THE ART OF PRAYER AND PASTRY

Tomato and Brie Galette

Recipe originally posted at The Heart and the Hunger

Pastry:

2 cups flour
2 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into cubes and chilled
Ice water

Filling:

4 medium or large tomatoes, 3 diced (seeds and pulp removed) and one sliced thin
1/2 large yellow onion, diced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp oregano
1/2 wheel of brie 

Egg wash:

1 egg
1 tsp water

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

In a large bowl, mix flour and salt. Add chilled butter and cut with a pastry cutter or fork until the butter resembles small pebbles. Add 8 tbsp water and mix until the dough holds together in small pieces when pressed. (Add more water if the mixture seems dry, but not over 10 tbsp.)

Turn dough out on a floured surface and knead until just smooth enough to hold together in a disc. Wrap in parchment paper and chill for 30 minutes.

Heat the onions, diced tomatoes, and oregano in a pan until the onions are translucent and the tomatoes have darkened in color. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

Roll out half of chilled dough on a floured surface into a 9×9 in square. (Use the second half for another galette or pie.) Place on a lightly floured pan and spoon the diced tomato mixture into the center. 

Cut half of the wheel of brie into strips and layer on top of the diced tomatoes. Top with the sliced tomatoes and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and oregano. Fold in the edges of the pastry and brush with egg wash.

Bake for 1 hour or until golden brown and bubbling.

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The Story Behind the Dish

In my house, shortcrust pastry is a ritual.When I pull butter out of the fridge and cut it into cubes before moving it to the freezer, my husband knows it’s been a bad day. He’ll give me a hug and unload the dishwasher, a task I loathe for reasons I can’t explain, then give me space. I clear the counter of spices, random utensils, dishes, and anything else I’d usually work around. Cooking is one of the great joys of my life, in general, but making shortcrust pastry warrants a little extra preparation and care. Just a little.

Shortcrust, unlike finicky puff pastry or a time-consuming sourdough loaf, is forgiving. Some extra flour won’t kill it, nor will a bit too much water or a less-than-optimal room temperature, so long as the butter is cold. The process of making the dough takes an hour, tops, and it doesn’t take a culinary degree to figure out something tasty to do with it. Most of the time I make cast-iron skillet pies or rustic (read: so messy they’re charming) galettes with fillings of leftover vegetables, meats, or cheeses, which is how this brie and tomato delight came to exist. 

As a writer I spend an inordinate amount of time sitting still and quiet, deep inside my own head, and attempts at prayer and meditation via that same stillness get lost in the mire of my thoughts. I crave the presence of God in tangible things. Flour flush with the edge of the measuring cup after I smooth it with the flat edge of a knife. The sink of near-frozen butter into my pastry cutter. The ring of a metal bowl as I drop in ice cubes and the way the ice cubes crack when I add cold water. I could mix my dough in a food processor, but I’d miss it sticking to my fingers as I work in the water, elements transforming into something new and untamed in my hands. 

Sometimes I knead my dough in silence. Other times I sing, folding loose bits of flour and butter in on themselves like pages of a book until they just hold together, fragile but solid. As the dough chills I prepare my filling, relishing the sizzle of onions melting into darkening tomatoes, sneaking a bite of brie before I slice it into strips. I let the thoughts of the day seep back in, little by little, as the oven warms and I coat my counter with flour. The dough becomes silky as it thins under the rolling pin and I fold it imperfectly around the sliced tomatoes; the ingredients are beauty in and of themselves. I spread egg wash over the edges of the dough; the way it turns the galette golden brown in the oven won’t save the world, but it reminds me that I have a place in it.

I have spent so much of my life in service of faith I cannot touch and stories born of my own imagination that I am only now beginning to see reality as a gift. The power to turn nothing into imperfect, joyful things was enough for the biblical God of the universe. It can be enough for me.