Ok, I’m sure that everyone is sick of politics right now, so, rather than discussing the fact that the election is two weeks away, (two weeks away!), I am going to talk about food. Because food is awesome, and it’s something that I pretty much never get tired of talking about, eating, and reading about.

I’m sure that all of us have made culinary mistakes at some point or another. Sometimes, those mistakes lead to great things, like teasagna, which I will get to in a moment. I thought it might be interesting to hear from you, dear readers, about culinary mistakes you’ve made which have resulted in something awesome.

Before I talk about teasagna, I must, of course, discuss a culinary disaster.

Given that I was a vegetarian and later a vegan for much of my life, I’m not very experienced with choosing and cooking meat. Which is really kind of a pity, because I love meat, but I don’t really want to buy it because I am concerned that I am going to mess it up. However, I set this fear aside a few weeks ago when I decided to make pot roast. I was dreaming of the pot roast at Nit’s, which is delicious and tender, with meat that melts in the mouth and delicious caramelized vegetables and a rich, amazing sauce.

That was my first mistake. Replicating restaurant meat at home is just not something I attempt. But I duly looked up pot roast in The Joy of Cooking, as well as on numerous websites, and I went to the grocery store armed with a list and a mission.

A mission which ultimately turned out awry. What I ended up with was a crappy stew of grey, stringy, flavorless meat, mushy vegetables utterly bleached of flavor and color, and mysterious floating objects which couldn’t be identified. I ended up choking down about half of it, trying to force myself to eat it as a reminder of the importance of not wasting food, but finally I gave up. It was too awful. I vowed not to attempt meaty deliciousness before I had learned more about cooking meat.

With this terrible failure stinging me, last weekend, I decided to make lasagna. Lasagna is a pretty basic food, and I’m a fan, and it’s something I make pretty darn well. So I did make a lasagna, and it was quite delicious, and I duly covered it in tinfoil and stuck it in the fridge.

And then, last Sunday, I was reading in the living room when I heard a strange clattering noise. I peered high and low, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Several hours later, I opened the fridge, and realized that the clattering noise had been the sound of a glass jar filled with iced lapsong soochong exploding. Apparently my fridge was too cold, so the tea froze. Of course, by the time I realized what had happened, the tea had melted, so my fridge was filled with a sea of broken glass and tea.

I duly emptied the fridge out and started cleaning it, discarding obviously spoiled food items. I didn’t think to check the lasagna until the very end, since the tinfoil looked tight. However, when I lifted it, I discovered that tea had somehow wormed its way in, and that the lasagna had actually been stewing in tea for several hours.

I was faced with a dilemma. Had ice pierced the tinfoil, or not? Given that there was a better part of a lasagne there, I was disinclined to throw it away, and I didn’t see any signs of glass, so I ended up draining it as best I could, and moving the pieces into tupperware. (Something I probably should have done to begin with, upon reflection.)

When I heated a piece the next day, I realized that it had an indescribably delicious, slightly smoky flavor. There was a hint of earthiness, and a nice slightly fruity note. I had invented…teasagna. I think I’m going to start cooking lasagna noodles in tea in the future, for a somewhat safer version.

So, what have you invented by accident?

This Photo Friday is inspired by the long-running “How Much is Inside?” series on cockeyed.com, a generally excellent website. It came about on Saturday morning, when I was preparing to strain some yogurt, and I thought “hey, I’ll bet strained yogurt is interesting to other people, too.” Maybe I’m wrong. I guess we shall find out.

I really like strained yogurt. I grew up eating it, and I still eat it pretty much every morning. Now, I actually have a yogurt maker, but the problem with making your own yogurt when you don’t have a car is that you have to haul several large jugs of milk home every week to make enough yogurt for the week (assuming you eat a lot of yogurt, like me). So, I usually buy yogurt at the store. But, storebought strained yogurt is extremely expensive. So, I’ve starting buying Nancy’s, my favourite non-strained yogurt brand, and straining it to turn it into strained yogurt.

