Apple & Orange Marmalade Galette
January in theory offers beginnings, fresh starts, promise. But January also comes to such a crashing social halt that its quiet can disturb. The un-garlanded, un-tinsled house feels intensely bare. The rooms that just weeks ago demanded extra guest seating now feel extra-empty.
The weather in January replaces December’s sounds. No more laughter over Sonos carols but snowplows scraping pavement in the night. The wind plays the gap in my front storm door like a harmonica. The furnace groans against the cold. The hum of inside visitors is supplanted by blizzard-blown waves crashing on Folly Cove rocks.
With all this January on my mind, I recently listened to an episode on stillness from Glennon Doyle’s podcast. (If you know Glennon I don’t need to say anymore. If you don’t, she is the author of the wildly best-selling memoir “Untamed.” And now, with her wife, soccer phenomenon Abby Wambach, and Glennon’s sister Amanda, Glennon hosts the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things,” just named the #1 podcast of 2021 on Apple. It’s that good.
In episode #58, Glennon tells how in a rock-bottom moment she learned that, as fast as most of us run from it, stillness teaches. There are lessons in stillness, taught by stillness, found only in stillness that we critically need to be human.
I realized that with its sparse calender, thinned to-do lists, and battering weather, the gift January offers is stillness - maybe time on a Saturday afternoon to lie across the bed and do nothing. To drift through that too quiet room to a book shelf. I found my stillness peeling apples. I had decided to make a galette that required peeling, coring, and thinly slicing 6 large Golden Delicious apples, sauteeing some of them, rolling dough, and then fanning the apple slices around the top in swirling order. Intentionally, I did all of the above without a podcast. Without a phone call.
Apple skins raveled across my hands as I peeled, and I thought of this year’s unimaginable loss: My cousin Dean’s handsome son, Garrett, her only child. The eldest child of Nancy, my 4th grade best friend. He was working on a Masters Degree in Education when he learned that not feeling well meant he had stage four colon cancer. Dan, Seania’s husband, gentle dad to his three sons, Boyscout leader to so many scouts, and best friend to almost everyone who needed something at Ace Hardware. No one walked away from Dan’s softspoken kindness and slightly jaunty smile without feeling good. And just before Christmas, Jen. The only thing springier than her head of lush curls was her personality. We were part of a small group of local women interested in food and cooking we ironically named The Gloucester Glitterati, but honestly Jen sparkled. She left her husband, her child, and an entire city of friends and family.
At the last minute, I thought to spread orange marmalade across the bottom of the crust, before piling on the sweet, predictable yellow apples. The bitter citrus held those griefs, but also the golden stillness January has allowed me to remember.
Apple & Orange Marmalade Galette
Galette Dough
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
8 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into chunks - frozen
4 tablespoons shortening cut into chunks - frozen
4 tablespoons ice water (or more if needed.)
Filling
½ cup orange marmalade
6 Golden Delicious Apples, peeled, cored, and cut into ⅓” wide slices
4 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons flour
Cornmeal for the pan
Sugar for sprinkling on top - preferably castor sugar.
1 egg yolk and 2 tablespoons whole milk for a glaze
Instructions
To make the dough put flour, salt and sugar into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade. Process lightly to blend. Add add butter and shortening chunks and process again until it looks like rough sand. Start adding ice water one tablespoon at a time with the processor running. At four tablespoons, let the processor run, pausing and starting it a bit, to make the motion start rounding the dough into a ball. You probably won’t need to add more water for this, just keep pausing and starting it. But add 1 more tablespoon if this motion does not bring it together into a ball. Remove the ball of dough, and pat it into a 1” thick round. Wrap in saran wrap and refrigerate.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl toss the apples, sugar, cinnamon, and salt together well. In a wide skillet, melt the butter. Remove about 1 cup of the apple slices, and toss in the butter. Cook gently until the apples begin to soften, and even break down, stirring occasionally. Once they are mushy, add the flour and keep stirring. Stir and cook for about 3 minutes or until the mixture becomes basically smooth.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and sprinkle the parchment lightly with corn meal. Flour a smooth surface where you will roll the dough. Remove dough from refrigerator, and roll out to about ¼” thinness. Fold the dough in half, and lift it onto the parchment paper, then unfold it so that it is centered on the baking sheet. Mark a circle about 2 - 3 inches inside the perimeter of the dough, that will be the size of the galette after you fold up the edges.
Spread the marmalade evenly over that circle. Spread on top of that the apple mixture from the pan. Starting on the outside edge, begin fanning the apple slices around the edge. Start a new row of fanned apple slices inside that one, and keep going to fill the whole top.
Moving around the edges, fold up the dough over the outside row of apples, tucking corners together to make a round as best you can. Galettes are meant to be rustic. Brush the dough with the egg-yolk and milk glaze. Sprinkle sugar generously all over the dough AND the apples. Bake for 45 minutes or until richly browned.
