best quiche ever

This is not meant to be a tease. Try to think of it as more a testament to how good it really was. You see, I meant to take a picture of this totally fantabulous quiche, but realized that none existed until the final crumbs. So here we are, looking at what might as well be a bit of scrambled eggs for all you care. Anyway, I present the last crusty remains of what is reportedly, the best savory, eggy-fluff heaven thingamagig ever made in my home: a crab, leek and crimini quiche.

(Now, I will go hide somewhere and drink a homebrew. And then I will hope and maybe even pray that someone out there will agree, that somehow, this was the best damn quiche ever.)

Oh, and remember, don't overdo it with the crab.........

crab leek crimini quiche:

5 large eggs
1 cup cream
1/2 cup milk
1/2 lb jack
3.12 ounces crab meat (dungeness around here)
1 biggish leek
6 medium crimini mushrooms
crust of your choice

crack, beat, pour, grate, pick, finely chop, saute, mix all together and then fill. bake at 400 for a bit, then 350. cool enough to not burn the shit out of your mouth. cut yourself a piece, enjoy.


and in case you need more crabby fun from the past, click here

smokeapalooza 2008

Kinda like that, but not. Perhaps the event was more like a smokathon. Anyway, the idea is that some endurance in withstanding smokey air was involved, but instead of fundraising, I blew some cash. Then I stayed home, raided the freezer for more food, cracked open a beer, and went out back and choked on smoldering embers for a long time.

A few weeks ago I fired up the bbq and did up anything I could. I figure if I'm going to commit some kind of carbon footprint no-no, then I should be more efficient and cook a bunch at once. Pork shoulder, beef bottom round, and some salmon fillets made it onto the grill. It was a huge load of food that I finally, just today, polished off the remaining leftovers. (Well, kind of, I put two of the fillets into the freezer.) I guess it's been a long couple of weeks steeped in wood smoked foodie goodness.

The pork shoulder was cooked too hot and didn't develop that fall-apart succulence I was looking for. No prob. Just "cook it again in something else" I always say. A trip to the chest freezer yielded roasted chile verde sauce. So, smoked pork with sautéed onion and mushroom enchiladas, topped with a verde sauce just screamed to be made. Served with desert pebble beans cooked with onion, garlic and a twig of epazote. Fresh white corn from Efren, likely picked that morning, and smeared in more butter than I care to admit, rounded the dish out. It was pure satisfaction and felt like the flavors were old school.

The smoked salmon from the smoke-fest had been nibbled away at for at least a week when I finally decided to make quiche. It was in the true spirit of the dish. I had no main course for dinner that night, but eggs, milk, cheese, big flavorful meat, and a want to practice making whole wheat pastry crusts were present in the house. It resulted in this. The salmon hunks sank a bit, but the crust was my flakiest to date. Overall, I think mom would have been proud, and for the most part, the family ate it. Well, the little one ate the filling and the big one ate the crust. If only I'd known ahead of time and just given them these respective portions.

The beef bottom round stayed almost entirely intact for darn near two weeks before I did something with it. I kept thinking of how cured meats hang around a deli for a few weeks and extended this to mean I had plenty of time to come up with a plan. It suffered the same initial toughness that the pork did and needed some more slow cooking "treatment." I began with sautéing a few poblano peppers, a bell, and the largest jalapeño you ever did see along with a hugenormous yellow onion. I cut the beef into disks of a sort, then hacked these in half and threw them into the pepper and onion combo. In the spirit of using leftovers I poured a home-canned jar of seasoned tomato sauce over the whole mess, and then cooked it for about two hours more on low heat. For the last half hour I uncovered it to thicken it some. Meanwhile a bag of masa from a few months back had been defrosting. I slapped some gobs of it around in my palms and laid this on top of the sauce and meaty goodness. I then put this in the oven for about 40 minutes.

It was like a smoke-bomb tamale pie. The high pepper count and tomato tang gave it one rocking jolt of flavor. The smoke from the meat stood up against it all and announced the dishes origins. I ate it for four days straight, but you know what? Right about now I could go for some more.

Well, this Sunday promises to be another smoke filled day. Once again, I'm preparing food for an upcoming backpacking trip that I volunteered to make some jerkey for. Since my experiment last year worked out so well, I'll be looking to duplicate it to some degree. I've got the peach wood and rump roast lined up, and the rest of the marinade in the works.

