Gosh, we’ve been busy of late I’ve neglected to mention a few of the food adventures we had recently, including:
- Ratatouille;
- Celebration Dinner at Lime Restaurant; and,
- Real Men Eat (French-style) Quiche.
Ratatouille
Ratatouille, like revenge, is a dish best served cold. Maybe, maybe not. But this version is delicious either way.
1) salt and cook up your eggplant; 2) soften onions and garlic
3) add in whatever veggies you have hanging about (mushrooms, zucchini here)
4) toss in some tomatoes and a whack of anchovies and cook down till; 5) glistenly yummy veggies are ready
Brent Celebrates his Bonus at Lime Restaurant
Back a couple of Fridays ago, Blee joined G and I to celebrate my annual bonus (me got an S+ rating … which is the highest you can get at my organization …woohoo) with a dinner and drinks at Lime, which we’ve eaten at several times and which I have to admit does a brilliant softshell crab curry with ginger jasmine rice.
7) great funky interior; 8) fried noodles with beef
Real Men Eat (French-style) Quiche
North Americans are (sadly) clueless when it comes to real quiche. This is not our fault mind you. The idea of quiche did transfer to North America and the spirit of France remains in the quiches here in the sense they do contain eggs and a crust. But that is where any similarity ends. Technology is partly to blame: when quiches were first made here the springform pan was not as readily available as it is nowadays, and the folks at Tenderflake had just invented frozen pastry shells which – while convenient – aren’t anything near like the true french version which ought to be 2 inches high and crown-like.
A real quiche is essentially a custard, it is mousse-like and shudders, undulates and shakes and is always just on the verge of disaster. It is an art and G and I acknowledge we still have some practice to go before perfecting a perfect real French quiche. We should have folded the crust further over the springform before baking; we should have cut the bacon into finer lardons so they would better incorporate into the custard; we should have made the full custard recipe (we modified a little since the crust wasn’t a full 2-inches high); and we should have baked it a tad bit longer.
But that’s fine as once you’ve tried the real thing, there’s no turning back.
We opted to make the classic, the original, quiche – a quiche lorraine. A quiche lorraine is essentially cream, onions and bacon. Cheese is not used, though we cheated and added 1/2 cup. Brace yourself for what this contains because it ain’t pretty:
- 1/2 cup of cheese;
- 2 cups of heavy cream;
- a pound of bacon; and,
- a pound of butter (in the crust).
Divine!
11) prepare the springform pie shell first (it looks like a crown); 12) layer in some cheese of your choosing
13) heat up your reduced onions and bacon; 14) layer in bacon/onions over the cheese
15) prepare your cream and egg custard by using a blender to really aerate it; 16) pour over mixture
17) bake in a hot oven until there is a uniform ‘jiggliness’ to the quiche; 18) cool
19) sigh, heavenly!
AppsScraps 
What a quiche!
looks yum. I actually may take your idea and buy anchovies for some of my improvisational dishes.