Apricot, Raspberry & Pistachio Galette

Apricot, Raspberry & Pistachio Galette – crisp, buttery pastry and a nutty pistachio base topped with bubbling tender fruit. Jump to recipe.

Normally. In any other year, I mean. Pre-quarantine and border restrictions? That normal. I would be currently home enjoying the New Zealand summer, full of family road trips and pohutakawa and corn and peach salads and barbecues and Christmas tree remnants and everything that a summer at home entails. BUT this is 2021 and we are almost (this is depressing) at our first COVID anniversary – and I remind myself that I can still do many of the above activities within the confines of state borders, and feel very grateful to be protected from the worst that people all over the world are experiencing (particularly health care workers in countries being hammered by this virus and everyone still living under strict lockdowns). I feel like many of us normally start a new year with a burst of enthusiasm and renewed motivation, brimming with yet-to-be-broken resolutions and a blank diary (that fresh book smell), the year already earmarked with weekends away or that holiday you’re saving for. Instead it feels anti-climactic, like the events of 2020 haven’t been neatly left behind like we naively hoped, and are instead dragging on like the prolonged live streamed daily press conference phenomenon. Repetitive. 

Although I’m not a resolution person normally, I’m hoping a couple of goals will make it feel slightly more new-year-ish, even if they don’t quite work out (isn’t that the point of a good new year’s resolution anyway?). If I have one in relation to this blog it is to be a bit more regular with new recipes over here (monthly!?!), and to make better use of the stack of cookbooks sitting proudly on our new bookshelf. Aside from a few Alison Roman / Ottolenghi dinner party adventures of 2020 and a foray into sourdough, it was also a year of too much food repetition. There are only so many zucchini and goats cheese frittatas I can make (actually quite a few, considering it was a near weekly occurrence). Ottolenghi’s Flavour and Hetty Mckinnon’s To Asia with Love and Meera Sodha’s East deserve to be more than living room eye candy. 

The latest delivery from Prahran Market of rose harissa and preserved lemons and new tahini and huge bunches of herbs and bundles of stone fruit did help the January creativity – we had a Israeli style salad of peaches and tomatoes on a bed of creamy hummus (recipe will follow on instagram soon) and Julia Ostro’s roast and marinated zucchini on burrata with mint and toasted walnuts, pooled in olive oil. Plums paired with miso and hazelnuts in a buttery crumble (again, keep an eye out next week); tomatoes were slow roasted with harissa and tumbled through fresh pasta (courtesy of The Fresh Pasta Shop, not homemade – shortcuts are smart sometimes) with mountains of grated pecorino and basil and a raw zucchini pinenut salad; and the rest of those apricots ended up right here. 

Galettes are a wherever whenever summer dessert – I’ve rolled out pastry with a wine bottle and used the most dilapidated ovens and battered berries and even if it’s messy, it’s a delicious beautiful mess of crisp buttery pastry and bubbling fruit and melting dollops of ice cream. No soggy pie bottoms in sight. This version has a ground pistachio base which muddles with the overlying apricots and their juice into an almost frangipane like layer atop the pastry. A little bit of cardamom (I know I’m obsessed) and lemon completes it. Feel free to ad lib with whatever over-ripe fruit you have on hand.