Plum and Nectarine Galette

We first ate this lucious dessert at Jill Israel and Billy Karp's house, August, 2004, at the occasion of our nephew Jake's Bar Mitzvah. It's a free-form, forgiving dessert. The original recipe is from the San Francisco Chronicle, but I've taken some liberties to adapt it.

Ingredients:

• filling
  • 6-8 pieces of soft fruit, preferably sweet plums, freestone nectarines, or freestone peaches
  • 3 T. all-purpose flour
  • 4-5 T. sugar
• dough
  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 6 ounces vegetable shortening (Crisco)
  • ice water
• finishing
  • melted crisco for brushing
  • sugar for sprinkling on crust
  • sorbet (chocolate, mango, or cabernet)

Yield: 1 galette to serve 4-6 persons

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or silpat.

Combine the flour and salt for the dough in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Work in the Crisco (this can be done with two knives or a pastry blender; I just prefer the food processor) until the pieces of Crisco are like small pellets. Add ice water a tablespoon at a time and pulse until the dough forms a ball but is not sticky. Wrap the dough in plastic and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or up to 5 days.
Halve and pit the fruit. Cut into 5 or 6 slices each.
Roll the dough on parchment paper. Make a 14 inch circle (or approximate circle). Leaving a 2 inch border, sprinkle the center of the dough with the flour and 1 T. of sugar. Arrange the fruit in concentric circles over the flour-sugar mixture, sprinkling each layer with sugar. Draw up and fold over the sides of the pastry to form a rim on top of the edge of the fruit. Brush the edge of the dough with melted Crisco, sprinkle with sugar. Bake until bubbly, about 40 minutes, rotating in the oven to evenly brown. Transfer, still on the parchment paper, to a cooling rack until serving. Top with sorbet.