From the Kitchen: Mushroom-Kale Galette

With a white bean purée in an olive oil crust.

It’s true that while I love to cook local and seasonal, my seasons aren’t the same as everyone else’s. While this galette makes sense for me to cook basically all year, because kale has a long season in Puerto Rico and we have a cultivator of portobellos who is stocked at Costco, I am always cooking this up even though it makes perhaps more sense for a fall or winter harvest for a lot of people. So: If this isn’t relevant to you at the moment, keep it in mind for a cooler season. If you have a vegan around for the holidays, especially, this is something that will make them feel cared for—much better than the usual plain baked sweet potato, I promise, and omnivores will eat it too. Everyone will eat it!

Testing this recipe was a funny experience, because I cook this so much that I make each component by feel and never measure anything. I went back to Ratio to reverse-engineer the crust, even though for me a pâté brisée of this sort is something I can literally only make with a pie cutter, my hands, and a direct line of communication to Saint Martha—patron saint of cooks, sister of Lazarus!—because any time I’ve made pie dough in a food processor or with specific instructions, it’s not come out right. I must feel it!!! I suggest if you’re also bad at pie, you feel your way through it, too; it’ll tell you how much oil, flour, and ice water it needs from this starting point. If you have a favorite way of baking pâté brisée, use that here. I’ve also done a butter crust for this preparation.

I also had to use canned Cannellini beans because I thought I had fresh habichuelas blancos (as I use for my white bean–fennel dip) in the freezer, but I did not! The rest of the filling is quite akin to the mushroom pâté, if you’ve made that.

Well, without further fanfare! A recipe that is really tedious to write but really easy to make.