A Long Bakes Knight

My husband and I like to cook – a lot.  We’ve learned enough in the last couple of years that we can confidently cook most recipes that we see.  It has made for some very yummy dinners.  Last night we made dinner for Andy’s family (we’re currently living with them).  It’s a weekly ritual that gives us the opportunity to try out an interesting recipe or two from our (ever-growing) stash of cookbooks, or one of the cooking magazines.

Last night we made a fantastic tagliatelle pasta with orange and prosciutto.  It sounds a little strange, but it was really good.  It’s in this month’s Bon Appetit if you’d like to try it out.  We needed something to go along with our pasta though, and we found this Tomato Basil Feta Galette in Cooking Light.  I made it fairly quickly – the hands-on time is maybe 20 minutes.  You need to allow time for the dough to chill and the galette to bake though, so start it a couple of hours before dinner will be served.

You’ll notice below that there are a few notes on how I might change the recipe.  Next time, I’m going to try adding another 1/2 tablespoon of ice water, because I found the galette dough to be really hard to work with.  There were not good thoughts going through my head as I was trying to fold the edges over the tomatoes and had to pinch the dough back together for the eighth time because it was so crumbly.

Also, my tomatoes never got all roasty and beautiful like the tomatoes in the magazine picture, and my crust never got quite as brown.  I’m not sure why…I even let it bake an extra 10 minutes in the first bake, and an extra 5 minutes in the second bake.  Next time I’m going to let it go a little longer, or maybe turn up the oven.

Even though my galette did not come out perfectly, it was still really tasty.  It is definitely a recipe I’ll be doing again.  Everyone else agreed – there were no leftovers.

Tomato Basil Feta Galette
Adapted from Cooking Light, June 2011

Ingredients
3.4 oz. all-purpose flour (about 3/4 c., but you have a scale – right?)
1/4 c. yellow cornmeal
3 1/2 Tbs. cold unsalted butter cut into small pieces
3/4 tsp. salt, divided
3 Tbs. ice water
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes (or jewel box, or multi-colored pear, according to the original recipe), halved lengthwise.
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 c. (2 oz.) crumbled feta cheese
1/4 c. small basil leaves

1. Combine flour, cornmeal, butter, and 1/2 tsp. salt in a food processor bowl and pulse until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.

2. With the processor on low, slowly add ice water through chute and mix just until combined – mine was still very crumbly.

3. Dump the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap and press it into a 4 inch (approx.) disc and wrap tightly.  Put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

4. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Unwrap the dough and roll it into a 13 inch circle.  My dough was extremely crumbly and hard to work with.  There was a lot of rolling, then pressing into place, then rolling again, and fixing cracks, and rolling again.  I might add a bit more ice water in the food processor next time.

6. Arrange your grape tomatoes on the dough circle, cut side up.  Make sure to leave an inch or two of empty space around the edge.

7. Fold the edges of the dough over the outer edge of tomatoes.

8. Bake for 25 – 35 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.  I baked mine for 35 minutes, and I could have left it in longer – my tomatoes did not have the beautiful roasted look of those in the magazine, and my crust was still light.

9. Sprinkle with cheese, then bake another 5-10 minutes (again, I left mine in for 10 to try and darken it up a bit).  Cool for 5 minutes, and top with the basil leaves.

The recipe says this makes 8 servings, but it’s a lot smaller than it looks, so we cut it into 6.