Hello friends! I’ve got a boureka-inspired galette AND a chance for you to share your family’s favorite recipe cards waiting below. But before that, a quick check in. Over the past month, The Jewish Table has featured:
A very delicious (“insane” as my almost 7-year old might say) recipe for bagels stuffed with shallot and chives. It is honestly one of my top 5 favorite dishes I have ever developed.
A spring-friendly chicken soup brightened with a garden’s worth of fresh herbs and lemon zest.
A recipe for curried rice with raisins and coconut, and a peek into the tiny-but-mighty Jewish community of Curaçao.
Weekly subscribers, thank you for your support and comments and for tagging me when you make/share one of the recipes on Instagram. It truly makes my day, every time. If you are enjoying The Jewish Table, please consider inviting a friend to check it out!
Monthly subscribers, I am so happy you are here. If you want to continue receiving newsletters every four weeks, all good! But if the dishes above look enticing, and you want to upgrade to a weekly subscription to get access to those recipes/never miss a thing going forward, you can do that here.
Okay! Housekeeping out of the way - on to the good stuff. First up, a flaky, buttery galette bursting with spinach and fresh herbs. I have been making galettes for years, and love how rustic and unfussy they are. There’s no yeast dough to babysit or pastry crimping involved - just roll out your dough, plop in the filling, and give it a quick fold. The more freeform, the better. I usually keep my galette fillings pretty straightforward, opting for a mix of berries or stone fruit, or going the savory route with potatoes and rosemary or tomatoes and goat cheese. But this galette was inspired by a recent cooking demonstration I taught over Zoom that *almost* went off the rails.
The class was making spinach bourekas, and halfway through filling and folding the Sephardic turnovers, I sensed through the screen that people were getting a little restless. On a whim, I decided to turn the second half of the boureka dough and filling into a galette. I warned the class that I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but they improvised along with me. The result? A culture-crossing, full-flavored pie that is delicious warm or at room temperature, and equally satisfying for lunch or dinner. I pair this galette, like most others, with a simple green salad and a glass of white wine. But you could also serve it alongside baked fish or a grain salad. Ready to get your galette on?
Spinach Boureka Galette
For the Dough:
1 1/4 cups (175 g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried dill, optional
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
10 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
4 tablespoons cold water, plus more as needed
For the Filling:
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
5 oz (142 g) frozen spinach, thawed, squeezed dry, and roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, optional
1/2 cup (120 g) cup ricotta cheese
4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
2 generous handfuls of fresh herbs (parsley, mint, dill, or a mix), finely chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 medium garlic clove, minced, grated, or pushed through a press
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
To Finish:
1 egg + 1 teaspoon water, beaten together
Make the dough: Combine the flour, sugar, dried dill, if using, and salt in a large bowl. Add the butter pieces and use a pastry blender or your fingertips to work it into the flour until the butter resembles small peas.
Sprinkle 4 tablespoons of water over the top and stir it together to combine; it should form large clumps of dough. If it does not, sprinkle over 1 additional tablespoon of water. Use your hands to gently knead the dough in the bowl to bring it together into a single mass. Form the dough into a disk, wrap it in a large square of parchment paper, and chill until firm, at least 1 hour or up to 3 days ahead.
Make the filling: Heat the oil in a medium frying pan set over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the spinach, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, if using, and cook, stirring, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
In a large bowl, stir together the ricotta, feta, fresh herbs, egg, garlic, lemon zest, and the cooled spinach mixture.
Assemble the galette: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Unwrap the dough and line a large baking sheet with the parchment it was wrapped in. On a floured counter, using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough into a large circle, about 12-inches across. If the dough is too solid to roll at first, let it rest at room temp for a few minutes.
Gently transfer the dough to the baking sheet. Spread the spinach mixture over the center, leaving a 2-inch border around the edge. Fold the border over the filling, loosely pleating the edge as you go. (Confused? Watch this.) The center filling should be exposed.
Brush the crust with the egg and water mixture (you will not use all of it). Bake the crust until golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Don’t worry if a little butter leaks out onto the baking sheet while baking. Transfer the galette to a cutting board and serve warm or at room temperature, sliced into wedges.
Send me your recipe cards!
Last month, I shared a recipe for my family’s Double Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake, and included this snap of the card from my mom’s recipe box.
Looking at the card, which has been lovingly stained and creased from use over the years, I remembered how fun it is to flip through a box of someone else’s recipe cards. It kind of feels like going to a new friend’s house and scanning their book shelves looking for titles you love (connection!) and titles you don’t know but that intrigue you (adventure!).
In that spirit of connection and adventure, I’m inviting you to send me your recipe cards. Spend a few minutes going through your family’s beloved recipes. Take down your grandmother’s recipe box and locate her beloved brisket recipe, find the most sauce-splattered page in your family’s copy of The Joy of Cooking (or The Settlement Cookbook, or…), and see which recipe is responsible for the splashes, or look through your old notebooks for recipes clipped from magazines and tucked there for safe keeping. (Maybe I am the only person who does that last one?)
Then: take a photo of the recipe card and upload it here (or email it to me at lkoenig23 @ gmail.com). If there’s a short story or memory to go along with it, share that too! I will go through them and feature the highlights in a future newsletter. Think of this as a virtual recipe potluck - a chance to get to know ourselves and this community better through the dishes we love.