Blueberry Nectarine Galette
The bounty of summer fruit presents me with a dilemma—maybe it does for you too. I anticipate the bite of my first peach of the season, as the juice rolls down my chin, but I overestimate how much fruit I will actually eat. In the store the blueberries look so good—big and sweet, I think to myself buy the big container. Now I am stuck with having to eat those berries every day or they will get old and moldy. For the next few days while I eat the blueberries, the peaches wait patiently on the counter. The bruised spots (that I didn’t notice at the store) are quietly starting to turn brown and moldy before they are even completely ripe. They need to be eaten too.
Luckily, I have a solution for this predicament: pie, or galette. Maybe like me you don’t enjoy the jellied texture of many fruit pie fillings. It’s created by the pectin added to keep the pie filling from running right out of the pie when you cut into it. Once again Julia Child will come to the rescue, as she has many times over the years. Her answer is to cook half the fruit with a bit of sugar and flour, and then pour it into the uncooked fruit. As it cools, it gels just enough to make a slightly runny and juicy filling.
The recipe below comes from her cookbook Baking with Julia which has many wonderful recipes. I also recommend her blueberry muffins; made with pastry flour, they are light and delicious. Beware though, it is hard to eat just one. (Her gingerbread cake is also amazing. With the unusual addition of espresso and unsweetened cocoa powder it is a great holiday dessert. I make a large one and serve it with her recipe for lemon curd.)
For this recipe, I have used both peaches and nectarines depending on what I have on hand. Don’t worry about the skins on the stone fruit: they are so thin that they kind of melt away into the filling. Also, don’t omit the lemon zest; you only use a small amount, but it makes a difference to the flavor
Ingredients for crust:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup pastry flour
12 tablespoons unsalted butter cold diced (1 ½ sticks)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon of sea salt
½ cup ice cold water
Directions for making pastry:
Whisk together the flours, salt, and sugar. Add the butter and using your fingers or two forks, massage/mash the butter into the flour until there are no chunks left but you can still see bits of butter. Add the ice water and combine with one hand holding the bowl, the other blending until the dough comes together. It takes a couple of minutes. Cut the dough into two approximately equal pieces, shape into a disk and refrigerate for two hours. (The dough can be made a day ahead.) The recipe makes enough for a 9 1/2” pie with left over dough for a small 6-7” galette, or Three 10” galettes. The dough will keep up to a month in the freezer.
Ingredients for Filling:
3 cups of fresh blueberries
2 cups of nectarines, cut into chunks
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1-2 tablespoons cold butter
Zest of 1 lemon (about 2 teaspoons)
Directions for the filling:
Add half the fruit to a saucepan along with the sugar and flour. Keep the rest of the fruit in a medium sized bowl. Cook the fruit mixture over medium heat stirring frequently until the juices start to release and thicken about 4 minutes. Combine with the fruit in the bowl and set aside to cool.
Assembling the galette:
Take one disk out of the fridge and place on a lightly floured surface. Roll from the middle turning the dough over from time to time so it doesn’t stick until you get it to an even thickness of a 11-12” circle. Gently roll it back on to the rolling pin and then gently unroll it into the dish, tucking it with your fingers so that it reaches all the way into the edges of the dish. Set aside. Repeat with the remaining disk to a slightly smaller sized circle but still enough to hang over the edge of the dish. Set aside. Now pour the fruit filling into the bottom crust, dot the filling with butter. Cover with the remaining crust and cut both top and bottom equally so that about ½” hangs over the dish. Fold the top crust over the bottom crust and tuck it under to form a thicker edge of dough even with edge of the pie dish. Crimp the edge of the pastry by placing your index finger on the inside of the dough edge and pinching it on the outer side with the thumb and index finger of your other hand. Cut slits into the top of the pie and chill for 20 minutes. Preheat the oven while the pie is chilling.
Cook in a 375° preheated oven for 50 minutes or until golden.
Save the extra dough for tomorrow’s galette.
