Quiche and Comfort Food

When most people think of comfort food, they think of home cooked meals from mom, dad, or grandma. Not me! I am certain that there were other things my mother cooked (like crawfish etouffee for xmas eve, boiled crawfish or roasted pig for easter, and the occasional gumbo during the winter season), but ask me if I can think of more than a handful of dishes other than rice and gravy (what people from other regions would call smothered, as the version I know is a flourless, onion-based “gravy”) that anyone in my family has ever cooked, and I would have to answer with an emphatic “no.” I feel like I’ve eaten the same meal every night of my first 18 years of life up until the time I went to college. Strangely enough, guess what we eat during family holidays and gatherings! Yeah, see above. Needless to say, I am still bored with all those types of food and will rarely cook them for myself, because I get tired of them with the first bite!

Every once in a while, my parents would take me out to eat, and I can tell you that I’ve never experienced such joys! Back then, Chinese was just so different and unique! Now I can cook it with relative ease, and some things I can reproduce as good as or better than from a take-out restaurant! Part of my process of becoming who I am as an individual had a lot to do with eating out, learning I CAN cook, and learning how to experiment with ingredients you would be very hard pressed to find anywhere in the small town in which I was raised.

Now I’m not saying I didn’t learn any cooking skills as a child. Funny story, there was one time when my sister was watching me (she’s 11 years older than I), and she was cooking dinner. She told me to help her by pealing the potatoes. I actually started crying when she fussed at me because I said I didn’t know how to use a vegetable peeler, and she didn’t believe me. The fact was I really didn’t. I learned quickly, and wouldn’t you know I took that very same vegetable peeler with me when I left home? I have tried so many other types, fancy and plain, and not a single other peeler works nearly as well as that one!

So comfort food. For me it is hard to describe, because it isn’t anything that brings back nostalgia, it isn’t anything starchy like potatoes or pasta (both of which have to be swimming in dairy product of some sort before either are even remotely palatable- would you like a little pasta with your ricotta, ma’am?), it isn’t a specific type of meat, and it isn’t anything that has been familiar to me for very long. For some reason, though, eggs can often leave me with at least some feeling of contentment. Oh, not “regular eggs” like boiled or scrambled, but when it is part of something else, they can sing. And besides, egg is used as a type of “mortar” for so many things, like crème brulee, and cheesecake! Another type of food that I like to make is pies. I LOVE pies, or I should say that I love making pies. I usually eat one slice and leave the rest for others. So why not put them together? What a wonderful idea! J

I never really tried quiche before because I was under the illusion that it was nothing more than scrambled eggs with stuff in it, much like an omelet. I’d go to La Madeline’s, and always got something else; I mean how can anyone pass up Chicken Friand?! Bliss in a pastry! But one day, I just decided to make one, and it was AMAZING! I usually try to make one-serving meals, because I really dislike left-overs (microwave-heated food usually tastes really gross to me), but I got over that inhibition easily with this pastry wonder!

But first, the CRUST! There is only ONE recipe that I will ever use, and it is this one: 2 cups flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, 2/3 cup lard or shortening, ½ cup iced water; combine dry ingredients, cut in fat until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal with a  few pea-sized pieces, add water and toss to coat, form into a ball and knead a few times until a dough is formed, divide in half and wrap each piece in plastic wrap or wax paper, allow to rest in refrigerator 30 minutes before rolling out.

I happened to find it on a website called Baking911 (a friend directed me there for cake-related recipes) before they changed it to members only and required people to log-in (not sure if it is free, because I never had reason to sign up). It was a recipe called Ultimate Apple Pie, and it included this pie crust recipe. Since I can’t link directly to their site, consider this my disclaimer that this is NOT my original recipe, it belongs to someone else. I would go back to it so often that I finally just copied it into a word document for ease of access. Lucky for me that I was being lazy and will always have it as a result! I will ALWAYS use lard in my pie crust, unless I KNOW that a vegetarian will be eating it, since I don’t know how strict their anti-animal policy is, in which case I will use regular vegetable shortening. The sugar can be left out, but even if I am making a meat pie, I always include it. This has become so easy and fool-proof for me to make that I will rarely use premade crusts any more.

For the quiche filling, this is the recipe that I improved upon, I mean improvised ;P : http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Belle-and-Chrons-Spinach-and-Mushroom-Quiche/Detail.aspx

Here is where mine differs: 1. I layer the bacon directly on the bottom of the pie crust; 2. I saut  the mushrooms (I use portabella caps sliced thin and cut to approx. 1-inch pieces) and onions (and add in a clove of freshly minced garlic because I am incapable of cooking non-dessert foods without it), then layer that on top of the bacon; 3. I layer most of my cheese (I used sliced swiss, sliced provelone, and a little shredded cheddar this time) on top of the previous layer; 4. Tonight, I used frozen spinach, which I heated until thawed, then squeezed to remove moisture, then layered as best I could over the cheese – otherwise I would just layer the fresh spinach, as I have in the past; 5. I beat the eggs with an electric mixer until foamy and the color has lightened a little (the more the eggs have been beaten, the fluffier the finished product will be), then I mix in the milk or cream and seasonings (I never measure my pepper; I just add it until I feel there are enough specks to make me happy). Here is the final result:

I really would like to try this with pancetta instead of bacon, and use fresh mozzarella , ricotta, and parmigiano-reggiano, but I was trying to figure out some way to use up the cheeses in my fridge, and came up with this idea since it was such a success previously (although then I had used only cheddar).

Et voilà! Eggs + cheese + pie crust= comfort food! C’est magnifique!