Meatless Monday: Carrot and Fontal Cheese Galette with Fennel Crust

This week's Meatless Monday recipe is a rustic, freeform pie filled with roasted vegetables and a delicious, nutty cheese surrounded by a crisp, buttery crust.

Let me introduce you to my Carrot Galette. It has one of my favorite cheeses, Fontal. Fontal is a nutty, slight sweet cheese that melts beautifully. If you can't find Fontal, try Fontina which has a stronger flavor. The cheese is topped with fresh thyme, thinly sliced roasted carrots and leeks. The top layer of the carrots and leeks will get nice and crisp which I just love. Surrounding all that goodness is a buttery crust flavored with fennel seeds.

Nervous about making pie crust? Don't worry. Making a galette is a great way to ease into pie making because the crust is not supposed to be perfect - how great is that? To make my crust, I use a food processor to combine the ingredients (except for the fennel seed), then chill the dough, roll out into a circle, fill with the ingredients and bake. Just a warning, while the food processor makes things easy, it also makes it easy to over work the dough so be cautious. Find the fennel crust recipe on my blog!

Carrot Galette with Fontal Cheese and Fennel Crust
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

• 1 prepared fennel pie crust (recipe on my blog)
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/8 inch diagonal slices
• 1 leek, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
• 1 cup shredded fontal cheese
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper

Toss the carrots and leeks with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with salt and pepper

Roast for 10 minutes and remove from the oven

Remove the pie crust dough from the refrigerator and roll into a 9 - 10 inch circle (should be about 1/4 inch thick)

Add the cheese to the dough, leaving a 2 inch border around the edges

Add the fresh thyme to the top of the cheese and top with the roasted carrots and leeks

Fold the edges of the dough over the filling to form a "crust"

Season the top of the galette with salt and pepper

Brush the beaten egg over the crust and place on a clean piece of parchment on the baking sheet

Bake for 40 - 45 minutes or until the crust is browned and cooked through. The top pieces of carrots and leeks will get nicely crisped