for this weeks challenge, we have chosen to make tomato and cheese galettes. sigh. big sigh…tomatoes are not in season yet here in tennessee. the spring weather was so cold and wet so late in the season that our tomato plants didn’t go into the ground until the third week of may. oh well, off to market i go.
in between stops, i ducked into my local publix supermarket. generally, i can expect them to have a better than average selection of produce. finding heirloom tomatoes shouldn’t be a problem there and i didn’t have time to go across town to whole foods to over pay for said tomatoes. all i can say is that if tomatoes are not in season in tennessee, it is unlikely that tomatoes from ontario (yes, ontario in canada) will be better. way to go publix! at least 75% of what they had available was listed as produce of canada. honestly, can we not grow our own tasteless hot house tomatoes? do we really need to import them??? my options were severely limited, i chose a tomato from florida and made the decision to focus on mushrooms and onions-at least i knew they were going to have some flavor.
we have begun to go hostless here at tuesdays with dorie so to see the original recipes, buy the book! or you can check it out on this heart of mine, blogger amy posted the recipes for the dough and the galette back in 2011 and it is word for word from the book.
my first bit of tinkering was with the flour for the galette. i have a bag of atta flour-indian flour made from durham wheat and wheat bran, and the only cornmeal i like to bake with is blue.
the recipe cautions that it is a soft dough. trust me it is. however, i think that is more due to the mixing instructions than the nature of the dough. you are instructed to use sour cream or an equal portion of yogurt or buttermilk and to whisk it into the water. however, the ingredient list suggests that you may not need all of the water. so why would you combine the sour cream with all of the water? it should tell you to add the sour cream (buttermilk in my case) and begin mixing and to add the water bit by bit as needed to get the proper consistency. my dough was a little on the sticky side. luckily, i know how to work with sticky dough, i partially froze it and worked with it cold. while the dough chilled, i made the topping.
one thing i do know, it is chanterelle season here in tennessee; we picked some last week. these are a little past their prime but would be fine for the topping
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the herb garden is pumping out leaves all over the place so finding them was easy. exit back door, snip, snip, snip… i quickly had basil, oregano, thyme and sage leaves.
first step, caramelize some sweet onions. to this i added a little garlic but was careful not to burn it.
the texture of the whole grain flours gives the dough a nice crunch and a little color.
close up you can see the dark flecks of blue cornmeal and little bits of wheat bran.
first on was a layer of fontina and romano cheese. i used about 3/4 of it on the bottom. then came the flavorless florida tomatoes (sigh) and the onions and mushrooms. the last bit of cheese was sprinkled over the top.
honestly, the dough was too soft to do much with so i quickly folded it up and into the oven it went.
it took the full 40 minutes to bake but it was nice and bubbly with just a little color. the house smelled like pizza and it almost tasted like it until you got the crust-that made it taste like a tart. a winner if you ask me, but next time, can we do this when tomatoes are in season? please???
will garden for cake 