Plum and Nectarine Galette

Hello there! I am back! The meetings that I mentioned here went well and, although this is still a busy time for us at work, it’s a good kind of busy. They type that you know is pulling you and your team to bigger and better things, even as you wipe the sweat off your brow and wallpaper your aching back with Salonpas preamp.

But enough work talk! I feel like celebrating and I’m doing it with pie! Well, with a galette if you want to be technical. A Plum and Nectarine Galette if you want to be specific. I found some nice plums and nectarines in the Sunday market across the street from me (yes, I live two steps away from a cute little market - another reason to celebrate!) so I bought a bunch with this in mind. I had been reading about Dorie Greenspan’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough from the enthusiastic Tuesdays With Dorie bunch and had been meaning to try it. When I saw Cenk’s gorgeous galette on (the equally gorgeous) Cafe Fernando I knew that as soon as I had a bit of free time I would be rolling out this dough.

I must say, the legions of Dorie fans out there are not mistaken. This pie dough really is good for almost anything! It’s tasty and flaky and a snap to put together. And getting pie dough flaky in my hot and humid kitchen is a feat in itself – Dorie I owe you! I used Cenk’s version though which only has butter and no shortening. I don’t have anything against shortening, and I know it is supposed to make the dough flakier, but I was too lazy to buy some ;)

I adapted the recipe slightly to make allowances for all the humidity and heat over here – lessening the water and adding more dough-chilling time. This recipe makes enough for a 9-inch double crust pie. If you make galettes you can make two 9-inch ones (one now one later)...and you don’t have to fiddle with a pie pan ;)

Plum and Nectarine Galette
(pie dough recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours as adapted by Cenk of Cafe Fernando, filling adapted from Cenk’s recipe)

For the pie dough:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 sticks of butter, cut into small chunks and chilled in the freezer for about 20 minutes
1/3 cup ice water

For the filling:
300-400 grams fresh plums, pitted and sliced into eighths (I used 3 plums)
300-400 grams fresh nectarines, pitted and sliced into eighths (I used 2 1/2 nectarines)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
Juice of half a lemon

1 egg, slightly beaten (for assembly)

- Pulse flour, sugar and salt in a food processor using a metal blade.
- Remove butter from freezer, add it in the processor, and pulse until it resembles a coarse meal. Do not over mix! The pieces don’t have to be uniform. Dorie says some can be the size of fat peas and some the size of barley.
- Add ice water little by little, pulsing once in between each addition, until the dough forms clumps and curds (I lessened the water from 1/2 cup to 1/3 due to the moisture already present in my air) custom embroidery. Again, do not over mix! Chunks of butter in the dough are fine (yum!) :)
- Turn the dough out onto a work surface and very lightly and sparingly, knead just to incorporate dry ingredients.
- Divide the dough into two even balls. Flatten balls into disks and wrap individually in plastic.
- Refrigerate dough for at least an hour (I refrigerated one disk and kept the other in the freezer for future use).
- Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough between two sheets of baking parchment (you can roll dough directly on a floured work surface or between two sheets of plastic wrap but parchment works best for me) into a rough 11-inch circle. When rolling, turn dough over frequently and lift the parchment so it doesn’t form creases. Trim the edges to form a clean circle.
- Place your flattened dough (covered in the parchment) back in the fridge for about 20 minutes to chill again.
- Remove dough from fridge, peel of top layer of parchment, and transfer the dough, on the bottom layer of parchment, to a sheet pan or pizza pan (I used one of those pizza pans with holes on the bottom).
- Mix 1/2 tablespoon of the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of the sugar in a bowl and spread on the bottom of the dough.
- Toss plums and nectarines with the rest of the cornstarch, sugar, and lemon juice.
- Arrange the fruit on the bottom of the dough, leaving 2 inches of dough left outside.
- Fold up and pleat the dough (as best you can) over the top of the fruit, leaving the center uncovered.
- Lightly brush the top of the pastry with the beaten egg and sprinkle both the dough and the fruit with sugar (I used Demerara sugar with large crystals).
- Place the galette in 400F oven and cook for 40-45 minutes until golden brown and bubbly.
- Remove from oven and transfer to a cooling rack immediately.

