Mushroom Galette

The bitter cold I have been nursing lately seems to have abated. slightly. I feel better and less clogged, and yet I am still a bit drained and depleted. This weekend was like all the others, we got into the kitchen early in the morning and did not leave until well after dinner time. Saturday we were making pizza and testing new dessert combos (soon to be featured here, I promise, but go ahead and check out my Instagram account if you're curious), Sunday, as usual, we baked. There were breads galore, and coconut cookies, and a chocolate marble cake, there was a hearty soup and an even heartier stew, with savoy cabbage which is something I always crave at this time of the year, there were tons of dishes to wash, and so I woke up not feeling rested but slightly even more tired.

I normally take a bit off of the weekend to edit some pictures for the blog and line up next week's posts, but this time it was quite impossible to do it. So I found myself this Monday morning with a post to write and a bunch of pictures to edit, not counting those still on my camera from the weekend's shenanigans that I have yet to download and also edit. Plus, I should revise the last three chapters of Book II before some details I forgot to add get lost in my mind, there's this Skillshare class I need to take and I should be reading an article on how to write battle scenes in fantasy literature. Besides all this, there's the common housework to be done, there's the kid's school runs, there's the daily exercising which I must take up again, and there's movies I want to watch as well as tv shows. Some stuff gets pushed back, usually exercising is the first to go, as I walk to and fro on school runs at least 8 times a day, taking about 15 minutes on each run to and each run fro - but seeing that I suffer from rheumatism, I need to keep doing other types of exercise as well, so this should be the last to go, for health's sake!! - followed closely by the movies and tv shows piling up and that I never get to see. The Skillshare class has been on the back burner for a few weeks, already, must tackle it soon, and the fantasy writing article will have to be read this week, certainly. So, feeling quite overwhelmed, today I needed something easy. Like this galette.

It's quite easy to do, and rather delicious. For the pastry you need:

• 100 gr flour
• 50 gr butter
• 5 to 6 spoons of really cold water.
• salt, pepper and thyme to taste

Mix the flour with the butter until it resembles sand, using a knife. Add the water and mix well, without kneading. Season it with a little salt, pepper and some thyme which goes perfect with the mushrooms. Once it's silky and looking satiny, transfer it into baking parchment and roll it into a ball. Refrigerate it for 30 minutes and in the meantime get started on the filling.

For it, you need:

• a bowl full of dried shitake mushrooms (50gr, aproximately) soaked in boiling water
• one leek, finely diced
• one garlic clove sliced
• thyme, salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 50 gr grated cheese - we used grana padano

On a skillet heat up the oil and gently steam the leek and the garlic. Add the mushrooms and let them sweat, they will loose some water, reduce it as much as you can, you do not want this to be soggy. Season to taste with the salt, pepper and thyme and let it steam away until you get rid of the liquid. If you notice things getting a bit too cooked, get the skillet off the heat and just drain the liquid before you get to the next step.

Take your pastry from the refigerator and roll it on a floured surface. Place the filling in the middle of the pastry, allowing for a wide margin you can fold onto itself. Sprinkle the filling with the grated cheese and start folding the pastry inwards, it doesn't need to be perfect, the more rustic the better. Get it into the 0ven at 190º for about 30m or untill the crust is golden and flaky. Let it cool on a rack and serve with a good winter salad, like beets and carrots. Simple, easy and quite fulfilling!