Eight minutes and it's in the oven...

You know how sometimes you have last minute visitors dropping by and you sorta want to just open up a bag of store-bought cookies but you can’t really do that because you have a fancy cookbook coming out in a few months, and a website all about good living, and a TV show where everything looks perfect all of the time? We totally know how you feel.

This happened this past weekend, when we realized that the photo crew coming over to take some “high fashion” shots probably didn’t have time to stop for breakfast on their way. In situations like these, we think it’s always good to have a few standby recipes committed to memory. This blog is about one of those recipes. We can have it in the oven in 8 minutes or less. With only 6 ingredients. And this is our favorite part…all you need to get dirty is a bowl, a fork, and a rolling pin. That’s it.

Is the result earth-shattering? No. Will it win you a James Beard award? Probably not. Would you make it if you found out Martha Stewart was dropping by in an hour? Definitely. She would admire your ingenuity. Getting something prepped, mixed, baked, and cleaned up in under 45 minutes will amaze even your most persnickity friends.

May we humbly suggest the humble galette as your go-to recipe de last minute. Most of you probably know what a galette is. It’s what would result if a pie and a tart had a one night stand on a camping trip. It’s a simple pie crust, onto which some fruit and sugar is piled. The edges are quickly folded up a little bit over the fruit and it’s baked. Very rustic. Very simple. Sure you can get fancy with galettes…the internet is full of corn-meal egg-washed crusts, and cream filled custard fillings. But a basic traditional galette is just that – basic. Crust, Fruit, Fold.

We’re even gonna help you memorize the process, to save you more time.

Here are the ingredients:

Crust = flour, butter, sugar, water or milk

Filling = Fruit, sugar (plus we use one other simple flavoring per galette. Usually either lemon or orange zest, basil, or thyme. Lemon thyme is even nicer.)

Here’s how you’ll remember the proportions for the crust, which you make first:

Chunk 1 stick of butter into large pats into a medium bowl. Use a fork, and don’t put the fork in the sink when you’re done. You’re also going to mix the crust with it. Most people will say the butter should be well-chilled. And it should. But you know what? You don’t have time. If it’s on the counter already because you didn’t put it away after breakfast, go ahead and use it.

1 very heaping cup flour (you always need a little more flour than butter)

A palm-full of sugar. less than a 1/4 cup. couple of teaspoons, really. Just scoop your hand into the sugar bin and whatever stays in your cupped palm is enough.

See? The crust is easy to remember. 1 + 1 + a little bit. (BTW, this works for most any kind of pie crust. Just keep the proportion and double the amounts for a two-crust pie.)

If you want, at this point, and the salt shaker is nearby, throw in a pinch of salt. If the salt shaker is way across the kitchen, forget about it.

Ok…with the flour, sugar, and butter chunks in a medium bowl, smush them all together with the fork. You’ll want the butter/flour to be in pea-size chunks. Then add cold milk or water, a little at a time (pour dollops like you would pour into a cup of coffee), and mix in between dollops. When the dough starts to just stick together in a ball, it’s done. Don’t get too wet, or it will stick to the counter when you roll it out, and be tough when baked.

Now most recipes would say you should let the dough rest in the refrigerator before you roll it out, but you know what? You have guests coming over the hill. If you can’t rest, why should your dough be able to?

Throw a fist full of flour on the counter, spread it out a little, and plop the dough ball onto it. Sprinkle a little more flour on top of the dough ball to keep the rolling pin from sticking to it. Roll it out. How? Well you can either watch hundreds of YouTube videos on the “proper way” to roll out dough, or you can do like your grandmother did. She, umm, rolled the rolling pin over it. Repeatedly. Until it was flat. Amazing, right?

For a galette, we roll out our crust in a kinda rectangular-ish shape. It fits a baking sheet better.

Transfer the crust to a baking sheet. It’s easier to transfer, we’ve found, if we fold it into quarters on the counter, transfer to baking sheet, then unfold on the baking sheet. Some it may hang over the side edges. That’s fine. You’re gonna fold it back over in a second after it’s filled.

Now the filling. First sprinkle whatever added flavor you want to use directly on the crust. A little orange or lemon zest. A sprinkle of fresh thyme leaves. For this weekend’s galette, we ripped up a few basil leaves. No chopping or scissoring. Just with our fingers.

Then place the fruit in the middle of the crust. This week’s galette was strawberry. Now, again, you’re going to see lot’s a really pretty pictures of strawberry galettes on the internet that have perfect strawberry slices, delicately overlapped in a precise pattern. Screw that. That’s how you make a tart. This is a country galette. Don’t put on airs.

We just plop a layer of whole strawberries in the middle of the crust. (If you’re using the elephantitis grocery store strawberries, cut them in half.) Don’t go all the way to the edge of the crust with the berries, because you’ll need to fold a couple of inches back over. We do pinch off the hulls from the whole berries, but we swear on our french Uncle’s Bob’s grave, that if we didn’t have the time to do that, we’d throw the berries in, hulls and all, and call it “uber-rustic.” The french make cherry clafouti with pits, so I bet they sometimes leave the hulls on their strawberries.

Ok. Berries in the middle. Check. Now sprinkle with another palm-full of sugar. Fold the edges of the crust over the top of the outermost berries. There should be maybe 2 inches of crust folded over all the way around. If there’s more, fine. Probably shouldn’t be much less, though. Because as the galette bakes, you need the overlapped crust to hold in as many of the released juices as possible. But let’s be completely honest. It’s gonna leak. And as long as you have a lip on the baking sheet so that it doesn’t drip off into the oven, you’re not gonna care.

And for God’s sake. Don’t do anything fancy like an egg wash on the crust. Take that time to run a comb through your hair instead.

Now put the galette into a hot oven. Between 350 – 400 degrees. It doesn’t matter. Do you think those french country bakers had a precise thermostat in their wood burning ovens? Bake for about 30 minutes or until fruit is soft, crust is brown, and juices are running. The juices might seem very watery, but they will get more syrupy as it cools.

Maybe all the juices ran out of your galette. It happens. Doesn’t matter. When you serve to your incredibly impressed guests, just spoon the juices back over the top. Pretend that you’d meant to drizzle all along. Drizzling is very fancy.

And you’re a fancy person.

Because you just baked a galette in a moment’s notice. Damn, you’re good.