Ben Roberts, Kent Sport Health and Fitness Instructor, shares his recipe for success using local apples to make this beautiful bake. Since flour is scarce, he has an ingenious way to help your little bit of flour go a long way. Thank you, Ben, for your entry into #LockdownBakeOff2020!
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Not had flour in the shop for weeks now so to make it go further, I’ve used potatoes to make the pastry base for this light desert using ingredients that you should still be able to get in supermarkets. This is an adaptation of a recipe from The Hairy Dieters Go Veggie; I’ve used Kentish apples here rather than the pears in the original but you can use what you have available.
Apple and Ginger Galette
Part 1: potato ‘pastry’
Preheat oven to 200’C/Fan 180’C. Peel 300g of floury potatoes (I used Maris Pipers) and dice into 3cm cubes. Cover with cold water in a saucepan, bring to boil and cook for 10-15 minutes until very soft. Drain potatoes in a colander, return to pan and let steam to dry off for a few minutes. Mash until very smooth and leave to cool completely. You will have leftover mash but that can be used easily for dinners to save cooking.
In a large bowl, rub 40g diced chilled butter into 80g of plain flour. Add 200g of the mashed potato alongside a tablespoon of milk. Season with salt and knead gently until everything is combined. Add up to 1 more teaspoon of milk if it’s too dry. Roll into a ball and chill for at least 30 minutes before use.
Part 2: the filling
Add juice of half a lemon or 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice to a large bowl. Core 2-3 good size eating apples and slice into very thin wedges. Add the wedges to the bowl of lemon juice and mix as you go to stop them turning brown. Add to the bowl 1 tablespoon of muscavado sugar, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of 5 spice, a pinch of nutmeg, and, if you have it, 1 piece of stem ginger in syrup rinsed and finely chopped. Mix everything together to coat the apple slices.
Part 3: assembly and baking
On a sheet of floured baking paper, roll the potato pastry into a large circle, roughly 3mm thick. If the pastry is too sticky, add a little more flour as you roll. Arrange the apple wedges in a spiral out from the middle of the pastry, leaving a 5cm border at the edge of the pastry circle. Overlap the slices but don’t add too many layers or the base won’t cook. Pour any liquid left in the fruit bowl over the apples and dot with 10g of butter. Using the baking paper to help you, fold the border of pastry over the edge of the apples leaving most of the middle exposed. Brush the pastry with beaten egg.
Carefully place the galette and its baking paper on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until golden brown and serve warm or leave to cool. Great with ice cream.