When you strain yogurt, you, uhm, stick it in a strainer and allow the whey to drain off. This allows the yogurt to thicken to a delicious texture, while retaining the familiar tangy awesomeness. Seriously, if you haven’t tried strained yogurt, you should. If you let yogurt strain long enough, you end up with labneh, aka “yogurt cheese,” a very dense spread which tastes awesome when you mix it with herbs.

But I didn’t make labneh, I made strained yogurt. And, when you strain yogurt, it loses a lot of its volume, as you might expect, so, without further ado, How Much is Inside a Container of Yogurt?

Straining yogurt starts with emptying a full container of yogurt:

Into a strainer lined with cheesecloth:

It needs to sit for a couple of hours, after which point the formerly towering mound of yogurt looks like this:

(If you’re some kind of food safety fanatic or it is really hot, you should probably refrigerate your yogurt for the Great Straining, but otherwise it doesn’t really matter. Dairy is pretty hardy stuff, especially yogurt, which is highly acidic, and therefore not very friendly to bacteria.)

Here’s all the whey, around one cup, (which can be turned into ricotta):

And here’s the finished product:

Side by side with a full container of yogurt:

So, now you know. Straining yogurt to the thickness I like reduces it by around 3/8 of its volume. And, incidentally, straining your yogurt at home is still cheaper than buying Fage, the only commercially-produced strained yogurt Harvest carries, since a container of Fage is around $5.00, and Nancy’s hovers around $3.00, and when it’s done straining, the Nancy’s is about equal to a container of Fage. (I would illustrate this visually, except I didn’t have an empty Fage containers lying around, so you’re just going to have to believe me on this one.)

I love pineapples. I am actually allergic to the enzyme in pineapple, so when I eat pineapple, my tongue/lips crack, but I still think it’s worth it. A little pain shouldn’t deter you from eating delicious delicious pineapple, ever. And pineapples happen to be on sale at Harvest at the moment, so I decided that it’s time to get serious about The Pineapple Experiment.

The Pineapple Experiment started a few weeks ago, when I made some pineapple fried rice (which turned out like shit) for Baxt and I. And I thought, “by God I love pineapple,” so I looked up how to grow pineapples, and I started a pineapple plant. (Details below.) That pineapple is now potted, and doing pretty well, although I will need a few weeks to see if it has really taken:

So far, so good, is all I am saying.

Now, there are two schools of thought on growing pineapples. One says that you should start them in water, which is what I did with the above pineapple. The other says that you should start them in soil, which is what I am going to do with pineapple number two. Although pineapple number one got a bit of a head start, I still think it will be interesting to compare the success of both methods, and to periodically post about it here.

I’m also open to naming suggestions, since all of my plants have names, and so far neither plant has an official title yet. (Just for the record, we have Pete the Snakeplant, Dave the Aloe Vera, Fred the Palmythingie, and Jorge the Lobelia on the porch.)

So, if you want to play along with The Pineapple Experiment at home, here’s what you need to do.

Step One:

Get one of these. This is a required step. Pineapples actually propagate themselves in the wild, and we are going to take shameless advantage of this trait.

Step Two:

Take the top off. That’s right, pineapples are dirty little sluts who like it, uh, with their tops off. I recommend eating the rest of the pineapple, since you aren’t going to be needing it for The Pineapple Experiment, and it tastes good. (If you are also allergic to the enzymes and you for some reason have a problem with having your mouth split open in agonizing pain, cooking the pineapple neutralizes most of them. Try flaming it in rum for dessert!)

Step Three:

Trim the top, and strip off the bottom layer of leaves. You actually want your pineapple even more trimmed/stripped than this, but this picture came out better than the one of it all stripped, so here you go.

Step Four:

Wait. You should let your pineapple top dry out for three to five days. If you don’t, it will rot. Ew.

Step Five:

Start your pineapple.

