Potato, Caramelised onion and Cheddar Galette by Dom Gattermayr
This is a perfect winter dish as the pastry is much easier to handle in the colder weather. Rough puff pastry, like this one, is a really handy pastry to have in your repertoire and once you’ve made it, you’ll find many other uses for it. This filling can be used as a guide: a firmer vegetable (potato), a cheese (cheddar) and a wet vegetable (onion), and then maybe have a look at what you have in your kitchen and instead of buying more things you can use something you already have. This would also work beautifully in summer with tiny cherry tomatoes, goats curd and basil. But we still have a bit of a way to go before then…
Ingredients:
2 onions, finely sliced
1 sprigs rosemary
100g sharp cheddar, grated
100 ml cream
4 Nicola potatoes or kipfler, finely slice, peeled or not peeled.
340g plain flour
1 tbsp white sugar
1 tsp salt
250g unsalted butter, cold
120ml cold water
1 egg for egg wash (optional)
Start by making the pastry so It has time to rest while you prepare the other ingredients. You can also make the pastry ahead of time as it will last 2 days in the fridge or if you freeze it you can thaw it for use whenever you like.
- Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl.
- Chop the butter up into small cubes and then start adding them to the flour mixture, rubbing the butter and flour between your fingers to create crumbs. You still want flecks of butter through the pastry so you don’t need to combine it too much.
- Now pour the flour and butter on a clean work bench and create a well in the centre. Start pouring the water in and mixing the dough together. You want to try and bring the dough together, kneading it gently to combine all the flour and butter parts to form a ball. You want it to look a little scrappy but if it’s not coming together enough, add a little more water until it does.
- Now you need to laminate the dough by flattening the ball into a disk, cutting it in half, laying one piece on the other and rolling it out to a disc again, repeating this step once more.
- After the second lamination, wrap the dough and leave it to rest for 2 hours in the fridge.
For the Filling
- Heat a pan with some cooking oil, such as a blended olive and canola oil. Add the onions and a sprinkle of salt and allow them to caramelise on a slow, low heat. If you like your onions sweeter, you can add some sugar while they are cooking, but I find onions are sometimes sweet enough as is. You can also add a splash of vinegar to taste. Cook for around 45 minutes until nice and caramelised.
- Prep all of the other pie filling ingredients. You can also opt for a different cheese like a parmesan or blue cheese, but cheddar works nicely.
- Mix the sliced potato, rosemary, grated cheese and cream in a bowl with a pinch of salt and few cracks of pepper. Set aside
- Take the pastry out of the fridge and let it soften a little bit for ease of rolling. Dust your work bench with flour and then begin rolling the pastry out to approx 2-3mm thickness.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius fan forced.
- I baked my galette in a wide round baking dish but just see what you have size wise and what will fit. Cut out the circle (use a plate or something round as a guide) with some overhang as you will fold the galette up over the sides.
- Leaving enough room from the edge to create a crust, lay down the caramelised onion mix and then place the potato mixture on top. Pour any remaining cream and cheese from the bowl over the potatoes. Begin to fold up the pastry edge and seal the galette by folding, over and pinching the creases around the edge until it’s all come together.
- Beat an egg and then brush the pastry all over before placing in the oven. Bake for 1 hour and then another 30-40 mins at 160 to cook the filling and the base of the pastry through. If the top of the galette is starting to colour to much, put some foil over the top and continue cooking. Slice and serve warm.