Friday's Favorite French Things

Galette des Rois
January 6 was Epiphany, the day the catholic & orthodox churches celebrate the "shining forth" or revelation of God in human form, to the Gentiles, in the person of Jesus.
Whatever.
Two things take place in France during Epiphany:
1. All the Christmas decorations come down
2. Galettes de Rois make an appearance. These either look like the photo below:

and are filled with an almond paste and a "fève", or are in a ring or crown shape and made of brioche. The fève is a little ceramic thingy that used to have a religious theme, but these days can be anything from a Smurf to a St Mary to Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.
When the galette is cut up, the person who gets the piece with the fève is king (or queen) and gets to wear the crown. In bars/cafes or work, the person with the fève gets to buy the next round. Children have been known to get violent over the fève and will resort to prodding the entire galette with their grubby little fingers until they locate the fève.
For lunch today Fi & I made a savoury galette, and it was bloody delicious.

Easy to make - here is the recipe
Galette Nicoise
Pre-heat oven at 200C
2 tins of Croissante pastry. Get these in the refigerated section at your supermarche. It comes in little tins and there are 4 croissants each tin.
2 chicken breasts
1 onion
handful of lardons
feta cheese
emmental cheese (optional)
black olives
red pepper
Cook the onion and lardons with a bit of garlic and herbes de provence. Set aside.
Cut the chicken into small pieces and fry, with some salt, black pepper & a squeeze of lemon juice.
chop half the red pepper & cook in the empty pan
In a bowl, mix the chicken, onion/lardons pepper, black olives and cheese. The emmental will make the mixture more melty and moist.
In a buttered baking tray, place the triangles of croissante pastry, pointy sides outwards so that the bases overlap. To get them even try starting with the 4 poles like in a compass and then put in 4 more overlapping pieces in between.
spoon the chicken mixture onto the widest parts of the triangles and then fold the points over the mixture towards the middle. Zoom in on the photo above and you'll get the idea.
Place it in the oven and cook for about 10-15 mins until the pastry is golden. Careful to not burn the underneath.

Easy peasy - spectacular looking and tasty. We called it "Galette Nicoise" or "Couronne Nicoise" to fool our chauvanistic french guests who wn't eat anything that isn't french. They fell for it.