Here’s where things diverge. If you want to go with pineapple number one, stick your pineapple top in a cup, add just enough water to almost touch the bottom leaves, and then wait until it sprouts roots, a process which can take awhile. You should also change the water and rinse the base now and then if things start to get gross. Be patient. It took almost a month for pineapple one to grow roots. Once the roots appear, stick the pineapple in a pot with some well-drained soil, and dump on some water and fertilizer. If you want to go with pineapple number two, skip to the potting part.

Step Six:

Watch your pineapple grow! Isn’t nature awesome?

I’m not normally a big product reviewer, because I figure there are other places to find/read product reviews, but in this particular instance, I just couldn’t resist. The fact is that finding gluten-free baked goods that do not taste like butt is actually really hard, so I should definitely be promoting the ones that taste good. Perhaps someday you will be standing in the store, staring at the gluten-free baking mixes, going “gah, what should I make,” and you will remember this post and rejoice.

The other day, Baxt and I were at the store, and I got a passion for brownies. There were actually an assortment of options on the shelf, but we went for the cheap(er) one, from a company that makes baking mixes Baxt has used before: Gluten-Free Pantry. Apparently she likes their cake. And the Glutino Food Group, which owns Gluten-Free Pantry, also makes some mighty fine pizza, or so I hear.

Anyway, we picked up the Chocolate Truffle Brownies, and two things about the box encouraged me, as someone who does not generally use baking mixes. The first was that all of the ingredients were readily identifiable, and logical. It was basically what I would put in brownies, only without the wheat flour. The second was that the added ingredients were also brownie-like: melted butter, and eggs. Basically, they boxed the dry ingredients, and we brought the wet ones.

The mix seemed a little gritty and stiff when I prepared it, and I was kind of nervous, but I dutifully stuck it in the oven. The next good sign was that the brownies actually smelled like brownies as they baked, and they cooked in the recommended time. (A lot of gluten-free stuff seems to take forever to bake, and then it still tastes like butt, and it is very sad.)

We let them cool, and then busted them out with some ice cream. These brownies are insanely crumbly, but also really delicious, so I am happy to overlook the crumbly issue. They had a nice crackly layer on top, which is something I appreciate, and then moist, chewy, dense, rich insides. I would recommend doing what we were too hasty to do, which is scoring the brownies after they have had a chance to cool, freezing them, and then breaking them apart; if you prepare the brownies on a sheet of foil for easy cutting (like I always do), this task is made very easy.

I gave the Chocolate Truffle Brownies a nine, and I am pretty sure that if I’d fed them to someone else without mentioning that they were gluten-free, the other people wouldn’t have guessed. Baxt didn’t give a numerical score…but she seemed to enjoy herself.

I’ve been experimenting a lot with gluten-free baking lately, because Baxt has been hanging out, and I like to make food that she can eat. And I’m always up for a baking challenge. I think that people tend to settle into a rut when they refuse to think outside the box. So, this weekend, I invented some excellent gluten-free cookies which met with the approval of both Baxt and myself. And I thought it would be mean not to share the recipe.

First, I had to come up with a name. The inspiration for the cookies was these delicious cream cheese icebox cookies I like to make, so I wanted to capture the excellence of those, in a gluten-free version. And I thought that perhaps adapting a shortbread recipe might work, to make a really dense, rich, flavorful cookie. As it turned out, I was right, and Gluten-Free Vanilla Sandies were born. If you have a more creative name for them, please, for the love of Pete, let me know.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 Celsius), and assemble your ingredients. Here’s what you are going to need:

• One half cup butter (one stick)
• One quarter cup cream cheese
• One quarter cup sugar
• One pinch of salt
• One and one half cups rice flour (you can substitute one half cup rice flour with one half cup cornstarch for a more crumbly cookie, if you want)
• One half teaspoon vanilla

Cream the butter and cream cheese together until well combined and smooth. Beat in the sugar and salt, and then add the vanilla. Add the rice flour one half cup at a time, beating it thoroughly with each pass. You may need to add a little bit of rice flour at the end if the mixture is too wet, but don’t fret if it’s a little moist.

