Tomato Galette

I visited the farmers market the other day and picked up the most beautiful heirloom tomatoes! I have been wanting to make a tomato galette. It’s so simple to make. Galette is a French free form pie.

I use my all butter pie crust. You can easily take a short cut & pickup a store bought one. The filling is herbed goat cheese and some pecorino as a base.

Start by making the pastry dough for the galette and cooling it is the fridge. It needs to be cold when you roll it out.

I suggest salting and draining your sliced tomatoes. They don’t have to be the same size, but slice them the same width so that they will cook evenly. Let them sit in the colander for 30 minutes while the pastry dough is chilling in the fridge.

I also laid them out on a paper towel before tossing them with the other ingredients.

When you roll out the dough, you want to create an inner crust that won’t allow the tomato juices to make the crust soggy. That’s where the pecorino comes in handy. The step by step is below.

Ingredients:

Pastry dough

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 stick of butter

1/4 cup ice water

Galette filling

1/2 cup pecorino or Parmesan cheese

1 small log of herbed goat cheese

3-5 heirloom tomatoes (various colors & sizes)

1 scallion

1/2 a shallot, thinly sliced

1 tsp fresh dill

1/2 tsp dry oregano

Salt & pepper to taste

1 tsp sugar

Drizzle of olive oil

Egg wash:

1 egg and a tablespoon of milk or cream

Garnish with pecorino cheese, sesame seeds and dry oregano

Topping;

A few leaves of fresh basil

Directions:

Mix the flour & salt. Cube 1 stick of cold butter. Using your finger tips, massage the butter into the flour mixture. You will eventually end up with the texture of coarse corn meal with slightly bigger walnuts size pieces of floured butter. Add in the ice water to form a dough.

Make that into a disc and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, slice the tomatoes, salt them and drain in a colander for 30 minutes. Chop up your other ingredients (scallions, shallot, dill) and set aside.

Roll out the dough. Sprinkle some of the pecorino or Parmesan in the center to create a base, leaving a border that you will fold over later.

Add the goat cheese. Spread it out piece by piece. It will melt and come together.

In a bowl, toss the tomatoes with the other chopped ingredients. Toss in a teaspoon of olive oil, pepper. The tomatoes don’t need more salt.

Layer them over the cheeses. Drizzle of olive oil. Sprinkle a little sugar to help caramelize them. Fold the edges of the dough over the edge of the filling.

Apply the egg wash and sprinkle the cheese, sesame, & oregano on that.

Bake at 350 F for an hour till golden brown and crispy.

Let it cool for 15 minutes before cutting into it.

Add a few leaves of fresh basil. A little flaked sea salt.

Kali Oreksi!