Now, if I only had a respirator........

corn in the grand scheme of things

So, in a previous post I mentioned the garden pests being pretty bad this year and how my first round of corn never made it into the house. Hoo boy was I pissed. Then sunday morning I picked our first ears and IMMEDIATELY brought them inside and boiled them. Well, obviously they made a little stop for documentation purposes, but not for the worse. The water was boiling and ready. They boiled for a few minutes and then we slathered them with butter and a pinch of salt. It was super satifying eating an ear of home grown corn. It was two years in the waiting and I would be chawing on some momentarily. My day of corn had arrived.

It looked promising. Full kernals, tender and white. I took my first bite. Corny for sure, kinda tender, but not really sweet. Figures. Work my ass off to finally get some corn around here and it's just alright. Damn! Ok, I mean I can see that I'm on a rant here but geez man, in terms of input effort and final produce this experiment screamed loser. I thought to myself "well, in the grand scheme of things this is a lesson that I should stick with growing tomatoes here in coldville, where the sun is not powerful enough to produce super sweet corn."

Two days later I found myself eating chili and what I really wanted in it besides hotdogs was some fresh corn. But nooooo, not enough around here to be found. Maybe in another week we'll have a few more ears if the theives, er uh.....I mean garden pests don't make off with them. Anyway, the chili was very satisfying in a local sense, but a bit tough with some under cooked beans. Next time I'll make it on a day that I'm not attempting three other kitchen tasks. You live and learn right? Patience you see, is inevitable in the grand scheme of things. One of the better spices in the kitchen, right up on the shelf next to love.

Tuesday night after the farmers' market, I was famished. We had some leftover white beans, zucchini and 'maters on the counter, and herbs that needed picking in the dark of night. Meaning it was dark and I needed herbs. A bit of chopping, dash of olive oil and sprinkle of salt. Tossed in the dish the beans were in to save on washing. Cold bean with fresh tomato salads are some of my favorite and with some feta and walnuts thrown in this one certainly hit the spot. The only thing it was missing was some fresh corn.

Speaking of no corn, last night for the first time in months I made my first pizza dough without cornmeal in it. It wasn't as difficult as I thought, as I simply substituted whole wheat. It still makes for one fine dough, especially herbed as we like to do it here at the monkey ranch. I had some fresh tomato sauce and some delicious sautéed mushroom-peppers-onions combo for the top. Some jersey jack to finish it and all that was needed was blistering heat for near ten minutes. It was chewy and herby on bottom, gooey contained in crisp up top. The elder monkey and I ate the entire thing in about the time it took to halfway cook some calzones. I was a bit amazed my cousin didn't show up, having that preternatural sense about them soon going in the oven at your house. With the bready items finishing cooking it was time to prep dinner.

I whizzed up a dough earlier that morning. It was all local wheat that I tried coaxing into being flakey. It had obvious butter chunks when I started but was rather thick and a bit tough. I'll have to keep working on these whole wheat crusts. I love them, but I think I need a grain mill or grinder attachment or something so I can start off with a finer flour. It was chunky and smelled nice, and the gauge it was rolled out at should contain just about any degree of wet contents. I hacked up some broccoli and green beans, putting them in the steamer for the last ten minutes the quiche baked. If only we had some fresh corn.......

The next morning it was even better. The super soft texture of the custard from the night before performed a miracle and held up nicely. The crust softened a bit in the fridge as the moisture in the dish evened out. It is one of my favorite breakfast items so a few slices served with some strong local coffee put me in the right frame of mind to end the week on a strong note.

Overall, we'd been living large eating locally this week. One round of corn instead of a predicted three, but what the hell I learned a lesson in the grand scheme of gardening here in oaktown. Next year, I won't spend so much time on just a few ears of corn. I'll channel some of that energy (and water) toward other veggies that can be put up for later.

Speaking of putting up, over at the new locavore blog there are many examples of folks preserving things this month. For an inventory of the work I've done so far this week go check it out here on my new locavore page.

Now for a few recipes of the food pictured here:

CORN:
Plant, water, encourage the sun to shine on, protect from mites aphids ants dogs humans and the like for a real long time until the stalks are about ready to give you sustenance. Go out to pick and become quite depressed with your fellow humans as you realize your corn has been ripped off. Wait another week and then finally come inside and eat an ear. Realize that the best corn you can grow is nowhere near as good the stuff at the farmers' market. Learn your lesson that corn just doesn't do that good around here.

