I love making galettes – a french free-form tart.  This is a peak of Summer galette made from local plums and raspberries.  Once you get galette making down, you can create galettes with lots of different fillings:  Apples and toasted pecans, peaches with almonds, blueberries with lemon.  This takes few hours to make but much of that time is waiting for the galette dough to chill or for the galette to bake. 

Preheat oven to 385 F

Ingredients:

1 pound Plums (firm ripe)
1 C fresh raspberries
8 oz. Ricotta
Zest of 1 Lemon
1 Egg at room temperature
1 Tbl cornstarch
2 Tbls (plus more for dusting) Powdered (Confectioners) Sugar
1 Tbl melted butter
3 Tbl Turbinado Sugar

1 disk Galette dough (see the recipe below).

Put the ricotta into a fine strainer or inside of a piece of cheese cloth and let it drain for 30 minutes or more.  Mix the lemon zest and 1 Tbl of confectioners sugar into the ricotta.  Taste the ricotta mixture.  It should be balanced between sweet and salt and taste lemony.  If it needs more sugar, add a bit more to bring the sweetness up.  Once it tastes like you want it to, mix the egg in well.

Slice the plums into 1/4 inch wide slices.  To pit a plum, slice all the way around the outside of the plum from the top to the bottom.  Slide your knife into the plum at the top then turn the plum over cutting the plum in half all the way to the pit.  Follow the seam along the outside of the plum where the two halves of the plum grow together.  Then twist the two halves apart, back and forth, gently until one side breaks free from the pit.  Slice this half into 1/4 wide slices.  Cut the other half the plum in half again.  Do the twist trick once more until one quarter of the plum breaks free of the pit.  Cut the pit out of the remaining quarter off of the pit or pull the pit out with your fingers. 

Add the slices to large bowl.  Add 1 Tbl cornstarch and the remaining 1 Tbl of confectioners sugar.  Add a pinch of salt and mix.  Taste your plums, if they are tart, you might want to add more confectioners sugar.

Roll out the galette dough into 16“ wide disk and trim to a circle.  Slide the dough onto a piece of parchment paper and then slide the parchment and dough onto a baking sheet.

Drop small pieces of the ricotta mixture into the center of the dough leaving a 2 inch margin around the outside edge of the dough.  Lay the plum slices on the ricotta.  If you making this for a fancy party, you can arrange the slices in concentric circles.  If you want quick and simple, just pile it all inside.  Make sure to leave a 2 inch margin of dough so that you can fold it over to make the pleated edge.

Fold the edges of the galette dough over the sides of the fruit.  There are several ways to pleat a galette dough.  See this Fine Cooking article for details.

Brush the dough with the melted butter.  Sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the buttered dough and across the top of the galette.

Bake the galette for 30 minutes turning once after about 20 minutes.  Sprinkle the raspberries across the top of the galette and bake for 15 more minutes.  Pull the galette from the oven when the dough is nicely browned.  Slide the parchment paper and galette off onto a cooling rack and let cool for 10 minutes or more.  Dust the top of the galette with confectioners sugar and serve.  You can serve this with vanilla ice cream or creme fraiche (whisk lemon juice and confectioners sugar into the creme fraiche) .

Galette Dough Recipe

5 3/4 oz. (1 1/4 cups) All-purpose Flour
1 Tbs. Sugar
1/4 tsp. Salt
4 oz. (8 Tbs.) well chilled unsalted butter cut into small cubes
1/3 cup Ice water

Add the dry ingredients to a food processor and pulse several times to mix.  Add the butter and pulse a few times.  Do not over mix the butter.  There should still be pea sized chunks of butter in the dough.  Do not mix until it looks like corn meal.  Add the water all at once and pulse a few times until the dough starts to come together.  It will not come together into a ball.  It will still be crumbly and will seem under mixed but don’t worry it will come together in the fridge.  Pour the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap.  Gather it up and form it into a disk.  Wrap tightly and put in the fridge for two hours. 

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