Butternut squash and caramelised onion galette

Name: Butternut Squash Galette recipe
Yield: 1 hearty, 12-inch galette, serving 8
Ingredients: 315g plain flour (including 150g wholemeal flour if you like), plus more for work surface; ½tsp table salt; 225g unsalted butter, diced; 120g soured cream or full-fat Greek yogurt (i.e., a strained yogurt}; 1tbsp white wine vinegar; 80ml ice water; 2 small or 1 large butternut squash (about 1.25kg); 3tbsp olive oil; 1½tsp table salt; Freshly ground black pepper; 15g butter; 2 large sweet onions, such as Spanish or Vidalia, halved, thinly sliced in half moons; ¼tsp sugar; ¼tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste (optional); 185g grated Italian fontina cheese; 1tsp chopped fresh thyme, or 2tsp chopped fresh sage; 1 egg yolk beaten with 1tsp water, for glaze (optional, but makes for a croissant-looking finish)

Butternut Squash Galette Taken from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman, a free-form rustic tart recipe of butternut squash, carmelised onion and pastry

By Deb Perelman

12 October 2021

Image may contain Food Pizza Dessert Cake Pie and Tart

By Deb Perelman of The Smitten Kitchen and The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Once upon a time, I was obsessed with savory galettes. To me, there were few higher callings than serving for dinner a big green salad and a free-form, rustic tart that you could fill with, well, whatever you pleased. But my favorite galette of all was the butternut squash and caramelized onion galette I made on a whim one October evening.

Years-and one kid-later, I went to make the recipe again for a bring-a-plate dinner and was horrified at the amount of labor it took to yield a dinky galette that would barely serve four for dinner, despite the six servings I suggested.

So I doubled the crust and made more filling, and replaced some white flour with wholemeal (it's dinner, after all), and tweaked any number of other things; what came out of my oven was a small pizza-sized wonder of wonders that fed my family for three nights. Three! Nights!

It is wonderful, either as a pleasant surprise on a weeknight or as a stepped-up appetizer for a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Divide it into a few smaller galettes and it becomes the thing you can bring to a wine-and-cheese cocktail party that nobody will be able to stop talking about.

Recipe extract and image taken from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman (Square Peg, £20), which is out now

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This recipe can be divided to make two 23cm galettes.

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Recipe notes