tuesdays with dorie / baking with julia: berry galette
I can’t believe how long it’s been since the last time I posted to my blog, over three weeks. And, my participation in Tuesday with Dorie / Baking with Julia, despite my best intentions, has remained at the minimum allowed, once a month. Ugh! It’s a new month, and I couldn’t pass up the first August recipe for TWD: berry galette.
Fresh Picked Berries
There was a container of freshly-picked blueberries from the lakeside bush at our cottage in Maine, and another of blackberries picked from the backyard here in Massachusetts. No shopping required for this recipe. This recipe was tailor-made for this week.
The galette dough was much softer and stickier than a usual pastry crust. It came together easily in the food processor and spent the day chilling in the fridge. I was worried that it would be tricky to roll out because it was so soft, but I was generous with the flour and used a marble board, and it rolled out without a hitch. No problems transferring it to the parchment-lined baking sheet either.
The mixed berries were sprinkled over the crust, then sprinkled with sugar, drizzled with honey, and dotted with butter. The edges of the dough were folded up over the fruit in the center to finish up the free-form tart.
The tart baked in a hot oven for 35 minutes. There was a little leakage, but the remaining filling was still quite juicy.
Ooops, I leaked!
Overall, we found the berry galette to be just okay. It reminded me a little of a pop-tart. Also, I expected the crust to be tender, but it was a little bit tough and I don’t think overhandled it. I have another round of dough, so I will try again, maybe using stone fruit for some of the berries. Even so, the galette is a very summery dessert and was worth a try.
For the recipe, visit one of this week’s hosts: Lisa at Tomato Thymes in the Kitchen and Garden and Andrea at The Kitchen Lioness. Andrea hails from Germany and is my friend from French Fridays with Dorie. Her magnificent photos and entertaining prose are worth checking out. She often takes her food “on the road” for photo shoots in glorious, scenic locations.
ffwd: salmon with basil tapenade
I do love salmon. After trout, it’s probably my favorite fish. It usually gets the simplest preparation at my house: grilled in the summer, broiled in the winter. In either case, we coat the fish lightly with a spice mix and nothing more. This week’s selection for French Fridays with Dorie, Salmon with Basil Tapenade, adds yet another technique option to the repertoire.
I’m not a very good meal planner. We have a CSA share for the month of July (won at a silent auction). Earlier this week, when I picked up the share, it included a generous amount of fresh basil. I wasn’t thinking ahead to Friday, so I promptly made the entire lot of it into pesto. I didn’t realize that I should have reserved some for this dish. In the end, I just substituted my pesto for the chopped basil, which tasted just fine. For the fish, I cut a one pound fillet of wild coho salmon into three 5-ounce pieces.
The recipe was confusing when it described how to cut pockets in the fish fillets for stuffing with the aromatic tapenade (a blend of tapenade, pesto, and lemon zest and juice). I couldn’t figure out whether it was a one-inch slit that went partially or all the way through the fillet, or whether it was a one-inch slit along the entire edge. Howard and I both read it through multiple times and demonstrated to each other what we thought Dorie meant. In the end, I went with two slits that went from edge-to-edge, on either side of the center bone.
Stuffing the fish with tapenade was incredibly messy, and in my opinion, not worth the trouble. With tapenade sauce topping the cooked fish, I found that gave plenty of flavor and would have been enough.
Very Messy
I liked the cooking method. The fillets are seared in olive oil in a hot skillet on the top side, then the skin side. Then, the skillet of fillets goes into a very hot oven to finish off the cooking. Everything was so hot, I didn’t test as I went, I just used the times in the recipe. The fish was slightly overcooked. Next time, I’ll cut a few minutes off the final roasting step, not that it’s very long to begin with. I had a little trouble flipping the fish. It’s a good thing the sauce is opaque and masked some of the torn flesh. I used a high-sided skillet and suspect that the angle for turning was too sharp to do a perfect job.
I served the salmon with orzo tossed with roasted fennel and some green beans with a dollop of the tapenade sauce (veggies courtesy of CSA mentioned above). It was a delicious meal, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s leftovers!
I’m looking forward to reading about what my fellow FFwD bloggers thought about this week’s recipe. Check out their links under the Leave Your Link post for this recipe at French Fridays with Dorie. We don’t post the recipes, but consider getting your own copy of the book, Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table.
A Plateful of Happiness 