Beet and Sweet Potato Galette from Vermont
Creamery.

In the pastry world, a galette is a rustic, open-face pie, made without a pie pan. It is flat, with a turned-up crust that wraps around the filling to create a “dough pan.” It can be round, square or oblong.

Galette (gah-LET)—called crostata in Italian and rustic pie or rustic tart in English—hails from the days before people had pie plates, and the days after that when only the kitchens of the wealthy had them.

Way before then, the precursor of the galette probably dates from the Neolithic Age, a.k.a. the New Stone Age, which lasted from about 10,200 B.C.E.and ending between 4,500 and 2,000 B.C.E. Thick cereal pastes—barley, oats, rye, wheat—were sweetened with honey and spread on hot stones to cook.

The recipe below, from Vermont Creamery, uses their Spreadable Goat Cheese and Unsalted Cultured Butter.

It can be served as a light lunch or brunch with salad and soup, or as a first course at dinner.

Palates, take note: Vermont Creamery’s cultured butter is churned to 86% butterfat. This is higher than most other butters available and creates an especially flaky and delicious pie crust.

Supermarket butter is 80% butterfat, and most European-style butters are 82%-84%. We’ve only seen the 86% varieties from Vermont Creamery and California’s Straus Family Creamery. If you want the best butter, this is it.

And, we must note: Our favorite butter for bread is Vermont Creamery’s Cultured Salted Butter. It’s amazing: We never use salted butter unless it’s this one, with the lightest touch of sea salt. It’s irresistible.

See the different types of butter in our Butter Glossary.

Ingredients
 
For The Crust

 
For The Filling

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 375°F.

2. PEEL the sweet potato and beet, then slice them into 1/8-inch-thick rounds. Set them aside on separate plates, to keep the beets from bleeding onto the sweet potato slices.

For summer, make the galette from zucchini and yellow squash. This example, from Good Eggs, shows an individual-size galette.

4. ADD the ice water one tablespoon at a time, mixing until the dough begins to take shape. Gently knead with your fingers to help bring the dough together. If needed, add additional water a little at a time. Once the dough is formed…

5. SHAPE it into a disk and roll it into a rough circle on a piece of parchment, to a uniform thickness of ¼ inch. If you have trouble creating a uniform thickness, consider a pie crust mold for “perfect crusts every time.”

6. SPREAD the goat cheese onto the dough, leaving an inch border around the edge. Layer rounds of the cut sweet potato and beets on top of goat cheese. Gently fold the bare edge of dough inwards on top of the layered vegetables, working around the entire circle.

7. SPRINKLE the top of the galette with fresh thyme, salt and pepper and bake for 40–50 minutes, or until vegetables are cooked through and the crust is golden. Serve it hot from the oven, at room temperature or in-between.

The website has the most beautiful professional food photography, but no “About Us” information.

So we did a quick search and found that the blogger is Mowie Kay, photographer and food stylist, which led us to find his professional website.

Mowie, THE NIBBLE wishes you an especially delicious Valentine’s Day.

It’s zero degrees here right now, with a wind chill below zero—the coldest February day since 1963. It’s a good day to focus on soup.

We prefer to consume soup in a mug instead of a bowl. It can be easily sipped, and we never drip soup on ourselves. Our ability to avoid spilling some soup as it travels from bowl to spoon to mouth is not exactly enviable.

Italian chef Stefano Ciotti showed us a more elegant way to sip soup: from a porcelain tea cup.

All you need is an old-fashioned shallow tea cup (no mugs!), the soup and some beautiful garnishes.

There are garnish options made from bread, dairy, herbs & spices, seeds, fruits and cooked or raw vegetables.

Here’s a guide to pairing the right garnish with your soup.

You still need to serve a spoon for eating the garnish (an espresso spoon works for us). While you can use a spoon to eat the soup, it’s acceptable to drink it from the cup.
 
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUP

Mankind is some 200,000 years old. For the majority of our existence, we had no soup.

The earliest humans had no cookware—nothing in which to boil water (or anything else). Boiling was not easy to do until the invention of waterproof containers, probably pouches made of clay or animal skin, about 9,000 years ago. Archaeologists have dated the first soups to about 6,000 B.C.E., some 8,000 years ago.

You can trace the origin of our modern word soup from the French soupe, which derived from the Vulgar Latin suppa, which in turn came from the post-classical Latin verb suppare, to soak. This referred to bread soaked in broth, or a liquid poured onto a piece of bread. The bread added heft to the meal.

In Germanic languages, the word sop referred to the piece of bread—often a use for stale bread—used to soak up soup or stew. The word entered the English language in the 17th century exactly as that: soup poured over sops of bread or toast. Eating the soaked bread with one’s fingers often served as an alternative to using a spoon (flatware was costly).

Today’s soup croutons evolved from sops. Prior to sop/soup, soups were called broth or pottage.

Top: Croutons, crème fraîche and pumpkin seeds garnish butternut squash soup. We’d add a sprig of green herb for contrast—and fill the cup with more soup! Photo courtesy Stefano Ciotti. Bottom: Soup gets its name from sop, a large piece of bread used to sop (soak) up the soup. It evolved into the modern crouton. Photo courtesy Castello Cheese.

While the rich enjoyed elaborate soup courses (think of modern bouillabaisse, chicken in the pot, cioppino or pho, Vietnamese beef and noodle soup), a simple bowl of soup might be a poor man’s entire dinner.

