Buckwheat galette with Abondance and a runny egg

"A galette complète is a Sunday-evening supper. With Abondance, it becomes a quietly festive dish."

Why a buckwheat galette?

Buckwheat is not a cereal: it's a plant, sometimes called black wheat, at home on the acidic, poor soils of Brittany. Brought back from Asia after the Crusades, it has been grown there since the 13th century. It gives a grey flour, a liquid batter, a thin galette cooked on a scorching-hot griddle. It was the everyday bread, topped with whatever was to hand.

Then there's the question of language: in Upper Brittany, people say galette for buckwheat and crêpe for wheat. In Lower Brittany, they speak of a crêpe de blé noir, a buckwheat crêpe. Same batter, same technique, same griddle.

Which leaves the cheese. In a crêperie, a generic Emmental, rubbery and salty, covers the filling. Here, we take a different route: Abondance, a semi-cooked pressed cheese from Haute-Savoie made with raw milk, which melts briefly, coats without stringing and leaves the starring role to the egg yolk. With creamy mushrooms and chives, this buckwheat galette with Abondance bridges Brittany and the Alps. We've got everything you need to treat yourself!

Ingredients for 2 galettes

Preparation: 15 min — Cooking: 10 min (with shop-bought galettes)

Buckwheat galettes, eggs, mushrooms, ham, chives, crème fraîche and a fine piece of Abondance.

• 2 buckwheat galettes, ready-made or homemade (see below)
• 120 g Abondance AOP (60 g per galette)
• 2 slices of cooked ham, ideally thick-cut
• 150 g button mushrooms
• 2 eggs, very fresh, at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons crème fraîche
• A few sprigs of chives
• 1 knob of butter
• Freshly ground pepper, a pinch of salt

Fancy making the batter yourself?

Shop-bought galettes do the job very well; that's what we used in the photos. But homemade buckwheat galette batter needs just four ingredients and one rule: let it rest.

• 250 g buckwheat flour, finely ground
• 50 cl cold water
• 6 g fine salt, one level teaspoon
• Optional: 1 egg to bind, 30 g melted butter for crisper edges

The ratio that matters: twice as much water as flour, by weight. The batter is liquid, almost runny. That's normal: a thick batter gives a stodgy galette. Make a well in the flour, salt around the edge, egg and butter in the middle, then add the water in three goes, whisking from the centre outwards. Ten seconds with a stick blender gets rid of any lumps.

As for equipment, three options, one principle: a very hot, thick, flat surface. The billig, the traditional 40 cm cast-iron griddle, even and generous. A heavy-based 28 cm crêpe pan, perfect for two. A non-stick frying pan will do at a pinch. In every case, preheat for ten minutes: a drop of water should dance and disappear within two seconds. Grease with buttered paper, pour in a ladleful (90 ml for a billig, 60 ml for a 28 cm pan), spread in a spiral, and don't touch it again. One and a half to two minutes on the first side, thirty seconds on the second. This quantity makes 4 large galettes or 6 pan-sized galettes; the batter keeps for 48 hours in the fridge.

The recipe step by step

1. Prepare the mushrooms and chives

Clean the mushrooms and slice them thinly. Finely snip the chives.

Even slices cook at the same rate.

Chives, snipped at the last minute to keep their fragrance.

2. Creamy mushrooms

Melt a knob of butter in a frying pan, add the mushrooms and let them brown for 5 minutes over a high heat, without salt, until they have released their water and taken on colour. Add the crème fraîche, salt lightly, season with pepper, and let it thicken for a minute.

The crème fraîche goes in once the mushrooms are golden.

Off the heat, add the chives. Keep warm.

Chives off the heat, for freshness.

3. Abondance shavings

Heat a large frying pan or crêpe pan over a medium-high heat, lightly buttered. Lay in a galette. Using a vegetable peeler, shave the Abondance into curls directly over the centre of the galette, leaving a hollow in the middle for the egg. The shavings melt on contact.

With a peeler, straight onto the hot galette.

