Make This: Tess Ward’s Sweet Potato SurpriseBy Tess Ward

Looking for something delicious and wintery? This sweet potato galette recipe will see you right. Before chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi, Heidi Swanson and Hugh Fearnley converted to veggie, there have been very few chefs that have written cookbooks which I would call truly inspiring for a meat-free cook. And it’s almost like the average restaurant feels that they are doing you a favour by even offering a vegetarian option.

For all my veggie friends out there I have come tried to come up with a recipe that I feel meets the comforting requirements of these winter months, with no sacrifices.

Sweet Potato Galette Recipe with Goats Cheese and Thyme

INGREDIENTS:

The Pastry:

• 150g white flour
• 100g unsalted butter
• 50ml sour cream or yoghurt
• 50ml water
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 Egg + a little water, or a couple of tbs of milk (to glaze the pastry)

The Filling:

• 2 large sweet potatoes
• 100g soft goats cheese
• 4 tbs garlic oil (or olive oil)
• 2 tbs thyme
• 4 tbs sour cream (to serve)

METHOD:

1. Add the flour and salt to a bowl with the butter and mix well until the pastry takes on a sandy texture. Add the sour cream and water to the bowl and mix well, until the dough comes together in a ball (if the mixture is too wet add a little extra FLOUR and work it into the dough) knead the dough for a minute or two before wrapping in clingfilm and popping in the fridge to relax for half an hour.

2. To prepare your sweet potato cut them into disks, about 1cm thick. Add them to a bowl with 1tbs of the garlic oil, half the thyme leaves and salt and pepper. Use your hands to gently give the sweet potato a coating in the oil.

3. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.

4. Gently roll out the pastry in a circle shape on a floured surface – you want it to be about the thickness of a pound coin. Transfer the pastry to a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper – don’t worry if the pastry is a little larger than the dish because the edges will get folded over. Leave roughly two inches in from the edge of your pastry and carefully overlap the sweet potato to make a circle tucking little blobs of the soft goats cheese between every other layer.

5. Drizzle with the remaining garlic oil, scatter over the remaining thyme leaves before folding up the edges of the galette, gently pleating the overlapping layers. Brush the pastry with the egg wash.

6. Put the galette in the oven and cook for 30-35 minutes – turn once halfway through cooking, to achieve even cooking.

N.B: Completely unintentionally when making this recipe, I encountered that I had bought two different varieties of Sweet Potato so I alternated the colours when arranging them on my pastry base.

Do not be alarmed in thinking I was silly enough to confused a Sweet Potato with a Spud – I haven’t been at the wine just yet.