AIP rustic persimmon galette with a grain-free cassava and tigernut crust

The dough for this crust has to chill overnight, and you'll roll it between two sheets of parchment before folding the edges up around the fruit by hand. It is genuinely more fuss than a weeknight dessert. Some weeks the extra fuss is the point: a pastry with pleated edges that you can carry to a table, made with your own hands instead of bought.

Persimmons only turn edible once they're soft enough to worry you, past the point most people would throw them out, and at that stage they're a source of vitamin A and fiber. The crust underneath is cassava and tigernut flour, tigernut being a root vegetable that just happens to share a name with a tree nut, so it stays fully within what AIP allows.

Keep the pleats loose and a little imperfect; a neat edge is not the goal here. Once it bakes to gold, cut into it while the persimmon is still visible in its fan and notice the color before you notice the taste.

Ingredients

For the crust:

• 1/2 cup cassava flour
• 1/4 cup tigernut flour (a tuber, not a nut)
• 1 tablespoon arrowroot flour, plus more for dusting
• 1.5 tablespoons coconut sugar or date sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons cold palm shortening
• 6 tablespoons ice-cold water

For the filling:

• 4 ripe Fuyu persimmons
• 6 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce

Method

The night before, chill the palm shortening and the water so both are very cold.

Whisk together the cassava flour, tigernut flour, arrowroot, coconut or date sugar, and salt. Cut the cold palm shortening into the flour mix until it forms pea-sized, flour-coated bits.

Add the cold water and bring the dough together loosely, without overworking it. It should stay rough. Divide into 3 balls and refrigerate.

Slice the ripe persimmons about 1/4 inch thick.

Roll each ball of dough between two sheets of arrowroot-dusted parchment to roughly 1/8 inch thick.

Spread 2 tablespoons of applesauce in the center of each round, layer persimmon slices over the applesauce, and fold the edges up in loose pleats, leaving the fruit exposed in the middle.

Bake on parchment at 400 F for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden, rotating the sheet halfway through. Serve warm.

A note on the fruit: Fuyu persimmons must be fully ripe, with the skin softening and the color shifting from bright orange toward brown, or they taste bitter. Apples work as a substitute if persimmons are not in season.

This is a baked pastry, so it stays in the oven. An air fryer cannot reliably bake three open galettes evenly, and an Instant Pot is not suited to pastry, so no appliance variation is offered.

*Adapted from asquirrelinthekitchen.com*