While driving down Route 30 just outside of Townsend, VT a few weeks ago we passed a homemade sign reading “Pick Your Own Strawberries and Raspberries”. If I had been driving all of the day’s plans would have been thrown out the window immediately, but Patrick kept us on track and berry picking had to wait. Fortunately, we didn’t wait too long and a couple of days later we were standing in a huge, open field surrounded by strawberries plants and raspberries bushes. Grabbing a few pint and quart baskets my Mom, Eliza, Patrick and I headed into the fields. What seemed like a full morning’s adventure was over pretty quickly. There were so many berries they practically jumped into our baskets!
In less than 20 minutes we had picked tons of berries and had no specific plan of what to do with them besides eat them.
Fortunately, Eliza, always a picky eater, took this opportunity to decide she loved berries.
Once we got home I started to search for the perfect recipe for these beautiful berries. I wasn’t up for hours of baking, so I needed something relatively simple and I knew exactly where to go – Smitten Kitchen. Deb Perelman bakes the most gorgeous desserts and while some of her recipes can get complicated her fruit desserts seem to always air on the side of simplicity; letting the fruit do most of the work. Having always wanted to try a galette – basically an informal pie – I was thrilled to see that she had just recently posted a berry galette recipe for the Fourth of July. A few steps later and we were enjoying the fruits of our labor (see what I did there?).
Mixed Berry Galette
(Recipe heavily inspired by Smitten Kitchen)
Pastry
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 ts. salt
1 1/2 ts. sugar
Zest of half a lemon
8 TB. (4 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/4 cup yogurt (or ricotta or sour cream)
3 to 4 TB. cold water
Filling
2 cups mixed berries (I used raspberries, black raspberries and strawberries)
3 TB. sugar
2 TB. cornstarch
Juice of half a lemon
Pinch of salt
Glaze
1 egg yolk beaten with 1 ts. water
1 heaped ts. sugar for sprinkling (coarse, if you have it)
Whisk the flour, salt, sugar and zest together in the bottom of a large bowl. Work the butter into the flour with your fingertips or a pastry blender until mixture resembles a coarse meal and the largest bits of butter are the size of tiny peas. Stir yogurt and 3 tablespoons water together in a small dish and pour into butter-flour mixture. Stir together with a flexible spatula, then use your hands to knead the mixture into a rough ball. Wrap in plastic and flatten into a disc. Chill in the fridge for 1 hour or up to 48 hours.
Heat oven to 400 degrees. On a floured counter, roll the dough out into a large round-ish shape, about 14 to 15 inches across.
Transfer round-shaped dough to a parchment-lined baking sheet; folding your dough gently into quarters and then unfolding it onto the baking pan works pretty well.
Stir together all of the filling ingredients and spread them in the center of the dough, leaving a 2-inch border. Fold the border over the filling, pleating the edge to make it fit.
Whisk egg yolk and water together and brush over exposed crust. Sprinkle with sugar.
Bake galette for 30 minutes, or golden all over. Remove from the oven and let stand for 5 minutes, then slide the galette onto a serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve hot, warm or at room temperature, preferably with vanilla ice cream.