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	Apricot & Pistachio Galette A rustic summer Claudia Brick Jan 25 The first recipe here of 2021 and we are almost (this is depressing) at our first COVID anniversary – and although it is not the New Zealand summer I had hoped for (thanks to the ongoing lack of quarantine free travel), I feel very grateful to be protected from the worst that people all over the world are experiencing (particularly health care workers in countries being hammered by this virus and everyone still living under strict lockdowns). Many of us would ordinarily start a new year with a burst of renewed motivation, brimming with yet-to-be-broken resolutions and a blank diary, the year already earmarked with weekends away or that holiday you’re saving for. Instead it feels anti-climactic, like the events of 2020 haven’t been neatly left behind like we naively hoped, and are instead repetitively cycling - new case, lockdown, new case, daily press conferences, lockdown. Although I’m not a resolution person normally, I’m hoping a couple of goals will make it feel slightly more new-year-ish, even if they don’t quite work out (isn’t that the point of a good new year’s resolution anyway?). If I have one in relation to this blog it is to be a bit more regular with new recipes over here (monthly!?! more?!), and to make better use of the stack of cookbooks sitting proudly on our new bookshelf. Aside from a few Alison Roman / Ottolenghi dinner party adventures of 2020 and a foray into sourdough, it was also a year of too much food repetition. There are only so many zucchini and goats cheese frittatas I can make (actually quite a few, considering it was a near weekly occurrence). Ottolenghi’s Flavour and Hetty Mckinnon’s To Asia with Love and Meera Sodha’s East deserve to be more than living room eye candy.  Anyway - today we have an apricot, raspberry & pistachio galette, another recipe made in collaboration with my local Prahran Market. Galettes are a wherever whenever summer dessert – I’ve rolled out pastry with a wine bottle and used the most dilapidated ovens and battered berries and even if it’s messy, it’s a delicious beautiful mess of crisp buttery pastry and bubbling fruit and melting dollops of ice cream. This version has a ground pistachio base which muddles with the overlying apricots and their juice into an almost frangipane like layer atop the pastry. A little bit of cardamom (I know I’m obsessed) and lemon completes it. Feel free to ad lib with whatever over-ripe fruit you have on hand. Get the recipe here. This month Currently cooking A plum, miso & hazelnut crumble - the perfect way to use the copious slightly bruised summer fruit that I always overbuy. Miso adds a savoury saltiness to the plums, with a classic buttery hazelnut studded crumble on top. The step-by-step recipe is in my instagram stories today (and saved to highlights). Muggy evenings call for salads in all forms - a current favourite is a riff on this green mango slaw, often paired with this peanut tofu. Add avocado and use whatever crisp veg you have on hand - I currently reach for green cabbage, thinly sliced mango, cucumber and loads of herbs. Summer tomato pastas coupled with this freshly shaved zucchini, pinenut, basil and parmesan salad. Try this cherry tomato sauce or this one with eggplant and ricotta gnocchi. Summer reads The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste: Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930’s is not even a conflict I was remotely aware of before this novel, which focuses on the voices of female Ethiopian soldiers at war at a time when this was far from accepted and which remain barely documented. The Colour Purple, Alice Walker. Maybe everyone else has already read this Pulitzer prize winning novel, but I couldn’t recommend it more highly. The backdrop of Celie’s life - extreme poverty, racism and abuse in 1920’s era Southern USA - is a heartbreaking and timely reminder of the origins of the issues we continue to see play out worldwide today. And if you haven’t watched Amanda Gormon’s reading at Biden’s inauguration you should. My year of rest and relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh: a short, cleverly written novel narrated by an incredibly unlikable character (chemically sedating herself to sleep in a funk of depression), full of quips that could just as well apply to today’s age of social media and wellness industries as they could to capitalist early 2000’s New York. If you liked this post from the brick kitchen, why not share it? Share © 2021 Claudia Brick Unsubscribe Melbourne, Australia