In Brittany and Normandy, where the best butter in France is produced, there exist little round cookies with fluted edges, made traditionally with local butter. They are called "galettes". The recipe goes something like this: butter, sugar, egg, and just enough flour to hold it together. Because the ingredient list is so short and simple, the flavor of these galettes comes directly from the flavor of the butter itself. They should, therefore, be made with superlative butter or not at all.
Here in Santa Cruz, I set out to make these little cookies with a very special butter I churn myself. The butter is made with delicious cream from three pretty Normande cows who live in Watsonville. Each week I make a quantity in the kitchen at the Michelin-starred Manresa for use at the restaurant. What's left goes into these very special cookies.
I want to make proper galettes, but I'm much too impatient to cut out little rounds, and then roll up the remaining bits and cut them again. I came up with a far simpler process of cutting the dough into rectangle pieces, using a rolling pastry cutter. Fast and no waste at all, how great! There's just one little catch: since my cookies are not round, and the name galette in French means, literally, little round biscuits, they cannot be called galettes, no matter what the recipe or aspiration. Alas, my cookies can only dream of being a galette, and so I call them sablés qui rêvent de galettes.
Sweet dreams just the same.
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