Beet, Carrot, Rosemary and Goat Cheese Galette

I have been dreaming of this recipe since early spring when I planted my beets.  I had grand plans of harvesting loads of beets:  a few golden ones; dark red round ones, and the prettiest of them all, the lovely striped Chiaggio beets… and then along came a cold, rainy, long spring followed immediately by a long, dry, extremely hot summer.  I was away for the first three weeks of really hot weather, and nearly every living thing in my garden died.  The sole survivors were the mint which grew with great vigor and abundance everywhere; the oregano which has taken over the bed into which it was planted 3 years ago, 1/2 liter of strawberries, and a whole load of rhubarb.  Not exactly a smashing success.

My local food market, thankfully, was stocked with beets harvested by those with better luck and far greater skill than I, so I was finally able to gather the elements of this recipe floating around in my mind, and produce a dinner for my dearest and me.

I know, first I call it a galette, and then I talk about pie, so what’s going on, here?  A galette is French term for a flat, round, free-formed crusty pie or cake.  In this case, an open-faced, free-form pie, using flaky crust dough, baked on a flat pan with the dough arranged an a relaxed fashion around and partially over the ingredients, and then baked.  It’s easy to make and not at all fussy, so it doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect; in fact, it shouldn’t be.  The more rustic it looks, the better.

The first night we ate it all by itself, with no accompaniment.  It was warm from the oven with the golden, flaky crust breaking under the edge of the of fork and dissolving in our mouths.  The tanginess of the goat cheese balanced the sweet honey and earthiness of the beets and carrots, while the small bit of rosemary added a welcome perfume. It was delicious.  The next day I had one of the remaining slices for lunch, served slightly warmed, together with a fresh green salad.  The crust wasn’t as crisp on day two, but it was still delicious, so feel free to make this a day ahead and rewarm it to serve if needed. Warming it in a 200°C/425°F oven for 10 minutes would re-crisp the crust, as well.

It may look like a lot of work, but really, you expend a little bit effort and then wait while the action happens.  So go ahead, get that crust started and you’ll be enjoying this in no time.

Beet, Carrot, Rosemary & Goat Cheese Galette

Beet, Carrot, Rosemary & Goat Cheese Galette

Flaky Tart Crust
1 teaspoon / 5 ml salt
2/3 cup / 150 ml cold water
3 cups + 2 tablespoons / 455g all-purpose flour
1 cup + 5 tablespoons / 300 g very cold butter

In a small bowl, combine the salt and the water and stir to dissolve. Keep cold until ready to use.

You can make the dough in a food processor or by hand.  To use a food processor, but the flour in the work bowl.  Cut the butter into pieces and scatter over the flour.  Pulse briefly until the mixture forms large crumbs, and some of the butter pieces are about the size of peas.  Add the water-salt mixture and pulse briefly until the dough starts to form a ball, but is not completely smooth.  You should still see butter chunks.

To make by hand, put the flour in a bowl.  Cut the butter into pieces and scatter over the flour.  Using your hands, a fork or a pastry blender (my preferred tool), work the butter into the flour until the mixture forms large chunks and some of the butter pieces are about the size of peas.  Pour in the water-salt mixture and, using your hands, work the dough together so it forms a ball but is not smooth.  You should still see butter chunks.

On a floured work surface, divide the dough into two equal balls and shape each ball into a disk about 1 inch / 2.5 cm thick.  Wrap each disk in plastic wrap and chill for at least two hours or up to overnight.

You will need only one disk of dough for this recipe.  If you do not plan to use the other disk immediately, place the disk in a plastic bag, label with contents and date, and freeze.  Remove from the freezer and thaw in the refrigerator one night before you’d like to use it.

Make the filling:
5 medium-sized beets
2 large carrots, cut in half lengthwise
1 container of soft goat cheese
1 teaspoon chopped, fresh, rosemary
1/2 teaspoon Maldon salt or orange citrus salt
1 teaspoon of runny honey
1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 200°C/425°F.

Wash the beets if they are muddy, cut off the long thin root end but leave the stem end intact.  Place on an oven-proof tray and place in the hot oven for 30 minutes.  While the beets roast, peel and slice the carrots and toss them with a drizzle of olive oil.  After the beets have been in the oven, add the carrots to the same try and cook for another 15 minutes.  The beets should be tender when pierced with a fork; if they are not, cook them a little longer.  The carrots should be slightly caramelized and brown; remove them before the beets if needed.

