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.

Our Dirty Little Secret

There's a danger in learning to cook.  It can breed picky children.  There once was a day when I could crack open a can of soup, nuke it and call it dinner.  Alas, the last time I tried that the response I got was "I don't like this.  I like your soup better."  The ultimate compliment.  And yet, there are those Wednesday nights when you just don't have several hours to roast a chicken, make stock and serve up a steaming dish of homemade soup.  But we have a secret.

Here's what we had for dinner Wednesday night:

Total cooking time: 30 minutes from start to serving.

Our secret?

Rotisserie chicken and stock-in-a-box. 

Here's how we did it:

Saute 1 chopped onion in olive oil until it softens, about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally

Add to the onions:
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped

2-3 ribs of celery, washed and chopped

12 oz of button mushrooms, cleaned and chopped into quarters. 

Continue to cook another 5 minutes.

Add 1 box of stock and bring to a boil.  Add a couple of handfuls of noodles (your choice) and cook in the soup according to the time on the pasta box.

While the soup is boiling, take the meat off the chicken bones (remove skin too) and chop into chunks.

Near the end of the noodle cooking time, add chicken to soup.  Add salt and pepper to taste; a dash of vinegar also helps liven up the soup.  You can stir in several cups of fresh spinach leaves at the last minute; they wilt instantly.

Not as good as homemade, but good enough for a week night.  That's our secret.