Zucchini and Ricotta Galette

This week we take on something different. I know you’re used to seeing lots of desserts here at Needs Baked HQ. This week’s recipe is not sweet, but it’s still delicious. A tart for dinner, you say? A delicious crust wrapped around cheese and vegetables, you say? Yes, I say!

So what is this galette thing anyway, you might be wondering. Yeah, I was wondering, too. It can be a lot of different things, but this one, as many of them are, is like a tart. But it’s a tart without a tart pan. (See here for more info.) You might notice there’s now a new category on the site called tarts, so I think you can safely assume that there will eventually be more to come.

So why this galette? One night last weekend we were trying to figure out what to make for dinner. I remembered that I had a leftover pie crust from making the chess pie. So we discussed using that and making some sort of vegetable tart. We looked to see what vegetables we had handy and found that zucchini was our best option. So I did a little poking around on smitten kitchen, which always has great recipes, and I found this one which used zucchini.

Since I was using the leftover pie crust I had, I didn’t use the crust mentioned in the recipe. It’s also from smitten kitchen, but it’s slightly different than the one in the recipe: a little bit of sugar, no sour cream, no lemon juice. After we settled on making this, I took the dough out of the freezer and put it in the fridge so it could defrost but still stay chilled as the recipe required. By the time I got started it hadn’t quite defrosted, so I took it out of the fridge to defrost the rest of the way.

As far as the rest of the ingredients went, we didn’t actually have two zucchinis, we had one zucchini and one squash, but we figured they would play nice together. I used some pre-minced garlic we had, which was super easy. We actually had to go out and get all the cheeses. But, since we went for a nice afternoon walk through the neighborhood anyway, we just stopped and picked up the cheeses on the way home. We also got some sausages to have with it. I didn’t get any fresh basil, I just used dried basil which we already had.

I didn’t do an egg wash. As you may know, I generally don’t have eggs around and I didn’t want to get any just for this. I remembered doing a cream wash before, but I didn’t have any cream either. I figured butter might be close, so I melted some butter for a butter wash.

My wife cut up the zucchini and squash, salted it, and let it drain. (Thanks hon!) I blotted it dry and put it into a bowl to make space on the counter. I then mixed the olive oil and garlic, followed by mixing the cheese mixture.

By this point, the dough had been defrosting for a while, so I figured it was ready. I took it out of the plastic wrap it was in and started rolling it out. It was hard to work with. It was still a little frozen, or at least really cold, as it wasn’t really malleable. After working with it for a few minutes it finally started behaving, but by that point it had absorbed a lot of flour, which I had needed to use to keep rolling it out. (I probably should have just let it sit some more, but the evening was moving forward with it or without it, and I figured the evening would go better if we actually had something for dinner.) I rolled it out on my pastry mat which has all the sizes right on it, making it easy to measure.

I covered a baking sheet in parchment paper, and I carefully moved the dough onto it. It was a little messy, and the dough was a little weak in places, but I got it moved. I spread out the cheese mixture, arranged the zucchini and squash, and drizzled the garlic/olive oil mixture on top. Then I folded up the dough. I melted a little butter, mixed it with some water, and used it as a wash over the dough.

I baked it for 30 minutes, but it seemed like it needed a few more, so I baked it for 5 more. The dough didn’t look quite as brown as in the pictures with the recipe. However, I did use a different dough and a different wash, so those probably made the difference. Also, the zucchini/squash juices were kinda everywhere. I don’t know if I should’ve patted the vegetables dry again right before I used them. I also don’t know if the dough being a little weak in places is why it oozed out. I blotted the top of it with a paper towel and wiped up around the sides. Then I sprinkled on some dried basil and carefully slid it onto a dish for serving.

It looked fantastic and it smelled great too. I felt very European. And I have to say, it was delicious. Yummy vegetables, yummy cheeses, yummy dough. I was worried that the pie dough might be a little sweet, but it wasn’t. It all worked together perfectly. And the sausages were a great choice to go with it. My only real complaint was that at some point it was gone. 🙂 My wife said it was delightful, and she wished we could have one every week. She also described it as “what pizza wants to grow up to be.”

While I don’t know if we’ll have one every week, I would totally make one again. It was fairly straightforward, very delicious, and a great answer to the eternal question of “What’s for dinner?”. It also made me want to bake more for dinner. How about you? Do you have any favorite dinnery dishes? Any savory servings to share?

Dough recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen. Galette recipe also courtesy of smitten kitchen.

Naan

Do you love Indian food? I do. I can’t remember when I started eating it (where I grew up, the first Indian restaurant anyone can remember opened right before I graduated high school), but we always ate foods from lots of different cultures. What I do remember is that shortly after moving to NYC, a friend introduced me to her favorite Indian restaurant, it soon become my favorite, and there was no looking back.

My wife had not really had much experience with Indian food, but on our first date, she agreed to be adventurous, and we went to my favorite Indian restaurant. She loves it now too. One of my favorite things is naan, a delicious Indian bread. When we get Indian food, we often have extra naan leftover. I’ll eat it with the leftover entrees. I will eat it plain. And I know it’s kinda blasphemous, but I’ll even turn it into a faux-pizza and eat it that way.