Boil ears for 5 minutes. Slather in butter and a pinch of salt. Enjoy.


BUTTER BEAN SALAD:
2 cups cooked butter beans
1 small zucchini
3 ripe garden tomatoes
6 big leaves of basil
2 sprigs of thyme
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 diced feta
olive oil and salt to taste

Combine the beans, diced zucchini and diced tomatoes, chopped basil and thyme together. Drizzle with a few tablespoons of olive oil and add some salt. Mix and then add cheese according to your own preference. I used a cow milk feta here so it was probably milder than the typical goat version. Add the chopped walnuts, adjust the salt if needed and then sit down and enjoy it all to yourself as you deserve a nice healthy meal after a long day at work.


SUPER LOCAL QUICHE:
crust
2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 stick butter
1/2 cup whole milk yogurt
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freeze butter then chop into smallish pieces. Add to flour in a food processor along with salt and blend until crumbly. Don't over do it. Make sure there are obvious chunks of butter still left. Remove from food processor and add the egg and yogurt. When dough is just beginning to stick together gather into a ball and wrap up, putting into the fridge for a few hours while you work on the filling and other stuff.

filling
5 eggs
1 cup non-fat milk
1/2 cup whole milk yogurt
10 ounces grated jack and cheddar cheese (whatever proportion you like, but remeber the jack melts better in a quiche application)
1 cup sauteed veggies with bacon pieces (this started out as pancetta that was cooked and taken out of the pan, then mushrooms, onions, bell pepper and jalapeno were added and cooked until brown and lightly carmelized then the pancetta was put back in)

Roll dough into a shape roughly two inches wider than the dish you are putting it in. Press into place, shape the edges into a fun crust. Combine filling ingredients into another bowl and pour into crust. Place into a preheated 400 degree oven and cook for approximately 30 minutes. Turn down to 350 and cook until middle is set and lightly brown, maybe 10 or 15 more minutes.

quifflé, soufiche, or just quiche?

This is another quiche post.

No wait, a quiche that's part soufflé. I'm partial to quifflé. It helps me remember what this one was all about.

See, I took a few classes given by a true master in the craft of food. Having learned quite a bit, I've been anxious to apply that knowledge in the kitchen. And if ever there is a savory canvas to imbue with flavor, in which to use my newly acquired confidence in egg whites, where I could put their magic construction powers to work and be able to calibrate what the fluffy results truly were, quiche is it for me.

Wait, quifflé. Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna go with that for the purpose of getting on with this post, and after you check it out, let me know what you think.

I assembled the ingredients and did most of my prep. With room temperature eggs, bacon, three grated cheeses, chopped onions and mushrooms, and whole wheat flour from the farmers market, this was a very local venture. A few pinches of "small craft batched" salt and things were coming together nicely. The monkey and I had raided our garden for the parsley, green onion, thyme, and peas. The frozen butter hunks were ready for a whirl and the yogurt couldn't wait to jump in the savory mingle. I chunked up the bacon into what I believe are called lard-ons, no lardons, and got out the arm shaping iron.

Is there anything else in the world as pleasurable as the smell of frying bacon?

Is there a stupider rhetorical question that I could ask in a post?

Anyway, I fried the lard-ons with the onions and mushrooms and near the end added my herbs. It was looking damn fine. The monkey was getting a bit squirrely, so I needed to put her to work.......


Peas to the rescue! The ramekin comet "peapod" was being transported through space after nimble little fingers helped "free" the captives.


Whew! Thank god for an active imagination. It can really come in quite handy when cooking with little folk.


With the custard portion of our filling nearly complete and the crust awaiting the whole nine yards of backfill (with visible chunks of butter still, I was so happy), it was time to decide if my arms needed more of a workout. Since I can't afford going to the gym anymore, I beat the eggs whites by hand, to a pretty stiff peak and started drooling thinking about how fluffy this quifflé might turn out.

I gently plopped part of the fluff onto the custard and began folding.

I said folding, not mixing. Folding.

I added the rest of the fluff and continued folding. When I thought it was getting somewhat close to being a consistent texture, I stopped. If you think about it, just putting it in the crust will in effect mix it some more, so stop right there.

I popped the pie into a pre-heated oven and after 15 minutes gave it a check.

