Meeting early for a coffee at our local café, I was ready for my best friend, Miguel Trujillo, to start chatting as he sat scarved and dignified in his black trench coat. It’s not often that such a lifeline is well-versed in the culinary arts, but upon learning he did not always have those abilities, I was curious to hear how he discovered them.
Miguel pointed me to the cookbook Where Cooking Begins by Chef Carla Lalli Music. “I generally don’t buy [cookbooks] unless I know things about the author—which is what stands out to me.”
Human connection is a recurring theme in his culinary journey. Miguel has family working in the culinary industry and his earliest cooking was born out of the need to feed himself and his younger brother after school. It wasn’t until being gifted this book that his opportunity to branch out emerged.
Drawing from Music’s recipes seemed appropriate given he was familiar with her skill, though experimenting with a dessert wasn’t deliberate: “It was just the first time that I’d really cooked for the sake of doing it for enjoyment.” The dish he proudly showed me was the delectable Any Fruit Galette, which, to the untrained eye, begs for substantial culinary expertise. It beholds a very rustic, almost thrown together appearance that simultaneously looks very calculated. The crumbly pastry begins as flour rolled with butter, with a quarter cup of ice water drizzled on top and is then thoroughly worked and folded in by hand. After squeezing a knob of dough in the palm to see if it sticks, it’s rolled onto a baking sheet. The final product should be nice and flaky but “not like a croissant”, Miguel emphasised. After the dough is baked in the oven for 50 minutes, it should look deep brown with a slight sheen, as the fruit bubbles at its centre. His choice of fruits were blackberries, cherries and apples. He explained to me that they were pitted, sliced and macerated—where the fruit is placed in sugar and vinegar to soften and soak in more flavour. The result of this homely, sweet pie-like delicacy is, in Miguel’s words, “really gorgeous.”
Why Miguel chose this recipe, then, also intrigued me. “I’d rather show you one that I’ve had the opportunity to make,” he said while showing me pictures of his glamorous effort posted to his Instagram. One photo was of a slice revealing a bountiful pool of rich berry juice. However, I still figured there was more to his choice. Miguel then eagerly divulged his culinary philosophy: “Baking is very much like a science,” he explained, “you use specific ratios and it’s very, very particular.” Ironically, the Galette is very forgiving and using leftover fruits or those about to fall out of season is encouraged. The more the dough is worked in, the more it begins to break apart. Miguel pointed out the bits he precariously folded over to repair the cracks but clarified that it’s part of the charm: “It’s like an interpretative journey you take while making this dish.”
The great thing about cooking with other people is the bittersweet anecdotes. I laughed as we reminisced on cooking get-togethers that we had with our high school friends; “It’s sometimes the stories without words that are the most wonderful,” Miguel said. To cherish a meal made with your own hands will certainly lead to many memorable and poignant moments. Miguel mentioned that those same friends are cooking for themselves now and nurtures the carry-on effect his cooking has instilled to them.
Intensely curious, I asked my best friend the question again: why the Any Fruit Galette? Besides reflecting his main desire to cook nowadays, which is to feed, it is also to nurture people. “It’s this incredible middle ground of traditional flexible cooking and that sort of intricate baking,” he told me. Its imperfections make it perfect. The Galette doesn’t look picturesque, but it retains the decadency of a meticulously prepared sweet dessert. It’s not an everyday occurrence either—its creation alone is a special occasion. The fact that a single dessert is so indicative of bonds with friends and family is a testament to not only the ability of cooking itself, but to Miguel’s in bringing people together.