The absolute king of rustic sophistication, a simple galette is the perfect palette for the early foraged and garden flavors. For this dinner, we savored the handful of early morels from our Easter day mushroom hunt, added a couple garden delights with spring garlic, and asparagus, and baked them on lemony whipped ricotta with a perfectly flaky pastry crust. Heaven!. We served this dinner with a simple green salad and a quick homemade dressing. A stunner for guests or a treat for yourself on a weekday.

I used Julius Roberts’ recipe for the galette pastry. We love his cookbook and turn to it often, especially for the fundamentals like this. I’ll share it here.

Ingredients:

• Morels (or store bought mushrooms if you aren’t a mushroom hunter), we used 16 small ones, which would be about 1.5 cups chopped. I quartered them lengthwise.
• 5-10 spears of asparagus, the fresher the better, in 1 inch pieces
• 2 stalks of green garlic sliced into 1/4″ rounds (or two cloves sliced which have a much stronger flavor)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• Olive oil
• 1.5 cups of ricotta
• 1/2 lemon
• sea salt

For the Pastry Crust:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cups salted butter – very cold
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 egg for egg wash (1 egg beaten)

For the salad:

• Mixed greens
• olive oil
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 lemon
• sea salt

To begin, preheat your oven to 425 degrees on convection if you can and add a baking stone into your oven.

In a Kitchen Aid Mixer, add the flour and 2/3 of your cold butter to the bowl with the paddle attachment. Mix on low until the mixture looks crumbly like sand, then add the rest of the butter. Mix like this until it’s looking very crumbly and all the flour is coated with butter. Finally, mix your water and vinegar until it is just combined. Stop the mixer and press to be sure it will hold together. Remove it from the bowl and form into a disc. Wrap in parchment paper and place into the fridge to cool for at least 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your filling. Whip the ricotta, salt, lemon zest from 1/2 lemon, and juice from 1/2 lemon in a bowl until well combined. Adjust to your taste. I like it to be pretty zingy but not overwhelmingly lemon.

Preheat a skillet on the stovetop on medium heat, add about a Tbsp of butter and a little pull of olive oil to the pan and allow to heat but not burn. Then add your mushrooms, asparagus, and green garlic. Allow the mushrooms to cook all of their liquid out. This takes a while, so stir consistently. You want all of the vegetables to be well cooked but not browned. This will take between 5-10 minutes. It’s very important to cook wild mushrooms thoroughly. Set aside when cooked.

Roll out your pastry dough into a rough circle until it is evenly around 1/4″ thick. Then, starting from the center, spread ricotta until about 2 inches from the edge (this will be folded over. Finally, spread evenly the mushroom mixture. Fold the edges over, and brush on the egg wash around the edges of the pastry for shine and color.

Place into the oven and allow to cook for around 30 minutes. Check periodically. Depending on your oven and oven settings it could take anywhere from 30-50 minutes. You’re looking for a golden brown crust, a firm base, and evenly colored top. I change my oven setting from “Convection High Bake” to “Low Bake” for the last 10 minutes or so to ensure a firm crusty base that holds together.

While the galette bakes, make your salad dressing. In a small bowl, add all of the ingredients and whisk together well with a fork until it is a homogenous mixture. Taste and adjust salt and acid to your liking. Dress and toss over your salad greens. I find a few handfuls of salad greens will do for our family.

Serve together and enjoy!