4. Ham and mushrooms

Lay the slice of ham over the cheese, then spread half the creamy mushrooms on top, still keeping the centre clear.

Ham over the cheese as it starts to melt.

The mushrooms, leaving room for the egg.

5. The runny egg

Crack an egg into the centre, close to the galette, in one clean movement. Cover the pan and cook for 2 to 3 minutes over a medium heat: the steam sets the white from above, the yolk stays liquid. Lift the lid after two minutes to check. Season with pepper.

Egg in the centre, then cover.

6. Fold into a square

Using a spatula, fold the four edges of the galette towards the centre, leaving the yolk visible. Leave for another 30 seconds so the edges crisp up.

First edge folded over.

Four edges, a square, the yolk in the middle.

Serve straight away, then repeat for the second galette. A galette can't wait: the pastry softens, the yolk sets. It's a counter dish, not a buffet dish.

The galette complète, mountain-style. Break the yolk, mix, eat.

Abondance, the cheese that changes everything

In this galette, the cheese isn't decoration: it decides whether the egg stays runny or drowns.

Abondance is an AOP cheese from Haute-Savoie, recognisable by its concave rind edge. Whole raw milk from Abondance, Tarine and Montbéliarde cows, a semi-cooked pressed cheese made in a copper vat, moulded in a wooden hoop, matured for at least a hundred days. On the palate: hazelnut, butter, a slight hint of bitterness, fruity notes. A long finish reminiscent of Beaufort, with more suppleness.

Why this rather than Emmental? Because factory Emmental behaves like rubber: it strings, it salts, it smothers. Abondance melts briefly. It coats, wraps, vanishes into the mouthful. Its fat is mellow, its salt discreet. The egg yolk keeps the starring role.

Our Abondance is selected and matured for exactly this. The other cheeses from the massif are in our Savoie collection.

The mistake that ruins the egg (and how to rescue it)

It happens to everyone. Six classic mistakes, and the emergency exit.

1. Heat too high. The white blisters, the yolk sets on the surface. Medium heat, never full whack.
2. Egg cracked from too high. The yolk bursts. Crack it into a small bowl, then slide it into the centre.
3. Lid on too long. The yolk turns hard and pale. Lift it at two minutes to check.
4. Cheese under the egg. The yolk sits in boiling fat. Shavings around the edge, a well in the centre.
5. Egg straight from the fridge. The white sets before the yolk is warm. Take the eggs out twenty minutes beforehand.
6. White still raw. Thirty more seconds under the lid, or a quick spell under the grill, watching closely.

And if the yolk breaks anyway? Mix white and yolk with a flick of the spatula, leave for thirty seconds, season with pepper: you've got a Savoyard scrambled-egg galette, delicious and unpretentious. The first galette is for practice, the second for the table.

A word of caution: runny eggs are not recommended for vulnerable people (pregnant women, young children, elderly or immunocompromised people), just like raw milk cheese. For them, cook the egg until the yolk is firm. Raw-milk Abondance is not a cooked pressed cheese: during pregnancy, make sure it is fully melted and piping hot.

Variations

The classic complète

No mushrooms or cream: ham, egg, Abondance. The best known, the most requested, and already transformed by the cheese.

The vegetarian

No ham: double the mushrooms and add a handful of spinach wilted in butter. The Abondance and the egg carry the dish.

The Savoyard

Thinly sliced par-cooked potatoes, smoked lardons, the Abondance, and for the indulgent a slice of Reblochon melting in the centre. Both Savoies in the same batter. For the oven-baked version, there's our tartiflette.

What to drink and serve with a galette?

A galette loves freshness, anything that cuts through the richness of the cheese and butter.

• A brut cider, as in Brittany, or well-chilled lait ribot (Breton buttermilk), whose acidity cleanses the palate.
• A Savoie white (Apremont, Roussette) to follow the cheese.
• A salad of lamb's lettuce or watercress, with a mustard and walnut vinaigrette.
• Gherkins for acidity, and to finish, an apple salad or fromage blanc.

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