Savory Galettes

There are a lot of recipes for savory galettes on the Internet, but they are fairly basic allowing the cook to use whatever combination of ingredients that sounds good or to use what is on hand. Galettes are a great way to use up leftovers. Several recipes use a whole wheat or cornmeal pie crust for extra flavor, or even puff pastry.

The filling should be a fairly dry mixture so it doesn't leak out of the crust. Some add an egg to hold things together. Others seem to rely on cheese, or both, and even flour to thicken a cream sauce. Add spices and herbs that go well with the main ingredients. Bake at 375 - 400 degrees F.

Fillings

Galettes are often made with a vegetable filling. You could use leafy greens, or tomatoes, or various summer or winter squashes, or corn, or eggplant, or potatoes even. There's hardly anything that won't work, as long as you handle the combination with a little forethought. There are two things in particular you want to think about: the texture and water content of the vegetables.

Unlike sweet fruits such as peaches and apples, many vegetables, if packed raw into a galette, will never tenderize sufficiently in the time it takes to bake the crust. Others, like tomatoes, will dump their juices, threatening to turn the filling into soupy slop. With fruit galettes and pies, starches are added to thicken those juices, but I can't think of too many cases where a savory, starch-thickened vegetable sludge sounds appealing.

The solution in most cases is to pre-cook the filling, eliminating excess liquid, tenderizing the vegetables, and concentrating their flavor. Tomatoes can be roasted in the oven, leafy greens can be cooked down spanakopita-style, and winter squash can be roasted until browned and softened.

Exactly what form your vegetables take is also up to you. You could leave them in beautiful big pieces, or chop them smaller, or go for a more purée-like texture. You could also do a mix, possibly even keeping some components separate and then layering them into the galette during assembly. For instance, when making an asparagus galette, you could reserve the asparagus tips and add them raw on top of the filling, since they cook through more quickly, and make for a more beautiful presentation when they're not hidden in the depths of the filling.

Enrich the Filling

Cheese is a good option. Good melters, such as Fontina, Gruyère, Jack, or mozzarella, or a cheese like feta that will keeps its shape and add a briny punch work well.

Use your favorite recipes to get ideas for ingredients that go well together. For instance the classic recipe for Spanokopita, the Middle Eastern Spinach Pie. Or Cheddar and Broccoli Soup, breakfast food combinations. I even found a recipe that used Chicken Pot Pie flavors.

Some examples are:

- chard and baby beet greens briefly cooked with garlic and mixed with feta cheese, currants, pine nuts, an egg, and a little buttermilk

2 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
8 cups chopped washed cooking greens, such as kale, chard and beet greens
1 egg, separated (egg yolk brushed on pastry before placing in oven)
3 tablespoons buttermilk (mix with egg whites to use as a binder for the greens)
¾ cup crumbled feta cheese
3 tablespoons dried zante currants
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper, preferably white pepper
pinch nutmeg
1 tablespoon pine nuts

- Mediterranean Galette made with spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and mozzarella and Feta cheeses, garnished with fresh basil

2 cloves garlic (minced)
6 oz. fresh or frozen spinach
1½ cups (1 jar) marinated artichoke hearts
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ cup sun-dried tomatoes
4 oz. fresh mozzarella (torn into chunks)
2 oz. feta cheese
1 egg (for egg wash - used on pastry)
fresh basil for garmishing after baked

- Broccoli and Cheese Galette - broccoli cooked with onion and mixed with Mornay Sauce (1 c. milk, 1 1/2 Tbsp. butter and flour, 6 oz. Gruyère cheese, 1 egg for brushing on the pastry.)

- cheddar cheese, corn, potato, and zucchini galette, garnished with arugula and sour cream

- potato, caramelized onion, bacon, Havarti and Cheddar cheeses

2 medium Yukon Gold Potatoes, peeled and par-boiled
1 medium onion, sliced and caramelized; you will not use all of it
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 sliced bacon, cooked and diced
1/2 cup shredded Havarti cheese; or, any hard cheese on hand
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese; or, any hard cheese on hand
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil, flavored with garlic
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste; I use coarse Kosher salt

- creamy chicken, potato, corn or peas, and onion thickened with flour (sort of like chicken pot pie) in an herb crust

- Breakfast Sausage, Mushroom, and Egg Galette - cooked sausage, mushrooms, spinach, shallots, and goat cheese for binding, place in puff pastry crust, make wells or indentations. Bake briefly (about 10 minutes), fill each of the indentations with a broken egg and bake until egg is set.