I had originally purchased a package of frozen puff pastry dough to make dessert for the Boy and myself back at Valentines Day. And then our recipes ended up taking too much time, and by the time we had finished cooking dinner, had sat down with a glass of wine and a movie, we just were not feeling up to getting back up and making dessert. Which is a shame, because the recipe we had in mind was SO easy, and wouldn’t have taken that long. It also would have given us a little something yummy at the end of the meal, but then again, we did eat quite a lot of game hen and veggies…so maybe there wasn’t much room.
In any case, a month or so after Valentines Day I finally bought a large apple, pulled out the pastry dough and decided to make the recipe in question – a galette. A galette is a nebulous term that the French use to describe any sort of flat free-form pastry. They can be savory, but are more often sweet. In this case, I would be make a sort of super-easy apple pie. And boy-howdy, this was so easy. So easy that the hardest part was waiting for the pastry to thaw. Ok – maybe slicing the apples was slightly more difficult that thawing pastry dough, but slicing apples is not hard at all.
And because I am an adult and I get to make choices about my life and what I do with it, I decided that evening that I would be eating this apple galette for dinner. It would have been an even better life choice if I’d had some delicious sharp cheddar cheese to eat with the galette, but when you decide to live on the edge like I do, sometimes you don’t have the right kind of cheese in your refrigerator. But because I decided to eat the galette for dinner, I don’t have a good idea of how many dessert-sized servings it really provides. I know I cut it into 9 pieces. I think I ate about 5 that night myself, left 2 for the Boy to munch on when he got home late from work, and had two slices to tuck into my lunch the next day. So make of that what you will.
Basically, this is a fantastic little recipe to tuck into your pocket for when you have a couple people coming over and want to do something impressive. I may have messed up the recipe slightly by using the whole sheet of puff pastry instead of just half, but that’s ok. It doesn’t make it taste less delicious. But if you want to use whole sheet and fix what I did wrong, you should actually double the ingredients here…while oddly still only needing one sliced apple. I also used fig jam in place of apple jelly, because really – who keeps apple jelly around? I think anything fruit-based and jelly-like could probably serve here. Just think seriously about whether the fruit in question would taste good on apples. (If it’s fig jam, the answer is yes. Yes it does taste good.)
Easy Apple Galette
Yield: 4 large pieces, or 9 smallish pieces
Ingredients
1/2 (9 1/2 by 9-inch) sheet puff pastry, thawed
1 large Granny Smith apple (8 ounces), peeled, cored, halved, and sliced 1/8 inch thick
1/2 tablespoon butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon apple jelly
1 teaspoon water
Instructions
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Transfer puff pastry to prepared baking sheet and fold edges over by 1/4 inch; crimp to create 1/4-inch-thick border.
Starting in 1 corner of tart, shingle apple slices into crust in tidy diagonal rows, overlapping them by about half, until surface is completely covered. Dot apple with butter and sprinkle evenly with sugar. Bake until bottom of tart is deep golden brown and apple has caramelized, 40 to 45 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through baking.
Combine apple jelly and water in bowl and microwave until mixture begins to bubble, about 30 seconds. Brush glaze over apple and let tart cool slightly on sheet for 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
From: “The Complete Cooking For Two Cookbook” by America’s Test Kitchen