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.

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....