Recipes, stories, and seasonal cooking from a home kitchen
There is a particular morning in mid-May when you step outside and the air smells different. The strawberries at the farmers market have finally arrived, small and deeply red, nothing like their pale supermarket cousins. This galette is what happens when those berries meet brown butter pastry and a few sprigs of fresh thyme from the garden.
Some recipes exist not because they are clever or impressive, but because they solve Tuesday. You have dried pasta, a lemon going soft on the counter, half a tub of ricotta from last weekend's lasagna, and exactly twenty-five minutes before someone in the house starts opening cabinets loudly. This is that recipe. It is quiet and good and never lets you down.
Rhubarb is the first real sign that the garden is waking up, those shocking crimson stalks pushing through soil that was frozen solid just weeks ago. Most people stew it to death in a pot, but slow-roasting in the oven keeps each piece intact, yielding a compote with bright flavor and a texture that holds its shape. I keep a jar in the fridge all through April and May.