coconut. The result was amazing!

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Tropical Oatmeal
serves 2

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup steel cut oatmeal
1 bay leaf
1 small cinnamon stick (or 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon)
pinch of salt
2 cups hot water
1 ripe banana
1/4 cup greek yogurt
1/4 chopped fresh pineapple
2 tablespoon chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon desiccated coconut

Place a pan over medium heat and add the butter. Once the butter has melted, add the steel cut oats and gently toast for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add bay leaf, cinnamon and salt. Add the hot water carefully (the water will sputter). Stir until everything is mixed. At this point you can turn off the heat and allow to sit over night.

The next morning, return the pan to heat and cook adding the banana and a little water, if necessary. Cook for about 5 minutes or until creamy.

In a small sauté pan, over medium low heat, gently toast the walnuts for 2-3 minutes before adding the desiccated coconut. Toast for an additional 30 seconds to 1 minute. Do not look away from the pan because the coconut toasts very fast and will burn if left on the heat for more than a minute or two.

Serve the oatmeal in a warmed bowl and top with greek yogurt, pineapple, and toasted walnuts and coconut (or any other fruity, nutty combination). Enjoy!