Until recent times, the evening meal was the lighter of the two meals of the day. Soup/sop would be a typical evening dish. The name of the meal evolved to souper, than supper.

It began to be fashionable to serve the liquid broth without the sop (bread); and in the early 18th century, soup became a first course.
 
EATING VS. DRINKING SOUP

Since it’s a liquid, why do we “eat” a bowl of soup? Because it’s served in a dish, not a cup.

If you consume soup from a mug or cup, then you can be deemed to be drinking your soup.
 
THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOUP

So many soups, so little time! Check out the photos in our Soup Glossary and pick out a type of soup you haven’t tried yet.

Top: The secret ingredient is popped
mustard seeds. Photo courtesy Samin
Nosrat. Bottom: Serve either recipe with
homemade pita wedges. Photo courtesy
The Pioneer Woman.

Our supermarkets are filled with cooked, packaged, ready-to-eat beets brought in for Valentine’s Day. While we love fresh-roasted beets, they’re the most time-consuming root vegetables to prepare.

We got the message. We’re using the pre-cooked beets to make Valentine dips and spreads. If you want to roast your own, we salute you.

This recipe, by California chef and author Samin Nosrat, is adapted from one published on BonAppetit.com (and further adapted by us). We received it from Good Eggs in San Francisco, an outstanding grocery delivery service.

Good Eggs recommends it as an addition to a composed salad, a spread for a cheese board or a tangy addition to a sandwich. “Once you start stirring popped mustard seeds into your savory cooking, you’ll never stop,” they assure us.

RECIPE #1: MASHED BEETS WITH MUSTARD SEEDS

Ingredients For 2 Cups

 
Preparation

1. HEAT a small pan over medium heat for a minute. Pour in enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan, then add the mustard seeds. Swirl the pan until the mustard seeds begin to pop, cover the pan so the seeds don’t escape, and reduce the heat to low. After about 30 seconds, you’ll hear the popping slow down.

2. REMOVE the pan from the heat and let the seeds cool, uncovered, for a minute or two. Cut the beets into large chunks and place them in the bowl of a food processor, along with the garlic. Blend until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed. You can use a potato masher if you prefer it to a food processor: The mashed beets will be a much rougher texture (like hand-mashed potatoes) but still fine for all purposes.

3. ADD the popped mustard seeds, yogurt, a big squeeze of lemon juice, and some salt. Taste and adjust the seasoning as desired.

RECIPE #2: BEET YOGURT DIP, SPREAD OR TOPPING

This is the yogurt to whip up for Valentine’s Day. You can make it with any color of beets, but save the orange and yellow for another occasion and use red beets. You can make the recipe a day in advance.

Use beet yogurt as a dip, a spread, or as a topping—for baked potatoes, cottage cheese, grains, veggies, sandwiches, etc.

Ingredients For 6 Servings

A very romantic dish of yogurt. Photo courtesy Good Eggs | San Francisco.

____________________
*If you don’t like the licorice notes in tarragon, substitute basil or chervil.
 

Preparation

If you want to roast your own beats, follow the first three steps. Otherwise, skip to Step 4.

1. PREHEAT the oven to 450°F.

2. SCRUB and trim the beets, but leave the skins on. Place them in a small baking pan or casserole and fill it with 1/2″ hot water. Sprinkle with salt, cover with a piece of parchment paper, and then cover dish tightly with foil.

3. ROAST the beets until tender, about 1 hour. Remove them from the baking pan and let them cool until they are comfortable to grasp. Then, using a paper towel, rub off the skins.
 
4. GRATE the beets coarsely with a box grater, Microplane or the grating disc of a food processor. Blend with the yogurt, mint, tarragon, olive oil, and vinegar. Taste and season with salt and vinegar as desired.

5. COVER and chill the yogurt for 3 hours or overnight for the flavors to meld.
 
RECIPE: TOASTED PITA WEDGES

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. CUT each pita round into 6 wedges and place them on a baking sheet. Brush lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with salt as desired.

2. BAKE for 5 minutes or until crisp.
  

Top: Yogurt and “Valentine fruit” for breakfast. Center: Smoked salmon for more sophisticated palates. Photos and recipes courtesy Siggi’s Dairy, producer of artisan yogurt. Bottom: “Valentine toast.” Photo courtesy SmellOfRosemary.Blogspot.com.

Following our recent article on chocolate pancakes for Valentine’s Day, one reader tweeted, “Got anything for health-conscious eaters that fits into the schedule of a busy working mom?”

Beth, this one’s for you and the kids. You can easily make one or both recipes.

RECIPE #1: FRUIT SKEWERS WITH VANILLA YOGURT DIP

Ingredients Per Serving

 
Plus

 
Preparation

1. COMBINE the yogurt and honey in a bowl; mix well and set aside.

2. CUT the fruit with a small heart-shaped cookie cutter. Assemble the skewers, using grapes and/or raspberries between the hearts as desired.
 

RECIPE #2: SMOKED SALMON & DILLED YOGURT

Ingredients Per Serving

 
Plus

 
_________________________________
*Cut a thin wheel of lemon, then cut the circle into quarters.
 
Preparation

1. CUT the smoked salmon into large but bite-size pieces.

2. BLEND the yogurt and dill, seasoning with salt and pepper as desired.

3. SCOOP the yogurt into a bowl and top with the smoked salmon.

4. GARNISH as desired and serve.

VALENTINE TOAST

Make heart-shaped whole wheat toast with a heart-shaped cookie cutter of any size.

Toast both the original slice of bread and the cut-out heart.