What you’re going to end up with is a loose clod of dough. Work it to bring the dough together, and then smush it out on a dry cutting board. If you want, you can roll it out, to make it more even, but otherwise just pat it with your hands.

Use a cookie cutter or a glass to cut out circular cookies. You are going to need a spatula to pry them off the board. What I did was cut as many cookies as possible, then strip away the extra dough, and then spatula them onto an ungreased baking sheet. Recombine the loose dough and repeat until all of the dough is used.

These cookies are not going to spread out, so you don’t need that much room between cookies.

Use a fork to mark a cross shape in the middle of each cookie, to keep the cookie from expanding in funky ways and getting all bubbly. Then, stick a chocolate chip in the middle of the cross. You don’t need to do this, but I think it makes the cookies more exciting.

Bake the cookies until their bottoms are just turning golden, remove them, allow them to cool, and then eat. Or stick in a container, whatever floats your boat.

This post in the environment series might require a bit of effort, but I think it’s effort well spent. And it’s also cost-effective effort, which allows me to justify my decision to include it in the series. In brief, this week, we’re going to talk about meat and animal products.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for a very long time, you should already know that meat and animal products are viewed as harmful for the environment. Animals take up a lot of resources which could be used directly to feed people. Animals also generate huge amounts of pollution in the form of methane gas and excretion. Whether or not you think meat is morally ethical, you should be able to question whether or not it is environmentally ethical.

I’m not here to lecture you on what you should and shouldn’t eat, but I am here to encourage you to think about cutting down on meat, if you eat meat, and to reduce the amount of animal products like dairy and eggs that you consume. All of my vegan and vegetarian readers can smugly pat themselves on the back and move along (unless they would care to think about the environmental issues of soy and the practice of shipping exotic foods thousands of miles). As we all know, I am a repentant ex-vegan, in that I think meat is morally and environmentally wrong, but I eat it anyway. However, I don’t eat very much of it, for what that’s worth.

The Minimalist just did a series in which he addressed the fact that almost all of the recipes he features are loaded with meat. So he did a series of meatless recipes, or recipes with greatly reduced amounts of meat, to show people that it is in fact possible to abstain from meat eating. Of course, his recipes weren’t very fun or exciting, but I have to give him an A for effort, because he at least got readers to think about the issue.

And if the Minimalist did it, so can you. Think about the frequency of meat-eating in your household, and ask yourself if that frequency can be reduced. If you eat meat every day, maybe you can have a vegetarian night once a week, and see how that works out, and play around with recipes, and then slowly bring it to two, three, perhaps four. Maybe you’ll get so into it that you will find yourself slipping into vegetarianism or veganism, if you give it half a chance. Experiment with food: Americans are often vegetarians because they hate meat, rather than because they love vegetables, so start loving vegetables, because they are awesome.

While you’re thinking about the amount of meat you eat, consider dairy products and eggs too. There’s always room for experimentation in the wide world of food, if you’re willing to think outside the box (or the refrigerator case). You might even find that you feel better physically, because a lot of people have mild reactions to dairy and don’t realize it until they eliminate dairy from their lives.

By reducing the amount of meat you eat, you’ll be doing a small but meaningful part to help protect the environment, which is a very good thing. You should also be able to lower your grocery bills, because meat is often expensive, especially if you resist the temptation to buy disgusting overpriced meat facsimiles. Enjoy meals without meat, rather than trying to make them as much like “normal” meals as possible. Get into the wide world of vegetable awesomeness, my friends.

Well, it’s official. California has indeed banned the use of transfats in restaurant food, in a bill which starts to go into effect in 2010. Depending on one’s position on this kind of thing, it’s either a groundbreaking piece of legislation which the rest of the country is going to use as a model, or it’s yet another reason to mock California. Personally, I think that the transfat ban is a good thing, because, if nothing else, it focuses attention on food issues in the United States.

