Fruit Galette with Bruised and Irregular Peaches
It's finally peach season here in Georgia, and life is good. My favorite weekend activity is going to the farmers market and getting fresh local peaches - they're sweet, juicy, locally grown peaches and worth waiting all year for - but they're also pretty expensive. My solution: go for the scratch & dents and the irregulars and the misshapen ones, which most of the farmers sell at a discount. They don't look perfect and don't get as much love, but they still taste fantastic. I save money, the farmers get paid for their hard work, and we make sure none of these precious stone fruits get thrown into landfill.
I'll often just cut off a bruised part and eat the peach whole, dripping peach juice over my hands and into the sink, the way that these summer peaches should be eaten. But they're also great for baking and cooking. Doesn't matter what the peaches look like when they're sliced and stuffed into a galette or a pie or whizzed into a smoothie!
If people had the option to buy more ugly, imperfect, bruised or misshapen produce at cheaper prices, I think we'd all be a lot better off. Fewer people would go hungry. More people would save money. Farmers would make more money. Less food would end up in landfills. If you can, encourage your grocery stores and supermarkets to offer less-than-perfect produce, and support farmers at the farmers markets who offer the option.
And now, back to that galette. I was really hoping to make my life easier by using store-bought pastry. But the only pie crust at the supermarket came in a tin, and I didn't have enough peaches to make a pie. So I followed Melissa Clark's Fruit Galette recipe from the New York Times and made a pie crust. It turned out to be a great way to use up the last of the older jug of whole milk (subbed for the heavy cream) and the lemon I found bouncing around the fridge. Whether you buy or make your crust, you can follow her recipe, or use the simple version below where I just left out the sugar. You can swap in basically any stone fruit or berry or apples or pears - you'll probably want to add sugar for tart fruits or for apples and pears, but sweet summer berries don't need it. Clark also suggests a layer of jam at the bottom, which would be a great alternative to added sugar.
The Rough Recipe
This galette feeds 6-8 and takes about 45 minutes if you use a store-bought pie crust.
You'll need the following:
- 1 store-bought pie crust, thawed
- Roughly 3 cups sliced peaches
- Cornstarch
- A splash of milk
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Unroll your pie crust and put on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper or a baking mat. Put your sliced peaches into a bowl and sprinkle the fruit with cornstarch, then stir to combine. Scoop up the peaches and place into the center of the pie crust, leaving a border of an inch or so.
Fold up the edges of the pastry around the galette until all the peaches are held in by the crust. Add the splash of milk to the beaten egg and brush the pastry all around the edges (to be honest, I probably would have skipped this step if I didn't have the milk & egg leftover from making the pie crust. It's really up to you whether you want to do it).
Bake the galette until the crust is a delightful golden-brown. Let cool, then eat with spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream or the creamy deliciousness of your choice.
