Novice cooks, rustic vegetable galettes have your name written all over it.
They are as simple as they come _ the crust could be made with store-bought ready-to-bake puff pastry sheets, the savory filling can be prepared with whatever vegetables you have on hand, and the recipe does not require a fancy tart pan or even a pie dish; a cookie sheet or baking tray will suffice.
If you are not a master of rolling out a puff pastry sheet to a perfect circle, it's plenty fine; the galette won't hold it against it you. Even if the crust is remotely round, it is still a galette.
Just like its shape, the definition also is loose and free-form. The French native is derived from the word galet, meaning a smooth, flat pebble. By definition it is a cake-like creation, but in today's world it's a rustic tart made with a single pastry, and looks like a pizza. The filling can be sweet or savory, and the sides of the galette can be folded up or crimped and left rather flat.
The loosey-goosey attitude of a vegetable galette extends to its filling, which can be made combining broccoli, red peppers, Parmesan and pesto; or tomatoes, spinach and feta; or eggplant, zucchini and goat cheese.
Although there are no hard-and-fast rules to follow, the galette will be pie perfect if you keep a couple of minor tips in mind. Lightly flour the dough and roll it out on parchment paper so it won't stick. The paper also will come in handy to help fold the edges of the dough over the filling.
It's important that the filling is dry as this will prevent the pastry dough from getting soggy. Finally, don't pile the filling high. The galette is cooked on a cookie sheet and not in a pie pan, and so remember that the crust is not getting any help to hold its structure.
At the end of it all, tips or no tips, a galette is just a laid-back pie that is a shoo-in inductee for the Simple Recipe Hall of Fame.