Of course, the ban doesn’t include packaged foods, and packaged foods are the big killer, as it were. Transfats were developed for packaged foods, because they are incredibly cheap and shelf-stable. However, raised consumer awareness may result in a call for healthier packaged goods, and perhaps companies will start phasing out transfats voluntarily, which would be sort of neat.

I’m curious to see if other problems with the American food industry can be fought from a health perspective. For example, could factory-farmed meat be banned, due to concerns about the increased risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in such meats? Could huge-scale hog farms vanish, because their environmental impact is too great?

On the other hand, the transfat ban kind of smacks of a big brother state. “It’s for your own good,” they say, and it is, but I’m not a huge fan of being told what to do by the government. I wonder if a concentrated populist movement could have accomplished the same thing. Restaurants seem to have been responding to concerns about transfats even before the ban was in place, and I’ll bet they would have continued to adapt their menus on their own. Restaurant owners are savvy, and they’re not going to keep using ingredients that people are opposed to.

The interesting thing about the article, in my opinion, were the claims that “ethnic food” would be unfairly impacted by the ban. Uhm…if by “ethnic food,” you mean “the cuisine of Asia, which has been prepared for centuries,” I think that restaurants are going to be able to adapt. Yes, some ingredients might be more expensive, and menu prices might go up. But people cooked quite happily without transfats before 1911, when Crisco burst onto the market, and I’m sure that they can adapt. The result would probably be truer to the food’s ethnic roots, and less of a bastardization, to boot.

The wailing over prices illustrates the unwillingness that many Americans have to face the true price of food. Because there it is. Food costs money. Maybe if we stopped subsidizing harmful methods of food production, and foods that are bad for us, people would adjust their diets on their own, and we would see a shift in how people think about food. It’s not cheap fuel to be mindlessly shoveled down, it’s a fabulous doorway into an entirely new world. Why sully the deliciousness that is food with ingredients that sound like they belong in a lab?

No Henry Makepeace today, because everything stinks of smoke and it is cold, so I am hiding under a blanket with Mr. Bell and periodically checking the news to make sure that nothing in close proximity to me is on fire. Have I mentioned that it is extremely creepy to walk outside, smell smoke, assume that someone has a woodstove going, and then realize that no, in fact, no one is running their woodstove today? Also, that brownish-grey pall in the street? It’s not fog.

Apparently, a shift in the weather has led to an inversion which is forcing the smoke to hang around, rather than dissipating. Last night it was actually starting to disappear, thanks to a brisk breeze, but…it’s back! Like the Terminator (who apparently formally requested federal assistance yesterday). As of yesterday, here in Mendo we were down to 85 fires from a high of 131, but they were getting bigger, and Cal Fire had very poor containment, because, uhm, we don’t have enough firefighters. Apparently when you declare a state of emergency, no one cares.

I love how the few mentions about the fires in the media focus on Big Sur, which is a popular tourist area, and Napa, which is wine country, totally ignoring the epic fires in the Northern part of the state. The Southern California wildfires last year got tons of press coverage, probably because they put more homes in danger, but it’s still kind of disheartening to note that we barely merit cursory AP coverage. And those poor people flooded out in the Midwest are getting even less attention, despite the fact that the flooding is still going on, and getting worse in some areas. Good to know that the American media has a short attention span; maybe if they realized a bunch of celebrity palaces are threatened by the fires, we’d be seeing some news crews.

NASA took this picture. Not me. Well, duh, I mean it’s not like I have satellite access.

Anyway, here’s a recipe for shrimp curry, because that is what I will be eating for lunch. Silly vegans can use tofu instead.

In a wok, mix a can of coconut milk and two cups of broth of choice.

Bring the heat to medium, and add several slices of ginger cut into slivers, along with a slivered onion (I had an awesome onion from the farmers’ market), and a couple of teaspoons of red curry paste. Let this stuff simmer while you prepare other ingredients.

Throw some sliced green onions (I used three, because that’s what I had) into a small bowl, and add a chopped hot pepper or two, along with two tablespoons of fish sauce, and a tablespoon of brown sugar. (Silly vegans, use tamarind paste mixed with a bit of hot water to make it runny.)