It was looking nice and "floofy," (as the monkey called it). But it was browning already. It had already risen considerably, and I got the impression that the early browning was partly a function of the egg whites at high temperature and the fact that the loft achieved had pushed it closer to the roof of the oven than I had anticipated. I turned down the heat, removed the rack it was on and put it on the lower one.

This picture does not do it justice. This version had nearly twice the loft of my typical quiche. Egg whites are your friend. Try embracing them sometime and play around with their capabilities. Your mouth will love you, I promise.

Did I forget to mention I made a green olive sordough loaf to go with this one? I'm sorry. I had made a black olive loaf earlier in the week and gave some to Aunty who commented "Nice D, but you know I'm more partial to green olives......how 'bout if I give you some greenies in exchange for giving me a bit of the next loaf?" Like, duh.......I may be stupid sometimes, but I'm not dumb.

Did I mention I'm calling this a quifflé?


LARD-ON and SPRING PEA QUIFFLÉ

4 ounces bacon
8 ounces cheese
1 cup yogurt
5 large eggs
1 smallish yellow onion
6-10 brown mushrooms
1 green onion
1 big handful of garden peas
a few sprigs of parsley and thyme

Cube and fry pig. Add allium and fungus. When pig is lightly crispy add herbal clippings. Remove from heat and set aside. Finely grate your cheese selection and separate your eggs, and I don't mean put them in different parts of the room. Throw together the pig and garden fry, the yogurt, cheese, and egg yolks. Put the peas in last. Beat the tar out of the egg whites. Mind you, that's not beating the hell out of them, just the tar. If doing this by hand, make sure to cuss some when your arms feel like falling off. I don't know why, but it helps. So does beer. GENTLY fold the stiff fluff almost all the way in. With the sensitivity of a ninja, place this into the crust. If you're looking for guidance here, check my previous quiche post about it. Basically, same thing here. Bake on lower rack at 400 for the first 10 or 15 minutes. Turn down to 350 until the center stops doing the jello-jiggle. Tell your family it needs to cool for a bit while you scarf down half on the way to serving it at the table. Congratulate yourself on using old-school ovum-technology and enjoying your first quifflé.

fungal and games, maybe even a lesson

We like doin' it the old fashioned way here at the monkey ranch. Whenever possible, we strongly encourage making things with the use of critters! Fungus among us? Put it to work!

When my kid asks for "fizzy juice," (and there is no way I'm gonna give her a soda cuz' of all the crap in 'em), I think, why not make ginger ale? I'd give her some homemade of that as a sanctioned soft drink for sure. Boil up some ginger tea with honey, let loose a few fungi beasties and let them work wonders. Yeah......that's the ticket. A quick trip to the grocery store for ginger and the beer store for yeast and we're in business.

Simple ingredient recipes can be deceiving. Lots of time and cleaning. Finely shredded ginger, a couple of gallons of fresh water, over a pint of honey, and about an hour of boiling and you are nowhere near done. Cooked yes, ready no. Hot ginger, no ale.

After all that boiling, you need to cool it all off for the yeasty beasty so you don't kill it. Big deep sink of cold circulating water does wonders for this. Mix well, split into two batches and flavor one with some freshly squeezed tangelo plus "some of this daddy, so mommy knows we love her" (nutmeg), while making sure containers for storage are cleaned and ready. Put unflavored batch into one gallon polycarbonate jug to use as judge for baseline and measure of subsequent carbonation. Bottle the flavored batch right away. Put into oven to experience 80-ish degrees for a wee bit to help get fermentation/carbonation going. Intentionally forget about it.

Check a few times while forgetting:
2 hours and the bottle is looking rounded some.
Wow, at only 5 hours, quite a head must be forming behind that swelling plastic bottle.
At near 8 hours, very tight and swollen, check. PPPFFFFFTTSSSSSSSSS!
Nice. Seems they could go longer though. Bottle the plain batch and put back in door cracked open oven with tangelo version for storage in warm place overnight.
At 16-ish hours (next morning), wake amateur self up and check in on experiment. Bottles look good, some bubbles near the top. What is this? Small glints of green...........shards perhaps? Sh_t!

