Sausage, leek and pumpkin galette with Parmesan pastry recipe

If you’re nervous about making tarts, about transferring your sheet of pastry – precariously clinging to your rolling pin – to a tin without breaking it, then galettes are for you. You just roll your circle out on lightly floured baking parchment, add your filling, fold the rim of the pastry over it, slide the galette, still on its parchment, on to a baking sheet and put it in the oven.

Timings

Prep time: 45 minutes, plus 1 hour chilling and 30 minutes draining

Cooking time: 50 minutes

Serves

Six

Ingredients

• 300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

• 150g cold butter, cut into small cubes

• 35g Parmesan, grated

• 1 egg yolk

• 1 tbsp ice-cold water

For the filling

• 350g pumpkin or squash, skin left on, but halved and deseeded

• 1½ tbsp olive oil

• 2 large or 3 medium leeks

• 15g butter

• Leaves from 4 thyme sprigs

• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped, plus 1 small clove, grated to a purée

• 200g ricotta

• 20g Parmesan, grated

• 120g sausage meat

• ¼tsp fennel seeds, bashed in a mortar and pestle

• ½ tsp chilli flakes

• 1 egg, lightly beaten, for glazing

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/190C fan/gas mark 6.

2. Put the flour, butter and a good pinch of salt into a bowl and rub them together with your fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add the Parmesan. Mix the egg yolk with the one tablespoon ice-cold water and add this to the mixture as well. Bring this together into a ball, adding a little more cold water if you need to. You can do all this in a food processor if you prefer to. Press the pastry into a disc, wrap in cling film and chill for an hour.

3. Cut the pumpkin or squash into big chunks and put into a roasting tin. Drizzle with the oil, season and roast for 15 minutes. You can then remove the skin if you want to. Cut the pumpkin or squash into smaller chunks (about 1.5cm square).

4. Remove the outer leaves from the leeks and trim the bases and the tops. Cut into 2cm lengths and wash. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan and cook the leeks on a medium heat for a couple of minutes, then turn the heat down, season, and add a splash of water, the thyme and chopped garlic.

5. Cover and cook for 12 minutes, until the leeks are quite soft. Turn the heat up and leave the lid off so that the excess moisture can evaporate (you don’t want the leeks to be too wet or they’ll ruin the galette).

6. Put a metal baking sheet in the oven.

7. Put the ricotta into a sieve lined with some muslin or a brand-new J-cloth. Let the ricotta drain for about 30 minutes, then mash and mix with the Parmesan and the garlic purée. Season.

8. Mix the sausage meat with the fennel, chilli, salt and pepper. Work it with your hands so the flavourings are well-distributed, then form the sausage meat into balls about the size of a hazelnut (in its shell).

9. Lightly flour a piece of baking parchment and roll the pastry out on this. You need a circle about 35cm across. Leaving a 4cm border all the way around, spread the ricotta mixture on the pastry (it will be a thin layer, but it’s enough). Spoon the leeks on top, then the pumpkin and sausage. Pull the edges of the pastry up over the mixture all the way around. Crimp the edges and brush with the egg.

10. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and quickly slide the paper with the galette on top of it on to the sheet. Put back in the oven immediately and cook for 30 minutes. The crust should be golden. Leave to cool a little before serving.