Chop up a couple of zucchini and a handful of mushrooms. You don’t have to use these veggies, and feel free to use replacements like carrots, broccoli, whatever; just don’t overload on the vegetables, because you want the focus to be on the shrimp.

Speaking of which, dejacket and devein the shrimp. I know that deveining is a pain in the butt, but please do it anyway. Unless you’re into cacophagy and you don’t mind a little bitterness in your curry, in which case, rock on with your bad self.

Toss the shrimp into the wok of simmering goodness, and stir briefly before throwing in the vegetables. You may need to add more broth to get full coverage. When the shrimp are pink and the veggies are starting to soften, add in the green onion mixture, and cook for another minute or so, just until the green onions are soft.

Serve over rice, with some chopped coriander and a spritz of lime.

Depending on how much liquid you use, you can make it more soupy, or more thick and currylike; it’s entirely up to you. I like mine soupy, personally.

One of my all time favourite Chinese dishes is baozi, the stuffed and steamed dumplings served at pretty much any respectable dim sum parlour. The best baozi, by far, are stuffed with vegetables, and then dipped in chili sauce, a dash of soy, a hint of rice vinegar, and some soy sauce. I know lots of people like the pork buns, but I just don’t dig on them all that much. Vegetables are where it’s at, for me.

Alas, not living in the city anymore, access to baozi is limited. Sometimes my Chinese mother brings them back from trips, and it fills me with excitement, but the other night, I decided to try my hand at making my own. I discovered that it’s not only really easy to make baozi, it’s immensely satisfying. I was going to take pictures of the process, but I kind of forgot, and then it got dark. So, the accompanying photos are actually of some leftovers when I reheated them the next day.

You need to start by making dough:

Mix one half cup warm water with one packet of active dry yeast, and add two tablespoons of sugar. Allow the yeast to proof for 15 minutes or so.

When the yeast is nice and foamy, add a half teaspoon of salt and another cup of warm water, then whisk vigorously.

Add four cups of flour, one cup at a time. Stop if the dough starts to get really stiff; flour measurements are pretty much always guesswork when making bread.

Turn the dough out onto a floured counter, and knead it until it is smooth; around 20 minutes or so.

Lightly oil the dough with sesame oil, and put it in a glass bowl, covered with a damp cloth, to rise until doubled in size, which will take one to one and a half hours.

While the dough is rising, mix your filling. You can pretty much throw whatever you want in there; the baozi I made had shittake mushrooms, garlic, and ginger. I would definitely recommend using garlic and ginger in whatever filling you devise. You can also throw in stuff like chopped bok choy, carrots, water chestnuts, tofu, whatever. Sprinkle some sweet chili sauce, salt, sesame oil, and soy sauce over your filling. You can mix it up with stuff like black bean sauce too, if you’re feeling frisky.

After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured counter, compress it into a disc, and sprinkle one teaspoon of baking soda on top. Then, knead the dough until it pulls together in a cohesive ball again. Divide the ball into 12 chunks of dough, and turn each chunk into a disc with a puffy center. While you’re working, keep the dough covered with a damp cloth to keep it from drying out.

To make individual bao, cup a disc of dough in your hand and transfer a spoonful of filling. Use the fingers of your other hand to grip the edges and twist them around to make a neat little dough purse with a swirly top. As you finish each dumpling, set it on a small square of parchment paper. When all the dumplings are done, cover them and allow them to rise one hour.

(Obviously these have already been cooked, so they don’t look that doughy, but they look kind of neat, and you get the general idea. Also, note parchment paper, which keeps them from sticking to whatever surface you set them out to rise on.)

After the baozi have risen, steam them for 10-15 minutes, until done. Mine were pretty small, so they were done in more like 8 minutes, but cut one in the first batch open to test. You can eat the dumplings hot, or refrigerate and reheat them by steaming another day.