I love how this turned out! All rustic and earth goddess goodness...uneven buttery crust, sticky-shiny filling, sweet juices bubbling over onto the parchment, hypnotic pie-baking smell filling my flat...and C, who is not a sweets type of guy, actually had it for dessert that night (and breakfast today), claiming that “I like this kind of thing!” Yet another reason to celebrate!

More reasons to celebrate:
A wonderfully generous friend brought me back Fage Greek yogurt from her trip to Hong Kong, so I’ve been having very satisfied breakfasts :)
I discovered the most adorable earth-friendly soap stall at my neighbourhood’s Sunday market! She makes body soaps and laundry soap...the laundry soap smells so good (it’s made with herbs) that I want to dunk my head in the basin every time I wash! And I can! Because it’s safe for my skin! Joy! The best part? Unbeknownst to me at the time Ergonomic furniture, she is the same girl who supplied me with all those tomatoes a while back!
80 Breakfasts is mentioned as “click-worthy” in Rogue Magazine’s current (August 2008) issue – The Appetite Issue (piece by Wysgal)! Oh yay!!! My shameless thrill is as uncool and this magazine is cool. Thank goodness this blog managed to slip into its pages before any of them discovered how dorky I am ;)

Dulce de Leche

Whew.  What a week and then some.  As I sit here in my ‘office’, catching a much needed breath, just for 2 seconds, before I go off again, I literally force myself to, as Max so succinctly put it, ‘be still!’.

Be still --- how hard can that be?

Harder than it looks.

With the world, and life, moving so much faster than ever before, filled with so much more (more things to do, see, say, buy, experience, start, finish, eat), it’s become that much more difficult to simply stop and, consciously and wholeheartedly, be still.  But, for the very same reasons, it is that much more important to do it Managed Network.

So here I am, for just 2 seconds, breathing in and out, listening to the silence that is my city’s sigh on the weekends, savoring a warm latte, writing in this blog.  Scribbling away at the few words I have the time for while my dulce de leche simmers to life on the hob.

Making this is too simple to even venture towards a recipe.  Take a couple of cans of condensed milk**, place them in a sturdy pot that is a good deal taller than your cans.  Fill the pot with enough water to completely submerge the cans by a good 2-3 inches (or more, if the thought of exploding cans makes you nervous).  Place the pot, covered, over low heat for 3 hours, making sure that the water level stays above the tops of the cans at all times.  I place a kettle of hot water beside my pot in case I need to make a top up. When the 3 hours are up, turn off the heat but leave the covered pot, and the submerged cans within, undisturbed until the water has completely cooled down.  Once cool, take your cans, dry them off, and enjoy the uncomplicated divinity called dulce de leche Enterprise Endpoint Backup.

There are other ways to make dulce de leche but this is the way my great-grandmother (and my grandmother, and my father) made it, so this is the way I make it too.  There is something so special, so comforting and calming, about performing a task that has been likewise performed by your forebears.  It makes me feel connected, part of a greater whole.  It makes me feel, despite the transient nature of so many things nowadays, that there is goodness that endures.  And, despite the worries that come with being an adult, when I place a spoon of that smooth sweetness in my mouth, I am transported to a soft though roughly-upholstered chair, a ratty box of favored toys in front of me, with my great-grandmother lying on her sofa watching tv.  Companionable silence, no thought but to what was in front of us, content.

In these precious few moments of ‘being still’, stolen from a perpetually and oft-too-fast spinning wheel of life, I like to think of that.

I wish you've all had, or are having, a wonderful weekend…and a couple of quiet moments to ‘be still’! :)

**It must be shared that I used both Milkmaid and Carnation condensed milks, and the can of Carnation was still liquid while the Milkmaid was perfect (and it's what you see pictured here).  Milkmaid is what my father and grandmother use, and what my father strictly counseled me to use.  Apparently with good reason Hong Kong Festival.