summer fruit galettes

The other day, there were lovely plums and peaches available at the fruit stand, so I bought some of both, thinking of making fruit galettes. I made my usual sweet dough pie dough and used an Ina Garten recipe as a jumping off point and turned out a lovely plum galette which was given away and then today, a peach galette.

Summer Fruit Galette (inspired by Summer Fruit Crostata from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa At Home)

Dough (from Laura Calder)
1 c + 2 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c butter, cold, diced
3-4 tbsp cold water

In the bowl of a food processor, add the flour, salt and sugar and whiz until blended. Add the butter and pulse briefly so the butter is in large chunks through the flour. Add the vanilla and the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse briefly until the dough starts to come together. Remove from the processor, press together, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Filling
1 1/2 lb fruit, sliced into wedges (plums, peaches)
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp lemon juice
half a lemon's worth of zest
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Add the fruit to a bowl. Add the sugar, flour, vanilla, juice and zest and mix.

Preheat the oven to 450 deg F. Remove the dough from chilling and roll out into a 12" circle. Move the dough onto parchment paper, add the fruit filling over the center of the dough, evenly spreading it out to an inch or so of the edge. Fold the pastry over the fruit, towards the center, pleating the dough as you go around the pie. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and then sprinkle about 3/4 of it over the pie (over the crust and the fruit center). Bake the pie for 20-25 minutes until nicely browned. Cool on a wire rack. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar over the top.

escape to the rock

Recently Molly has been writing about family traditions. And I was hard pressed to come up with our family traditions. It suddenly hit me on our long drive south to this place, for the seventh year in a row (I counted in my head) that this was one of our traditions. I should have realized earlier of course. And that our boy a few weeks earlier had called it, "our cottage in Oregon" should have been a big clue.

The drive down was fairly uneventful, no long border lines, no crazy traffic jams, only a slow drive from Seaside to Cannon Beach thanks to a utility pole replacement. This year it took some electronic amusements for the boy to stop the inevitable antsiness that sets in around hour 6 of the drive - the fascination for big trucks has waned but luckily the logging trucks in and around Longview Wa still entrall. We hit the beach and the boy immediately ran into the freezing surf and emerged half soaked before we made our way to the tidal pools around Haystack Rock. Luckily for this visit, low tide was mid-morning and early evening which allowed lots of time for exploring the tidal pools. There was also a morning riding fun cycles, some afternoon kite flying, a hike in Ecola State Park, and afternoon BBQ lunch, the usual digging in the sand and a beach bonfire while watching the sun go down. A lovely break from our regular busy days.

summer so far

We've been so lucky in this neck of the woods, to have had a lovely, long stretch of sunny, hot (for us) summer days. We've been trying to make the most of the weather - picnics at the beach, dinner outside in the garden, ice cream cones, swimming/wading in the ocean, skateboarding, tennis, bike riding, slip and sliding at camp, a few days away, etc.

How has your summer been?