Another recipe featuring herbs from my little balcony garden! All my plants are positively thriving now (my verbena plant has doubled in height!) and I think I'm going to start giving away bundles of herbs to people at work because I cannot possibly use all the herbs that I am growing. But I love it! My cilantro flowered a few days ago with these beautiful tiny white flowers, so I picked those and some lavender and put them in a little jar on my coffee table and I just feel so grown up and fancy.
It's been a pretty crappy summer here in Vancouver so far, with temperatures hanging around 15-18 C and clouds all the time and even rain! Like all day rain, not just a summer storm. But finally, it's starting to look up. The forecast predicts a whole week of sunshine and 25+ C temperatures! Which is really super considering I'm going to be in a kitchen with no windows for 12 hours a day for the next week....Just super.
But at least the berries are still acting like it's summer! All the local berries (and even some peaches) are in the markets and are just DELICIOUS! We have awesome blueberries here in British Columbia (and we are actually one of the largest high-bush blueberry growing regions in the world) and it's always a treat when the local ones start popping up. It's so easy to eat them like candy! I managed to restrain myself from eating all of them and made individual galettes with them. I put a little bit of lemon thyme in there to give a herby note, to make them a little different than the usual. But they hardly need to be fussed with and this is way I love to enjoy the best fruits of summer - surrounded by flaky pastry and a bit of sugar and lemon juice.
Blueberry and Lemon Thyme Galettes
Makes 8 individual galettes
Pie Crust
Recipe from Dahlia Bakery Cookbook
350 g pastry flour
100 g all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
226 unsalted butter, freezer cold, cut into 1/2 inch dice
60 g vegetable shortening, freezer cold, cut into 1/2 inch dice
114 g ice water
2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar
Blueberry Lemon Thyme Filling
650 g fresh blueberries
1 lemon, juiced and zested
75 g granulated sugar
10 g cornstarch
6 g all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons lemon thyme
To finish
Eggwash
Demerara sugar
Lemon thyme leaves
For the pie crust, combine the flour, sugar, and salt in an electric mixer. Add the cold butter and shortening and mix on low speed until the mixture look shaggy and the pieces of butter are slightly smaller than peas. Stop the mixer and check the size of the butter, sifting through the mixture with your hands. If you find bigger chunks, smear them between your fingers.
Put the ice-cold water and vinegar into a measuring cup and stir to combine. Add the water-vinegarto the flour-fat mixture on low speed and mix briefly with a few rotations of the paddle, but do not let the dough come together.
Turn off the mixture and scrape the sides and bottom of the mixer to make sure there are no pockets of dry ingredients. Squeeze a small amount of dough in your hand. The dough should come together in a clump. If it’s too dry, add a little more water a few teaspoons at a time.
Remove the dough from the mixer, divide the dough into 8 equal disks, wrap each one in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
Unwrap one disk of dough on a lightly floured work surface and roll each one out to about 6 inches. If you want cleaner edges, use a bowl and a knife to cut a perfect circle from each round. place on a baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining rounds of dough.
Place the rounds in the refrigerator while you make the filling.
For the filling, toss the blueberries with the lemon juice. Combine the sugar, cornstarch, flour, lemon thyme, and lemon zest in a bowl and stir to combine. Sprinkle the mixture over the berries and gently toss to coat the berries.
Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Remove the rounds of dough from the fridge. If they are too warm, put them back in the fridge for another 5 to 10 minutes. If they are too cold and stiff, keep them at room temperature until they are plaible.
Brush the outside of one disk with egg wash. Put about 1/3 cup of blueberries in the middle of the disk and gently fold the pastry up and pleat it to create the galette. Top up the galette with more berries if you need to. Repeat with the remaining galettes.
Refrigerate the finished galettes until firm, about 20 minutes. Brush the pastry with eggwash and liberally sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, rotating the trays halfway through.
Remove from the oven and serve warm (with ice cream!) and a sprinkle of fresh lemon thyme leaves. Rewarm in a 300 F oven for 10 to 15 minutes if you want to serve them later.