So I thought, somewhat naively, how hard can it be? I should try making it. I looked around a little bit, but then I realized I already had a recipe in the book “How to Cook Everything”, which I already had. If you haven’t seen this book, you should take a look. It’s really awesome. I had originally gotten it as a present for my wife many years ago, but we both use it a lot. And, like many things, there’s an app for that. I used the app to cook with, and it was actually quite handy.

I went out and got the necessary ingredients. I obviously didn’t read the recipe closely enough, as it called for instant yeast, and I got active dry yeast. I got a tiny little milk drink box (juice box size). I got a small Greek yogurt, as they didn’t have any regular yogurt where I was shopping.

I went through the recipe, step by step. (You can follow along if you look at the recipe.)

Step 1: There was mostly nothing to it, but because I got active dry yeast, I had to activate it first. I used warm water for that.

Step 2: This was easy. I had to break out our funnel. It was something we got as a wedding present, but for some reason we hadn’t used it until now (3 1/2 years later). It’s a pretty cool 3 in 1 funnel and it works nice.

Step 3: I only added a cup of water, because I had already added 1/2 cup to dissolve the yeast in earlier. It ended up being too sticky. I had to add a few more tablespoons of flour until it was the right consistency.

Step 4: It was hard to get it all out of the food processor, because it was still a little sticky. Kneading it was easy, but it was hard to get it into a ball, because it’s a lot of dough. It was more like a round-ish blob. I put it in a bowl which was lightly oiled with grapeseed oil and covered it with plastic wrap. It needed to rise 1 to 2 hours, and I ended up letting it rise an hour.

Before rising.

After rising.

Step 5: I preheated the oven, but I forgot to put the baking sheet in till later. I covered it with aluminum foil for cleanliness sake. Using “as much flour as necessary” turned out to be a bunch of flour. And getting 12 equal size balls was a little bit of a challenge. I had to fudge it a bit. I covered them with plastic wrap to rise for the last 10 minutes.

Step 6: It was hard to roll out the dough because it was super sticky. I ended up using a bunch of flour. I didn’t measure how the size when I rolled them out, I just kinda guessed. I baked them for 3 minutes per side. (Note: the first round was 4 minutes for the first side as I didn’t have any rolled out yet. So I put on one, then let it sit open cause “it would only take a second” to get a second one ready, but then it took forever. So I think the oven cooled down a little bit and they weren’t quite ready at 3 minutes.)

Step 7: I didn’t wrap them in a towel. Oops! I spread on some melted butter, although it may have been a little bit too much.

Overall, I would put making these on the messier end of the spectrum. They were really sticky. It took a lot of flour to roll out the balls of dough. I also didn’t tug them into shape. They were not that puffed when cooked. Some seemed a little thin.

However, for some reason, the last one came out super puffed.

And how did they taste? They were tasty! They definitely looked like naan. They tasted kinda like naan. They were not the best naan I’ve ever had, but as my wife said, they were the best homemade naan I’ve ever had. They were definitely really good.

I should also note that while I was making the naan, my wife helped me out with making some and also put together a dinner to go with it. She had cut up some vegetables the other day, and we got some chicken and a jar of tikka masala sauce. We cooked up the chicken and vegetables in the sauce and had it with some naan. It was a good dinner. Thanks hon!

And lest you think I’m ignorant, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no way this was an authentic Indian dinner. It was a facsimile. A decent, tasty facsimile, but a facsimile nonetheless. I would love to learn how to do it better.

I’ll also be the first to admit the irony of making this recipe. When I first started the blog, I talked about not cooking so much cause it would make dinner late. But I could bake, because it wouldn’t affect dinner time. Well this time it did. I got started a little too late. We didn’t eat dinner till 10pm. It was good. It was fun. It was kinda awesome. My wife said it was totally worth it. She was super impressed by the naan. But it was still a late dinner. (Sorry hon!)

I was also kinda impressed by the naan. I now totally understand why they look the way they do: the kinda floury bits, the burned spots sometimes. I have a lot of respect for those who make them all the time. I would assume that I would get better at it if I did it again.

One last note. Because I have been taking so many pictures for the blog (with my phone), my wife got me an actual digital camera as a present. (Thank you! I love it!) This was many months ago. But this was the first recipe where I had a chance to use it. We’ll have to see if the pictures are any better. (Feel free to let me know what you think.) The day I made the naan was the first day I used the camera. I only briefly read through the instructions. I will have to learn how to use the camera better. And I will have to learn how to take better pictures. One step at a time!

In closing, I’m wondering a few things. I’m wondering if you’ve ever learned to make food from another culture, and what that experience was like. I’m also wondering if you’ve ever made something that took so long you ended up eating late. And finally, I’m wondering if you have any good tips or resources for learning how to take better food photos. Thanks!

Recipe courtesy of “How to Cook Everything”, by Mark Bittman.