A galette with any fruit you want, and the gifts of foraging

A recipe for baking this classic pastry at home with the most delicious summer fruit

Welcome! In this week’s newsletter, you’ll find reflections on Pacific Northwest fruit foraging and reciprocity, my go-to galette recipe (scroll down), and some links to my favorite things this summer.

You can find more of my recipes & cooking inspo in my debut cookbook, Braids, and as the co-host of the podcast: Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy.

Happy cooking and eating!
Sonya

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In her extraordinary book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes picking wild strawberries as a small child. As soon as berries emerged in the fields near her home, she impatiently gathered the fruit before it was quite ripe. Over time, she learned to wait and let the berries turn red before collecting them. This kind of learned patience across generations benefitted both the plants and the foragers. Sweeter berries picked with a higher frequency caused the strawberry plant to adapt and evolve into a redder, more delicious fruit.

Harvesting with the intent of sharing yields its own results. Wall Kimmerer explains the intrinsic relationship between gatherer and gathered: “That is the fundamental nature of gifts: they move, and their value increases with their passage. The fields made a gift of berries to us and we made a gift of them to our father. The more something is shared the greater its value becomes. This is hard to grasp for societies steeped in notions of private property…” 

I am acutely aware of my instincts to keep foraging locations secret. There’s some kind of primal fear that if a bountiful spot is discovered by many, none of the fruit will be left for oneself. I am far from perfect at sharing, but this summer has deepened my understanding of the nature of reciprocity.

Recently, we had an abnormally intense week-long heat wave with temperatures in the high 90s and 100s. Two things help me during excessive Portland heat: jumping into a river in the early morning and foraging for fruit whenever the opportunity presents itself. This time of year, I don’t leave my house without a bag or container in hand — fruit is just around every corner in the Pacific Northwest. Within a 10-minute walk of my home in all directions, there are raspberries, blackberries, salmon berries, plums, figs, pears, Asian pears, apples, crab apples, persimmons, and cherries.

On one of the hottest days of the heat wave, my husband and I started our morning at the Washougal River. Soon after plunging into the cold water, I received a text from my friend, Ethan: “Sour cherries are a go! What’s your availability?”

This friend and I share a love of foraging and harvesting fruit. When you ask Ethan where he gets his stone fruit, he’ll confidently answer “I’ve got a tree.” Many of these trees are ones he’s found on easements or people’s properties, and he always obtains permission before picking. I have shamelessly asked if I might join him in future harvests.

My preoccupation with discovering edible things in the world reminds me that I am my father’s daughter and that all those mushroom-hunting trips, blueberry-picking mornings, and Italian plum-seeking expeditions of my youth have shaped the person I have become. In my childhood, I used to feel shame standing in a park, collecting fruit in paper bags. Foraging in public was not particularly cool in the 80s and 90s. Now, foraging makes my Slavic soul burst with joy.

There are two particularly gorgeous sour cherry trees a few blocks from my house. They belong to a property overgrown with plant life, and foreboding in nature. Every year I have failed to muster the courage to knock on the door of this house. I have written mental drafts of letters I plan to drop off that offer to share in harvest and baked goods. Every year, as I walk by the fruiting trees, I feel a twinge of sadness for the unharvested jewels of cherries, shriveling on their branches in the hot July sun. I tell myself “Next year, you have to write a letter.”

As the fruit ripened this June, I resigned to another year of buying sour cherries at the farmers’ market. Then, while walking with a highly observant friend, she pointed out a previously undetected sour cherry tree in our neighborhood. Gold mine!

I harvested a few pounds, made a galette, and posted about it on Instagram. Mio, a local pastry chef, politely commented on the post about how lucky it was to find a local tree. I asked if she wanted me to show her where it was and help her harvest the fruit.

And so one summery evening, I found myself high above the ground harvesting cherries. For two hours it was pure joy, picking pounds and pounds of fruit. I took a small Tupperware of cherries and left Mio with the rest. She encouraged me to take more, but it was clear that this fruit would be of greater use to her. The cherries will be included in many expertly crafted, gorgeous desserts that will thrill a myriad of regular customers and tourists in our city. It didn’t feel like a particularly selfless act to help her harvest, partly because I had already collected a couple of pounds a few days before, and partly because Mio and I have been in a circle of reciprocity that seems to have no end.

I have frequented her stand at the farmers’ market, and she used to come to my restaurant. I have gifted her challahs, and she has given me cakes and cookies in return. I gave her a book, she gave me a Stollen. I shared a recipe idea with her, she shared a source for chic aprons with me. This cherry-picking exchange was just another form of back-and-forth.

The next day, as I pitted my small haul, I thought that was the end of my sour cherry harvest for the year.

That is until I got Ethan’s text during the heat wave. Some context: I am fragile in heat. When it’s above 80-ish degrees I get shvitsy and loopy, snappy and zapped. But that day, the river filled me with life and enough energy to brave triple-digit temperatures and bolt over to a suburb of the city where Ethan was already hard at work.

Have you ever seen a sour cherry growing on a tree? Its redness is almost fluorescent and slightly translucent; the roundness and stem of each sour cherry are cartoonishly perfect. As I found myself lost in the branches of green leaves and red orbs, I was acutely aware of the particular circulating wealth I had been blessed with.

