Rhubarb Galette: How a Bad Waitress Became a Pastry Chef plus a Podcast All About Moi
Let’s bake a Spring Rhubarb Galette
The cat’s out of the bag!
Before I characteristically bury the lede, I am excited and somewhat nervous to tell you about my recent guesting (is that a word?) on a podcast. You’ll learn all about my culinary trajectory along with a few things that may surprise you. At least they surprised my best friend and with her, I’m an open book.
I’ll cut to the chase in this post about how the pastry chapter of my life unfolded. The restaurant where I was an inefficient waitress, Rudi’s Big Indian Country Kitchen, was located in….Big Indian. That’s actually the name of a town in the Catskills, near Woodstock, NY.
I wasn’t a terrible waitress, but I was innately a much better cook. I was also, and still am to some extent, shy: not good for waitressing. Fortunately, I’ve learned to manage it over time. Back then I gravitated to the kitchen during the day and waited tables at night, eventually arranging to hide more comfortably in the back of the house.
In the seventies, women were not deemed capable of becoming line cooks in a professional kitchen. Our neighbor Eugene Bernard, a French chef in NYC and eventually instructor at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York, decided to volunteer as a mentor in our restaurant kitchen to elevate us above our hippie-roadside-restaurant status. He invited one of the male cooks to do a three-month stage (internship) in his NYC restaurant. When the cook returned, it was over for me.
I was booted to the basement (literally).
The restaurant had a walk-out basement room with a view of a sparkling stream, into which we jumped in our birthday suits on hot summer days. The seventies were fun!
The basement room was furnished with a 10-foot marble table, a pizza oven, and a stand mixer, with a bowl large enough to accommodate at least 2 or 3 small children. Pies, cakes, and eventually beautiful French pastries plus sandwich bread for the restaurant came out of that room to delight our customers.
Bernard took pity on me and sent me to a similar, albeit much briefer stage, at the CIA’s (Culinary Institute of America) pastry kitchen. By then, Bernard had retired from the NYC restaurant and was serving as Chief Instructor at the CIA’s cooking course for the Escoffier Room, the school’s restaurant.
The students were on summer break, but the school’s restaurant was still open for business. Along with the Chief Pastry Instructor (Albert Kumin) and an assistant, I helped create pastries for the restaurant and thereby completed their whole pastry curriculum in a couple of weeks.
Back at the restaurant, I started making puff pastry, croissants, eclairs, napoleons, gateaux Basques and some pretty incredible small tarts. Probably my favorite was the Pont Neuf, named after the famous bridge in Paris. Its components—buttery tart dough, choux pastry, pastry cream, and puff pastry—all needed to be prepared separately and kept on hand. The tart tins were lined with the buttery dough, filled with a mixture of rum flavored pastry cream and choux pastry, and topped with a cross of thin strips of puff pastry. When the tarts baked the filling rose and pushed up the strips of puff pastry to form two intersecting arches. Once the tarts cooled, the filling fell flat, leaving two little arches, which were painted with apricot glaze and sprinkled with tiny, chopped pistachios. So pretty.
Phew!
Don’t worry. I’ve got something far easier for you to bake to celebrate Spring. It’s a long weekend in New England with the Boston Marathon and Patriot’s Day on Monday. It’s also going to be Tax Day. All the more reason to share something sweet. I hope you will!
Skip the fussy tarts and make an easy-ish galette. (See tip #2 if rolling dough is not your strong suit.) Rhubarb isn’t yet in season locally, but there’s plenty of it coming into the markets now, and in several weeks’ time it will be here. Almonds with their skins add a ton of flavor and a rustic quality to the rich, buttery pastry. It comes together quickly in the food processor. Try using tapioca flour (sometimes call tapioca starch) instead of cornstarch to thicken the filling. It’s not as hard to find as it used to be, and it imbues the filling of fruit pies and tarts with a clear and glossy texture. It also thickens liquids at a lower temperature (140 degrees) than cornstarch or flour. This tart needs no embellishment, but if you want to gild the lily, serve it with ice cream or whipped cream.
Tip #1: While the dough chills, prep the rhubarb filling.
Tip #2: If rolling dough intimidates you, roll it between 2 sheets of parchment. Lift the parchment from time to time if it wrinkles. Remove the top paper and transfer the rolled dough onto the baking sheet.
Rhubarb Almond Galette Recipe
By Sally Vargas. Makes 1 (9-inch) galette
Prep time: 30 minutes
Bake time: 45 minutes
DOUGH
3/4 cup whole almonds with skins
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 cup ice water, or more as needed.
1. Set a rack in the center position of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Spread the almonds on the baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, or until they smell toasty. Cool completely.
3. In a food processor, process the almonds until they are very finely chopped. Remove and set aside 1/4 cup for assembling the tart. Set the parchment-lined baking sheet aside for baking the galette.
4. To the remaining almonds in the food processor, add the flour, sugar, salt, and cold butter. Pulse the mixture about 4 times, or until the butter is in pea-size pieces (a few large pieces are okay because you will process the dough again when you add the water.)
5. Remove the lid and sprinkle the ice water over the mixture. Pulse until the mixture looks beady but does not yet form large clumps. Press a small amount of dough together in your hand. It should form a clump that holds together firmly when pressed without cracking. If it feels dry, add additional ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
5. Tip the dough crumbles onto the countertop and press them together with cupped hands to form a disk. Wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate for 20 minutes or up to one day.
FILLING
Flour (for rolling the dough)
1/4 cup reserved ground almonds
Finely grated zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons tapioca flour or cornstarch
Pinch of salt
4 large stalks (about 3/4 pound) rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces (2 1/2 cups)
1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon cold water
Turbinado or granulated sugar (for sprinkling)
Vanilla ice cream (for serving, optional)
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough into a 13-inch circle. Transfer it to the baking sheet; it’s okay if it hangs over the edge a little. Leaving a 3-inch border all around, sprinkle the reserved 1/4 cup ground almonds in a circle in the center.
3. In a large bowl, rub the orange rind into the sugar. Stir in the tapioca flour or cornstarch and salt. Add the rhubarb to the bowl and toss to coat it.
4. Spread the rhubarb over the circle of almonds. Fold the outside rim of dough over the fruit, pleating as necessary to form a round. Press gently to seal the pleats. Brush the edge with the egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
5. Bake the galette for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the filling bubbles in the center and the crust is golden brown. Set on a wire rack to cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing.
©2009-2024 Sally Pasley Vargas. Writing and photography, all rights reserved.Did you like this newsletter? Please forward it to a few people or share it on social media. It really lifts my spirits (and hopefully theirs) when I reach more people. Thank you.
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XXOO
Sally
Email: sally.p.vargas@gmail.com
Website: sallyvargas.com
Instagram:@sallypv
Ditto to Lydia and Marti.
In addition to showing us what you create from other stuff, and then convert your how-you-did’s into how-to’s for us, and your photos which I can just about eat, what you show is how beautifully expressively you write.
I will try.
Love to hear about your background much of which I did not know!