To assemble:

On a lightly floured surface, roll 1 disk of crust (recipe above) out into a large circle measuring 40 cm / 15 inches in diameter.  Don’t worry if it’s not a perfect circle, or if the edges are a bit rough.  The great thing about a galette, is that it is supposed to be a bit rustic.   Place the crust onto a parchment covered tray.

Spread the center of the crust with a layer of goat cheese – use all of it, and spread it out so it’s 1.5cm / 1/2 inch from the edge.

Slice the beets into thin layers and lay them out across the the goat cheese, starting 2.5 cm / 1 inch in from the edge of the goat cheese, letting them overlap slightly.  Leave a small empty circle of goat cheese in the middle.  Cut the carrots into small chunks or strips and arrange them in the center.  Sprinkle the chopped rosemary and the Maldon salt over the top of the carrots and the beets.  Drizzle honey over the top.

Fold the edge of the crust over the outside section of the beets, working from one point in the circle and turning the crust slightly under itself as you work the dough up and over.  Brush the crust with beaten egg.  Place the tray with the galette into the hot oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the crust is golden and crisp.

Serves 6-8 as a main course.  I recommend you serve it with a nice green salad.  Also makes a wonderful appetizer.

Zucchini Potato Gratin

What are gonna do if you’ve planted even one zucchini plant, and it just keeps producing one zucchini after another, faster than you can keep up, and faster than you can give it away?  You may have made zucchini bread or cake and zucchini soup and grilled zucchini, and are running out of ideas.

But then even more seriously, what are you gonna do if you have a head full of zucchini recipe ideas and no zucchini in sight?  The second feels like a far worse predicament this year, I have to say – since my zucchini plants produced…absolutely nothing.  I was away for the hottest weeks of Finland’s summer, and my poor plants dried out from neglect.  I received a few zucchini’s by someone trying to get rid of some of their excess, and happily started cooking.  No worries – there is always another great way to utilize this raw ingredient in my house.  Anyone looking to unload a few?  😉

If you happen to have access to potatoes as well, here’s a dish that can be served as a main course or side dish and will have you coming back for seconds.  The creamy béchamel sauce can be made with any kind of milk from non-fat to whole milk; or oat milk as a non-dairy alternative, and really ties the whole dish together well.

Dig in while the Zucchini Potato Gratin is still warm.

Zucchini Potato Gratin

1 medium zucchini
6 new/small potatoes
1 onion, peeled and diced
4 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
2 tablespoons fresh oregano, minced, or 2 teaspoons dried
1 teaspoon + 1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder or 2 garlic cloves, minced fine
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons whole wheat flour
3 cups milk
1 cup grated white, mild cheese (Emmental, Gouda or Mozzarella all work well here)

Heat the oven to 175°C / 350°F.

Using a box grater or mandolin, slice the zucchini into very thin rounds.  Toss with one teaspoon of salt and place into a colander over a bowl.  Allow to sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Using a box grater or mandolin, slice the potatoes into very thin rounds.  Place into a small bowl and cover with cold water to prevent browning.  Prep the onion, parsley, and oregano and mix them together in a small bowl.

Squeeze the zucchini over the colander to release as much water a possible, making sure to collect the zucchini water in a bowl.

To make a béchamel: in a small saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour until blended.  Add the zucchini water and whisk until smooth.  Add all of the milk, whisk until smooth, and bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat.  Once the mixture is thickened and just begins to bubble, remove from heat.  Whisk in the salt and pepper, and garlic or garlic powder.

Assembly:

Butter the bottom and sides of a 2 quart, oven-safe casserole dish; any shape will do.  Layer potatoes across the bottom, Sprinkle with 1/3 of the onion mixture and 1/3 of the cheese.  Layer half of the zucchini rounds over the top and ladle 1/3 of the béchamel over the top.  Repeat to layer potatoes, then onion mix, then cheese, then zucchini, then béchamel, then potatoes, onions, béchamel, ending with the last 1/3 of the cheese.

Place the mixture in the oven and make for 45 minutes until the potatoes are tender when poked with a fork and the top is golden brown.

Serves 4 as a main dish.

Finnish Crepes served with fresh bilberries, Gooseberry Cardamom Jam, and Turkish yogurt.

Gooseberries are funny little things. Every summer, up at J’s mummo’s place, there are a few old gooseberry bushes that faithfully produce a 2 liters of green gooseberries and 1 liter of big red ones…and about 1/2 liter of the little wild ones that we use for eating only.