Mine and Mio’s harvest

If “what you resist persists” then maybe what you pursue ensues? I don’t have a cute aphorism for what I’ve been experiencing, but ever since that evening with Mio, I have been swimming in more foraged fruit than any previous summer: mulberries, wild plums, raspberries, and both sour and black cherries. Just the other day, Mio herself unexpectedly showed up on my doorstep with an overflowing bag of plums from her neighbor’s tree — and in return, I was able to share a fresh batch of brandied black cherries harvested from my neighbor’s. The cycle of giving and receiving continues.

During these surreal noticeably-hotter-than-they-used-to be July days — it’s not lost on me that I may not have AC, but I am rich with summer fruit.

The sharing of that fruit is a salve for my psyche.

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Sour cherry galette before it’s baked

If you’ve followed me on Instagram, then you might have noticed my strong preference for baking galettes over pies; I love the ratio of crust to fruit that a galette offers. This particular recipe works with any stone fruit, berry, apple, or pear. If you like baking with whole-grain flour, you can swap out half of the all-purpose flour for your favorite variety. If you are using a particularly tart piece of fruit, you may want to add a little more sugar. A glaze at the end is optional, but it adds an eye-catching shine and a touch more sweetness to the fruit.

RECIPE / Galette with any fruit

Makes a 12” galette, serves 6-8

Ingredients:
For the crust-
2 cups (260g) all-purpose flour 
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup (2 sticks/227 g) butter, cubed and ice-cold
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
3-4 Tablespoons ice water 

For the filling-
1½ lbs (680 g) fruit
⅓ cup sugar, or to taste
Juice of ½ a lemon 
2 Tablespoons tapioca starch or corn starch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg + splash of water (for the egg wash)
2 Tablespoons Turbinado (raw) sugar

For the glaze (optional)-
3 Tablespoons apricot jam or currant jam
2 teaspoons water

Directions:
For the crust-
If making in a food processor: pulse the flour, sugar, and salt together. Add the cubed cold butter and pulse until pea-sized crumbs form. Add the apple cider vinegar and 3 Tablespoons of ice water and pulse until the dough just comes together and forms a ball. Be careful not to over-mix. If making by hand: whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Add the cubed cold butter and combine with the flour with a pastry cutter or by hand until pea-sized crumbs of dough form. Add the apple cider vinegar and 3 Tablespoons of ice water and toss everything together lightly with your hands. Transfer to a clean surface, and lightly knead together into a ball shape. It may seem a little dry and that’s ok, but if the dough is not holding together sprinkle an additional Tablespoon of water into the dough, and mix in evenly before shaping again.

Form the dough into a round disc shape, and tightly cover it with plastic wrap or beeswax wrap. Allow the dough to chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, or overnight.

For the filling: 
Depending on which fruit or berry you use, cut the fruit into even-sized pieces. Combine the fruit with the sugar, lemon juice, starch, and vanilla. Allow to sit for 1 hour at room temperature.

To assemble and bake: 
Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Roll out the dough into a circle about ¼-½” thick. The edges don't have to be perfectly round, and the dough doesn't have to be a perfect circle either. Transfer the dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet

Add the fruit to the center of the dough, leaving a 3-4" border around the perimeter. 

Fold the edges of the dough over the fruit, overlapping as you fold each piece.

Brush the dough with egg wash and sprinkle the crust with turbinado sugar. You can sprinkle the inside of the galette with sugar if you like it extra sweet, too. 

Bake for 15 minutes, lower the temperature to 375°F and bake for an additional 35-45 minutes, or until deeply golden brown with bubbly softened fruit (do not be afraid to bake the galette for an hour – the crust should be well browned everywhere and this can take a long time.)

For the glaze-
Combine the jam and water in a small pot and heat until just warmed through. Brush the jam in a thin layer over the exposed fruit for extra sweetness and gloss (do not brush the crust with the jam). 

Serve warm or at room temperature topped with whipped cream or ice cream. Keeps at room temperature covered, for 1-2 days; reheat in a 350°F oven if desired.  

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Summer favorites…

Links to what I’m cooking and eating right now —

• If you’re obsessed with Korean cuisine, and find yourself on I-5 near Tacoma, do yourself a favor and pull off the highway to try Ho Soon Yi restaurant in Lakewood, WA.

• Brandy your cherries (sour or sweet). Instead of brandy, I recently used Calvados because it’s all we had, and I recalled Josephine did the same… and later found out she was inspired to do so by our friend Katie (an amazing local baker who takes custom cake orders). A recent text from Josephine also inspired me to share my galette recipe here.

• I can’t stop thinking about “Scuttlebutt sandwiches” that my friend Hannah recently made for a group of us.

• We’re deep in tomato season, and I am inspired by the Simply Tomato cookbook by Martha Holmberg (who notably co-authored the Six Seasons). Kari and I also delve into all things tomato on a recent episode of Food Friends

• I have a soft spot for Japanese reality TV, particularly during merciless news cycles, and “The Boyfriend” on Netflix is heartwarming and fascinating.

• I recently private-cheffed a small dinner and served up a big heirloom tomato fattoush salad with pomegranate molasses dressing that I’m now making on repeat. I typically stock my pantry with the Cortas brand variety.

• Speaking of galettes, this is the year I’ve officially fallen in love with frangipane (almond cream), and it makes a great base layer to sour cherry, apricot, or any stone-fruit galettes.

Heirloom tomato fattoush salad (pita chips and dressing added later just before serving)