Quiche Gone Wrong

You know how sometimes everything that can go wrong does?  That was mostly the story of our quiche, as you'll see below.

It started with the eggs.  I swore I had enough in the fridge, I'd even bought some the other day, but when my son went looking, he came back with only two.  We needed four.  I sent him out to the hen house and lucky for us they'd decided to actually earn their keep that morning, because he returned with two eggs. 

He made the dough and pressed it into the pan.  His sister wanted to do the dough too, so there was some argument over that.  It was a weeknight so I'd decided we weren't going to have time to chill the dough for long, just a few minutes before I blind baked it.  I turned the oven on (or so I thought....), I put the crust in the fridge when he was done and...totally forgot about it.

Next step in the recipe was to steam the spinach.  Now here's where the microwave provided the bright spot in the evening's escapades.  I was not about to get out a giant pot of water, boil it, load spinach into a steamer, where it would take on a lot of water, and then wash all those dishes.  Instead I piled it into a big bowl, put some plastic wrap over the mound and stuck it in the microwave on 'fresh vegetables'.  A couple of minutes later I had a nicely drained pile of cooked spinach sitting on my chopping board.  A couple of papertowels helped squeeze the water out and voila - cooked, drained spinach that didn't have that chewy frozen-spinach texture.  This was the high point.

I got the crust out (forgetting that I meant to blind bake it) and poured the quiche mixture in.  Then remembered about the blind baking.  Oh well, another experiment.  I opened the oven.  Stone cold.  I had set the temperature without turning on the oven.  So I cranked it, while the quiche sat in the uncooked crust, and waited.  When it was almost warm, I put the quiche in the oven, set the timer for the higher end of the recommended cooking time (40 mn) and retired to the living room with the sous-chefs to do homework and nibble on chips and salsa.

When the timer beeped, I opened the oven and saw this:

I guess that oven heated right up, huh?

So, after I peeled all the burnt bits off and put them in the chicken's pile, here's what I put on the table:

The ending of the story isn't that bad though.  The quiche was really very good, the crust, while it would have improved with a blind baking, was done.  The filling was 1/2 a large onion and 2 cloves of mashed garlic, sauted with one chorizo sausage, crumbled, then mixed with 2/3 cup half and half, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup parmasean cheese and 1 bag of spinach, microwave-steamed and chopped.  Some salt and pepper and it was good to go into the crust.  We recommend blind-baking the crust.  And not burning the quiche.

Passable for a weeknight.

Almond-Orange Tart - French Fridays with Dorie

This tart's unusual combination of orange segments and almond cream filling was delicious.  It helped that we had the tart last weekend, so we could anticipate some of the steps that required time (letting the orange segments dry on paper towels in the fridge, for instance) but it wasn't an overly complicated dessert and well worth the effort.  

The crust was a traditional pate sucre, made in the food processor and chilled, and the almond cream was also processed and chilled.  The only minor trouble we had was finding almond flour - it wasn't available at either of the grocery stores we went to this week, so we made our own by grinding whole almonds until they were flour-like.  I suspect our filling had more texture than intended, but it was wonderful.

Once everything had been chilled and assembled, the tart took about 40 minutes to bake.  It was heavenly.  The almond filling browned and developed a slight crunch between the orange segments, which remained meaty and flavorful.  A dash of powdered sugar was all it needed.

We're already planning some variations on this one - cherries or apricots, anyone?

Recipe can be found in "Around my French Table" by Dorie Greenspan.  See also: French Fridays with Dorie

Sometimes it's so Simple - Rootbeer Floats

It may be February, cold and rainy, but we can still dream about summer.  The other night, we had root-beer floats for dessert and they were perfect.  Our favorite babysitter had the inspiration to get ice-cream (french vanilla) and cream soda.  There were a couple of root-beers in the fridge, holding down a back corner of one of the shelves, and voila: dessert was made.  We were divided on cream-soda versus root-beer.  I'm a purist on that one.

It's hard to beat this dessert.  We used to go to the drive-up A&W for chili dogs and floats when I was a kid and something about that creamy, fizzy concoction always says summer and fun to me.

When I was lucky enough to be relatively penniless in Greece for a week one summer, a long time ago, I convinced the woman at the cafe in the village I was staying in to mix me a float.  She didn't have root-beer, and she didn't have vanilla (or maybe our language difficulties got in the way on that one) and she really didn't *want* to mix soda and ice-cream.  I finally convinced her to sell me a glass of sprite and a dish of pistachio ice-cream.  I plopped the ice-cream into the soda glass and handed her back the dish.  Talk about the right kind of summer lunch!  For the next few days, she sold me the ice-cream and soda, always in separate dishes, and looked disgusted when I handed her back the ice-cream dish.

I'm sure I didn't do the american tourist any favors, and I haven't heard about a new ice-cream-float craze in Greece since then.  But sitting on the sidewalk, watching a couple of kids play, feeling the heavy heat and sunshine pour down after a morning of visiting ruins - well, it doesn't get much better than that.

Hachis Parmentier - Comfort Food with a High Flash-to-Bang Ratio

This was comfort food of the highest order.  Hachis Parmentier, the french name for shepherd's pie, is essentially chopped beef under a mashed-potato topping.  Hachis means chopped, but I had to look thumb through wikipedia to learn that Parmentier was a nutritionist who convinced the french to eat potatoes.  And we are thankful for his work!

