I hope you’re liking the little cape gooseberry campaign I ran last week! I remember landing back from Goa and finding these berries in my fridge and suddenly there was this little spark in my mind that went “let's make some gooseberry content!” Now I know that I dangled this gooseberry galette carrot all of last week and it just didn’t transpire. Shooting and editing pies take a lot of time. Effectively you have to edit 2 hours of footage into 8 minutes. Picking and choosing the footage and then cutting it down is just a very labour intensive process. Between the time that I shot the recipe and this blog is going out, there were a lot of activities that took on the home front — Natasha got COVID (and recovered!), Besan got sick (and recovered!), half my team got down with COVID as well, we celebrated by boss’ birthday in a hill station and got snowed in, and finally, we celebrated Natasha’s birthday. So I had to find moments to squeeze in this edit.

Republic Day holiday was spent on edits. I got time to really focus on the video and get every element of the edit just right. The reason why I am talking about this is that sometimes, I find it cathartic to just vent and share how my head works. I think typing it out gives me some relief. I don’t know how many people enjoy this but it helps me. And you know what? I am going to vent because you’re all getting a free recipe out of this haha. It’s been over a year since I have been very cognisant about the content I am pushing out. I plan my entire month in advance and then plan out my weekends to make the most of them. Notion is a fabulous app that helped me do this constantly. One of the tactics I have been trying is to create some buzz around the new content that comes out every week. You would typically see a static post on Monday that would hint at the recipe that is coming out on Friday. I chose those two days because they bookend a weekend, they are typically the busiest days for content consumption on feed posts, and most importantly, they give me a deadline for when a post has to be pushed out. It helps me align my agendas for the day and signals to me that outside of work, my time needs to be spent working on edits for this post going live on Friday.

Very early on in this practice, I missed a Friday deadline and someone messaged me saying that they were very much waiting for the recipe to come out as it was something that they wanted to cook through the weekend. That somehow sunk in. When you create content, it’s hard to gauge how much people resonate with it. While some people comment or message, most are silent observers. They may never talk to you but they might be true fans of the content. I see that a lot when I meet fans of the blog in real life. I usually ask their name and what they do but most people who say hello rarely ever engage with me online. Now, yes some of these people might be fibbing but most seem very genuine. Therefore this comment hit hard. Ever since my only goal for the blog has been to make promises and meet promises. This is why Thursday’s are typically my busiest days. Last Thursday, when this blog was planned to go out, I was a mess. By 11 pm, I had done all my chores — dinner, Besan’s walk, spent time with mom, and packed up my bags for my road trip for which we had to be up and on the road by 5 am. I was tired and broken and I looked at Natasha and said “I still need to finish the blog for tomorrow.” She knows how important this deadline was in my head and she sweetly asked me to list out all that was left to finish — edit, voice-over, static edits, blog, upload blog, link in bio modification, and copies for social. As I verbalised the list, I realised that I was looking at 3 hours of more work. Instead of getting motivated by this (which is the usual thought process), this tired me. I decided that this blog isn’t going out. I shut my laptop and decided that this is a stress for some other day.

The next day, Natasha made a sweet little edit with Besan and me and we pushed it out as a reel and no one asked for the galette. What this experience taught me is that sometimes, I have to be selfish. I know I made a promise and truth be told, I could achieve it but the price of my health and mood turned me away from it. In many ways, this was also the genesis of these galettes. I have been making galettes ever since I started the blog in 2017. I loved the thought of making a pie but I didn’t have the equipment to make one. After much research, I found a recipe that worked perfectly well. A stone fruit galette by Melissa Clark from NYT Cooking. I made a burnt mess but I loved the mess. Through the years, I perfected my recipe with a pie dough that can work with ease both in the dead of Delhi winters and the never-ending heat of the city as well. The one modification that I believe made this my own was to make mini galettes. I could never roll the dough into a perfect circle, so I decided to make perfect round cutouts. This served two purposes — 1. They turned out to be more uniform in shape and 2. I could be selfish and store some for myself away from the health-conscious but sugar loving family. These cape gooseberry galettes are a new addition to an old tradition of misshapen pie. While I loved the flavour the one pro-tip for anyone planning to make this — spread some apricot jam to the bottom of the pie dough to add just a touch of more flavour! I hope you do try this recipe and until next time, happy cooking!

Glimpses from the week

Ingredients

Pie Crust

1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour [can be replaced with almond flour]

250 grams of unsalted butter, cold and cubed {almond or hazelnut butter tastes good too}

2 to 4 tablespoons of ice-cold water

1/4 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of sugar 

For the Filling

3 cups of cape gooseberries sliced in half

3/4 cup of sugar (or to taste)

2 tablespoons of cornflour

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Eggwash and crust topping

1 large egg (optional)

1 tablespoon of heavy cream (fresh cream works too)

Turbinado sugar

Method

Pie Crust

1. Add all the dry ingredients for the pie dough into a large bowl and whisk well

2. Add the butter and mix well while using your thumbs to press down the butter into pea-size pieces

3. Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (356 degrees Fahrenheit). Roll the dough out to a 12-inch (30 cm) round. Using a round cap or pastry cutter (about 3 inches in diameter) make cuts. Don’t worry if it's uneven. It goes with the rustic vibe! Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper and chill while preparing the filling.

   Filling

4. Toss together fruit, the lemon zest, and the cornstarch. Pile fruit on the dough circle, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border. Gently fold the pastry over the fruit, pleating to hold it in. Again, imperfect is totally fine. Brush the crust generously with one beaten egg and heavy cream.  Sprinkle raw sugar on the crust.

5. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until the filling, bubbles up vigorously and the crust is golden. Cool for at least 20 minutes (prime Instagram picture time). Serve warm or at room temperature