Here they are in the steamer before I stuck the lid on. The parchment paper is crucial, because it keeps them from sticking to the bottom, and each other, when they are crammed into the steamer. Do not leave out the parchment paper!

Now that I know how foolishly easy it is to make baozi, I’m so going to do it all the time.

I will also work on making them look a little prettier next time. But they tasted great.

I have a thing, with quiche. It’s not just that I think quiche is good, although it is, it’s that quiche happens to be one of my top comfort foods. I’m not really sure why, because I don’t think my father ever made quiche when I was a kid; he was more of a timbale kind of guy. But, at some point, quiche became equal to comfort, and I happened to make a quiche yesterday, and I’m eating a cold slice right now with a wedge of lemon and some Tabasco (the only way to eat quiche, really), so I decided to write about quiche.

I like the process of making quiche. It’s messy, by nature, and I’m a control freak, so I kind of enjoy forcing myself to just let go, let flour and eggs pile up on the counters, and make something awesome. Of course, as soon as the quiche goes into the oven, I make the mess go away, but it’s strangely exhilarating when the kitchen is all messy with quicheness. Sort of like crossing the street when the light is red (I did that yesterday too), living dangerously, you know?

Anyway, one of the cool things about quiche is that you can put pretty much anything in there. The quiche I made yesterday happened to be mushroom and potato, but it could have just as easily been purple cauliflower and sweet onion, or beet greens and bacon, or zucchini and squid. I mean, you never know, is what I am trying to say. Quiche is a world of possibilities.

I also appreciate that it can be eaten hot or cold. I actually made this particular quiche with the explicit plan of eating cold quiche over the weekend, since it’s supposed to warm up, but, as always, I ate a big chunk of it, hot and steaming, before I could stop myself. Once, I ate half a quiche at one sitting, and then rolled around on the floor groaning for half an hour before I could move again.

It was awesome.

Quiche is also a superb vehicle for eggs, a food I happen to not really enjoy in a pure state. Yet, somehow, quiche performs some sort of alchemy, allowing me to consume something with eggs in it without feeling violently disgusted. When I was vegan, I used to make quiche with tofu, and it was pretty damn good, too.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with all this quiche musing, so I’ll cut to the chase: here’s my quiche recipe. Go forth and bake!

Crust:

3/4 cup flour

5 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/6 cup cold water, blended with a dash of salt and a dash of sugar

Cream the butter into the flour, add the water, and mash around so that the ingredients pull together into a dough. Don’t overwork the dough. In fact, why don’t you put it in the fridge, so that you won’t be tempted to mess with it? Pie dough doesn’t like to be messed with. Just…let it chill, ok?

In a large pan, saute:

Something which will go into your quiche

I generally use a whole yellow onion in all my quiches, and then add whatever sliced/diced ingredients I’m using. I don’t really measure stuff, it’s more of a sensation by feel kind of thing. I should have measured yesterday. Oh well. Throw in some spices if you feel like it, or not, whatever. Then set the stuff aside to cool.

Roll out your pie dough and get it set up in an oiled and floured pie pan while you mix the filling, so you can dump and bake. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 for my Celsius cousins, 450 kelvin for the physicists among us).

In a large bowl, beat together four eggs, and then add a cup of milk. Sprinkle in some salt, pepper, and nutmeg (don’t ask, and yes, it is important. Trust me.) Then add 2/3 cup of delicious, delicious bread crumbs, and beat again. Add in another half cup of cheese of choice (I actually just grate right over the bowl until it looks good, but a half cup sounds right). Then mix in your veggies, pour the mess into the pie pan, and let her rip.

It usually takes around 40 minutes, or until an inserted knife/toothpick/cake tester comes out clean. If you can possibly bear to wait, let the quiche cool for awhile on a rack before slicing. Once completely cooled, said quiche can be refrigerated, covered. (By the way, if anyone wants to get me one of those bad-ass lock together pie plate things, let me know. Do those even exist? Because they should. Pie and quiche need protecting from the forces of evil in the world.)