Only one had "grenaded" during the night. Luckily, I had a pan under it that caught most of the liquid. Messy and filled with glass bits, but contained in the yeasty oven. Begin clean up and put everthing in the fridge to chill and try when cold. While cleaning, pretend how CSI would have determined the burst occurred........somewhere around 4 to 5 am, rampant carbon dioxide formation put excess stress on a weak seam in the container resulting in roughly 30% volume being aspirated in characteristic array toward far wall of oven, while remainder cascades down broken shards and onto cookie pan and oven bottom. More liquid then evaporated in the dry conditions of the stove, resulting in the seeming discrepancy between bottle capacity and liquid found at the scene. Sorry, brain does these things sometimes. I contemplate how best to capture the lesson I should take from this. Got it.

Homebrewing Lesson One: Use secondary containment next time you find self behaving so casually with carbonated glass containers.

2 hours later and yummy! Nice honey smoothness and sharp ginger bite. Tangelo and nutmeg batch also very nice. Different, but Mommy felt the love.


The following day, go to grandma's to play "name that quiche." Looks like spring, smells like garlic goat. Holy mobile hen-house, these eggs were dark yellow when scrambled. I knew it would be good before I put it in the oven. I like that.


The nearly all butter crust dripped some, burning and smelling up the place. Small inconvenience. If you own a kitchen exhaust fan, perhaps you should turn it on sometime. We have these fans for this reason, amongst a few others.




Quiche came out good. Dark yolks imparted dark eggy custard. Evening light out on the deck accentuated it. Heady smell of feta and garlic was perfecto. Quark instead of cream also lent a nice tang. Whole wheat crust, flakey and buttery. All of which went rather nicely with the ginger ale. Write this one down I tell myself.




Thursday, read a tasty post about pizza and decide I can't do without. Use two pizza stones in the oven in a new configuration and play the 8 minute, 2 cheese and 4 herbs pizza game. I love it, what's not to like at that single digit speed.

Of course, the oven took nearly an hour to heat up, but you should forget that and focus on how long it took to cook it.




With pizza a huge success, I had high hopes for the bread, and they were realized. A 'normous french loaf was to be had, done in a mere 17 minutes.


I believe the homebrew russian red 22 ouncer only lasted 13 minutes, so I guess you could say the whole numbers game sped up with the double pizza stone action.



Champagne yeast is amazing stuff. For a full three plus minutes, tiny bubbles escaped from the top of the bottle before settling down. And this was 5 days after making it. Apparently refrigeration doesn't necessarily stop the fermenting with this strain, just retards it some. Probably has a point of alcohol by now, sure smells like it. Next time I'll use half the packet of yeast in this recipe. I'll also try another one and shoot for something more like ginger beer, not soda ale. A plan is in the works.



While enjoying the "fizzy juice" Aunty reminded me of the delicious tuna she had recently bought. I immediately went inside and whipped up a sammich with the can she got me. Lip smackin' albacore I'm tellin' ya. If you enjoy tuna and can get this near you, try it. Muy delicioso! I especially recommend it mixed with mayonaise, capers, freshly ground mustard seed and a pinch of salt. On homemade sourdough of course.

If you've never played with a packet of yeast, or grown your own, try it. It's fun and tasty. And possibly alcoholic.
Chow!


Because in my effort to share more, I just had to write a few down:

GARLIC QUARK AND FETA QUICHE

2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 stick butter
1 cup ice water
pinch of salt

chop butter and freeze. put flour into food processor and pulse with salt briefly. add butter and pulse until crumbly. remove from processor and gently mix in water until it begins sticking together. stir and handle as little as possible. gather into a ball, wrap and place in fridge for a few hours.

small head of broccoli
small yellow onion
2 small carrots

saute in olive oil, onion and carrots first, then broccoli until tender. remove from heat.

8 ounces garlic quark
6 ounces grated feta
2 ounces grated dry jack
4 eggs

mix together and add veggie saute. shape crust into desired dish and fill. bake at 400 for first 15 minutes, then 350 for next 30-40. let sit for a minute before cutting. breathe in tangy garlic goat on buttered wheat. eat.


and just because I love a nice pizza pie:

2 CHEESE + 4 HERBS PIZZA

sourdough crust
tomato paste
3 ounces colby jack cheese
2 ounces dry jack
pinch of rosemary
a few sprigs of parsley
a couple of big-leaf thyme branches
one nice stick worth of oregano leaves

shape dough and smear with paste. add the cheese and top with minced herbs. crack some pepper over it. let rest for 20-30 minutes before putting on extremely hot stone (500-550). bake for 8 minutes. eat half before putting on plate.