The branches of the bushes have pokey little thorns that grab your hand as you reach for the berries, and nearly each berry comes off of the bush with a dried flower poking out of the top end and a stem attached to the other end.  Both ends of each berry need to be trimmed before consuming; the easiest way to accomplish this is to grab a pair of scissors and trim each berry, one by one.

Green gooseberries, before the stems and blossoms were trimmed.

So there you are with your pail of berries, but what do you do with them then?  You can only eat so many straight up, and out of the freezer they are so tart that every time we tried them over morning oatmeal or in smoothies we ended up throwing the end result away, or tried to compensate for the unbelievable sourness by adding heaps of sweet stuff.  Not good.

So now gooseberry harvest is over for another year, and this time I tried a few new tricks.  The first, made with the green gooseberries, was a Gooseberry Cake – a cake whose texture and flavor definitely improved after sitting overnight, and one I’d try again.  More on that cake later.  The other recipe I tried was a Gooseberry Cardamom Jam.

With a scant liter of red gooseberries available, I didn’t have a lot of raw ingredients to work with, which was no problem, really, because I wasn’t sure my experiment would work at all.  But we’d decided we were going to make Finnish Crepes for dinner, but didn’t have any jam on hand – a must-have ingredient when eating sweet crepes around here.  Necessity is the mother of invention as we know, and I started combining ingredients into pot.

Gooseberry Cardamom Jam is the perfect tart-sweet note in these dinner Finnish crepes.

This is a jam with a really strong flavor – you don’t need much at all on the crepe, and it isn’t a jam you’d put on toast.  The cardamom flavor stands out strongly and cleanly against the gooseberry’s equally strong flavor, and I didn’t want to over-sweeten as I like my jams to taste like what they are made of rather than to be a sickly sweet mass.

It’s a jam I’m looking forward to experimenting with in savory foods: I’d like to combine it with a brown sauce to serve with a roast, or to use it as I would with blackcurrant jam, and serve it with roast chicken.  This actually makes sense to me that the flavor is reminiscent of blackcurrant as both berries are part of the Ribes genus.

For now, roast anything will have to wait, as first, I’m starting with crepes.

But if you need other ideas for using up Gooseberries, here are a few:

Mrs Wheelbarrow makes pectin from gooseberries.
Nigel Slater makes gooseberry pie, a recipe published in his cookbook Ripe.
And brought to you by the BBC, a plethora of options.

The makings of a good dinner.

Gooseberry Cardamom Jam

1 liter red gooseberries, blossoms and stems trimmed
2-3 dl sugar / 1 – 1.5 cups sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 dl / 1/4 cup water

Place 3 spoons on a plate and into the freezer.

Combine all ingredients in a heavy-bottomed stockpot.  Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to medium.  Allow the mixture to boil for 25 – 30 minutes, until the mixture has reduced and smallish bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan.  Remove from heat.  Pour a small amount of jam onto one of your spoons and return it to the freezer for 5 minutes.  The jam is done if, when you push the jam on the spoon with your finger, it wrinkles a little.  If it has not gelled enough, cook for an additional 5 minutes and test again.  Repeat again until it has gelled to your liking.

Note: gooseberries contain a lot of pectin, so you don’t want to cook this too long.  It’s best if it’s a little runny as a finished product.

Once the jam is done, remove from heat.

Using a wide mouth funnel placed in the jar and a ladle, spoon the jam into the jars, leaving a 1/2″ / 1.5 cm space at the top.  Repeat until all of the jars are full.  Using a damp paper towel, wipe the rim of the jar so there is no jam residue left.  Place the hot lid on the jar, and, using a towel to hold the hot jar so you don’t burn your hand, tighten the lid finger-tight (don’t over tighten; the best way to ensure that you don’t is to use your thumb and first to fingers to tighten the lid, which means you won’t have enough finger strength to push it too far.)

Wash the big jam pot.  Put a dish towel in the bottom and place the jars on top.  Fill with water to cover the jar by at least 1″/ 2,5 cm.  Put the lid on and bring the pot to a boil.  Once boiling, set the timer for 15 minutes.  When the timer stops, turn off the heat and let the jars rest for 5 minutes.  Remove the jars from hot water and set on a dish cloth on the countertop, right side up, to cool completely.  Check to make sure the lids have sealed:  the top dome of the lid should be pulled in tightly and shouldn’t move when you press it with your finger.  Sometimes you’ll hear a ping as the jars cool and the lid seals, but not always.  If the lids are sealed, label the jars and store them in a cool, dark place for up to one year.  If your jar doesn’t seal, put it in the fridge and use it within one month. 

Makes 1/2 liter / 1 pint.