I fell sick a lot as a kid. Right up until I was 12 years of age, I was the victim of every flu, disease, and plague that was trending in the streets of Delhi. My tonsils were the weakest and almost always infected. By the time I was 6 years old, anything too cold, too tart, or too processed was banned from consumption. Basically, all the good things like jams, candy, ice cream, soft drinks, and packaged juices were all under strict embargo, with home minister Mom Agarwal presiding over supplies. While I retaliated—there were good reasons for the restrictions which I would only momentarily acknowledge once a Tetra Pak of mango Frooti would leave me feverish and have me sipping on cough syrup like alcoholics that run out of cheap rum, for weeks on end.

Having such restrictions were helpful though. I don't really have a sweet tooth, I rarely drink juices or indulge in hard candies for that matter. However, I do think this has also made my sensitive towards things are even mildly sweeter or sour than culinary benchmarks, rendering them challenging and at times, offending my palette. As I got older, I began testing old restrictions. I started with candy which almost instantly resulted in sore throats and night spent gargling with salty water (which I still believe is pretty pointless though the biologist in me fights with this claim incessantly). What stuck through my teenage rebellion was soft drinks and tart fruits. Diet Coke and I are inseparable even though, I am pretty sure my pancreas hates me for it (milking that B.S. in Biology with that reference). Tart fruits like strawberries, plums, oranges, cherries— basically Indian seasonal fruits that while still cause canker sores in my mouth and close up my throat, are ones that I could never give up.

My rebellion allowed me to understand the nuances of such fruits once I became a little older— armed with a relatively more mature palate. I know I have talked a bunch about cherries, but lets talk about plums. Plums are by far one of prettiest stone fruit. In India, they are quite small and come in a range of scarlet that start at this bright vermillion, and end into what I can only describe as a slow black eye— a red so deep that it’s almost purple. White spots dazzle the outer casing of the fruit like far away stars in a galaxy. They have this earth tone white that seems like a seed embedded into the flesh of the fruit and the opacity of the skin covering it gives it that unique off-white color but a bite in and you realize they’re just surface embellishments. Each bite works like the sour candies that I resisted— tart when they meet your tongue that slowly dissolve into sweet. Their tartness is what made me what to put them in a tart in the summer of 2017 when I really started baking. Since I didn’t have all the equipment such as a mold to bake them in, a galette is what I resorted to. My first stab at a plum galette was challenging. I burnt the top, there was no sheen on the pastry, the fruits were not cut uniformly which made them hard to cook uniformly and the added sugar in the fruit mix lysed the juice making the filling a lot more liquid than desired. It, however, did teach me how to make a perfect pie crust as well as how when you bake fruit, sugar, and cornstarch until boiling point, you make a beautiful, shiny jam that binds fresh fruit with the pastry and give it a taffy-like bite.

With a perfected pie crust and an evolving filling, I decided to miniaturize these pies and add some frills. Some lemon zest introduced more of a summery flavor, the peaches helped hold the galette together and reduce the amount of juice that bleeds out making the base soggy. I brushed the crust with cream and egg to reduce the burning and give it this beautiful color that looked like Swiss butter cookies which appear out of nowhere in tin cans every Christmas. As I bit into my first batch, I realized that the high fat content in the pie needed to be cut with something lighter. I decided on serving it with a vanilla bean whipped cream which helped add a classic vanilla taste and filled your mouth with airy cream while reducing the amount of pie in each bite. What I ended up with was a beautiful pastry which was tart in the beginning, sweet in the end, with a bite that resembles the texture of a taffy candy— all the restrictions from childhood in one bite.

Journey of a Galette

Recipe

Ingredients

For the crust:

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

300 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 fruits (plums, peaches, blueberries, cherries)

3/4 cup of sugar (or to taste)

2 tablespoons of cornflour

Zest of 1 lemon

Eggwash and crust topping:

1 large egg

1 tablespoon of heavy cream

Preparation

Pie Crust:

Step 1

In a food processor blend together the flour and butter until the mixture forms bean-size pieces. Slowly add ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse until the dough just comes together. It should be moist, but not wet.

Step 2

Put dough on the lightly floured counter and pat it together to make one uniform piece. Flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic and chill for 2 hours.

Step 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 inched 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

Step 1

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.

Step 2

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.

Yum