Parmentier had nothing to do with the flash-to-bang ratio though - that term comes from our army-based family member who has shared the ever-useful term with us.  High flash-to-bang?  You get a lot of flash for the size of the bang.  Low flash-to-bang?  It wasn't really worth the effort.  You can see how this could apply to cooking, right?

This dish had flash.  We made it on a Saturday and therefore had time to babysit a large pot of simmering beef while it became tender and made bullion.  We then had time to boil potatoes and mash them up.  Then we had time to chop the cooked beef into delightfully small pieces (this actually took relatively little time since it was falling-apart tender).  The hands-on time wasn't terrible, but it was worth every moment.  And I am really glad we made a double batch!  It freezes well and the leftovers are even better.

It was agreed by all that this was a keeper, and worth making from scratch.  There's a full recipe and a shortcut version using ground beef in "Around my French Table," or you can find recipes online.

Ouch!

It all started so innocently.  A pile of potatoes, two peelers, some chatter.  Next thing I know, my daughter is squeezing her finger and holding back the tears.

"I hurt my finger and I..am..pressing..on it."

Of course, I had to look.  Lucky for us, she just nipped the corner and while it hurt, it wasn't anything some soap and water and neosporin couldn't handle.

But, oh my, I had one of those moments.  Why wasn't I watching?  What if it had been worse?  Thank goodness it was only a peeler...but still!  You know that voice, the Bad Parent voice that lurks in the back of our mind, second guessing and criticizing?  All for a little nick.

She didn't cry and the band-aid seemed to make everything feel better, but I peeled the rest of the potatoes myself while she sat on the stool and talked to me.  It's a tough world out there - for kids and parents alike.  Here's wishing you safe dinners and, if needed, a box of band-aids in near reach.

Basque Potato Tortilla - French Fridays

This evening was our first foray into French Fridays with Dorie and it was a gastronomic success, but it took some getting there!

I managed to get home a little early this evening so we could make this recipe from Around My French Table - it was really tasty, but even with the extra time, we ended up having a pretty late dinner; it probably took about an hour to get the Tortilla and some veggies on the table.  We were making two new recipes, so that adds some time, flipping back and forth between pages, trying to keep track, but I think the main culprit this evening was the potato. 

The recipe calls for 1/2-1 inch chunks of potato, cooked in the cast-iron skillet for about 20 minutes.  It took closer to 40 minutes for ours to be cooked through.  I think I'll try this again, with the cheater's step of microwaving the potatos (tossed in olive oil) first, just long enough to get them started.  I don't know if that'll make them stick to the pan, but since you have to wipe the pan clean before you put the egg mixture back in, it seems to me that you could cook the potatoes in a non-stick pan first, then heat the cast-iron skillet for the final oven-browning.

As you can see, it was a beautiful dinner, but since it was a Friday, we had the luxury of not rushing dinner.  This is just our first shot at one of the recipes in the book, and it was so good we'll work our way through the others, for sure! 

My daughter really enjoyed showing off her salting technique, while the potatos were cooking, so it was time well-spent, nonetheless.

I can't post the recipe here (part of the rules - besides, you should buy the book - it's beautiful!) but it's essentially a fritatta with cooked potatos, rosemary, garlic and onions.  Probably good left over too - not that we'll know....

As Easy as Boiling Water

One thing I've noticed is that cooking with kids is not for the faint of heart. 

This week, I decided to push the limits a bit and asked my son to boil the noodles for our classic mac and cheese (see mac and cheese post for the recipe) before I got home from work.  We were going to be pressed for time and having that step out of the way would help get us to our evening class on time.

I gave him instructions over the phone.

"Do you know what to do?"

"Yeah, I boil the water then add the noodles."

"Right, and cook them as long as the package says.  The whole box."

"Okay."

"Start at 4:30, okay?"

"Okay."

At 4:35, my phone rings.  Not good.  "Uh, mom?  The stove is smoking and I don't want the smoke alarm to go off!"

"Is it still smoking?"

"No, I turned it off because I don't want the smoke alarm to go off."

"It won't.  It's smoking because I cleaned the stove.  It'll stop in about 30 seconds.  If it doesn't, turn it off and wait until I get home." (clearly, it is unusual for me to have just cleaned the stove...)

"But will the alarm go off?"  (clearly, he does NOT want the alarm to go off!)

"It won't."

"Okay."

So, for the next twenty minutes, the phone does not ring and I am having visions of the house catching on fire.  It doesn't help that I work next to a fire station and there must have been a fire somewhere becuase the truck went out, lights flashing, sirens blaring.  I was about to pack up and leave when the phone rang again.

"The noodles are done.  What do I do now?"

"Everything's okay?"

"Yeah, mom."

"Did you take them out of the water?"

"Uh, no."

"You know where the colander is, right...."

When I got home shortly thereafter (house still standing, everything as it should be), this was in the sink:

Beautiful.

We ate dinner, had the rest of our evening as planned and it was good.  As we ate, my son proudly announced that it was really good.  And he'd help make it. 

I'm left wondering if I should clean the stove more or less often.....