Bête comme Quiche

C'est un classique familial. Chez nous, on l'appelle "quiche Catherine", souvenir d'une Catherine depuis longtemps perdue de vue, qui est je suppose à l'origine de la recette. C'est la plat parfait pour une entrée ou un plat unique quand on est à la bourre, en panne d'imagination, ou avec de petits restes.

This recipe is a family classic. We use to call it "quiche Catherine", after a Catherine we've long lost contact with. It's a really simple, really basic dish, it can be either an entrée or a main course, it's perfect for a tired weekday evening as well as for using up those small leftovers in the fridge.

Quiche Catherine

5 oeufs - 5 eggs

3 petits verres de lait d'avoine - 3 cups oat milk

3 grosses cuillères à soupe de farine - 3 (large) tblsp all-purpose flour

1 paquet de lardons - a few bacon slices

1 poivron vert - 1 green bell pepper

1 poivron rouge - 1 red bell pepper

1 oignon - 1 onion

Préchauffez votre four à 180°C.
Dans une poêle,  faites revenir les lardons. Ajoutez très rapidement les oignons émincés et les poivrons coupés en petits cubes. Laissez dorer les lardons et fondre l'oignon.
Pendant ce temps, battez dans une jatte les oeufs avec la farine. Ajoutez doucement (sinon ça va faire des grumeaux) le lait d'avoine.
Graissez un poule à tarte, étalez dedans la garniture, puis versez la pâte par-dessus.
Enfourner 30 à 40 minutes, jusqu'à ce que le dessus commence à dorer.

Preheat your oven at 360°F.
Cut the bacon slices in smallish bits, put them in a hot pan, adding the minced onion and diced peppers as soon as there's a little grease in the pan. Cook until the bacon is golden and the onion soft.
In a mixing bowl beat the whole eggs with the flour, slowly add the oat milk.
Grease your mold (the flatter the mold, the better), transfer the bacon and vegetables into it. Pour the batter over them.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes - until the top gets slightly golden.

Ce qu'il y a de merveilleux avec les quiches, c'est qu'on peut les faire à tout. Un reste de courgettes sautées ? Du saumon fumé ? Des épinards ? Un bout de fromage un peu trop "caractériel" ? Ca y va !
Ce qu'il y a de merveilleux avec ce plat, c'est qu'on n'a même pas besoin de faire de pâte (mais riend ne vous empêche d'en faire une, ou de prendre un pâte feuilletée du commerce, c'est bon aussi), du coup, c'est vraiment très, très rapide à préparer.

Now the great thing aoubt quiche is that you can just put about anything into it. Leftover sautéed zucchinis ? smoked salmon ? Spinach ? Goat cheese ? It all goes in !
And the other great thing about this one it you don't even have to make a proper pie crust - of course, you can make one, it you really want to, or use a ready-made puff pastry dough, it works really well, too.

Salmon-broccoli crumble, or how I broke my food processor (but it was worth it)

Well, it it not entirely broken. I can still make it work using a long stick and some fiddling around its insides. Which is good, given it gave up the soul when I had just started cooking today's lunch. I had broccoli int he fridge, and smoked salmon, in quantities that fit a lunch for one adult, two kids and some leftovers (always, always make leftovers, that's my motto) I looked around a bit. I didn't want to make a simple broccoli purée (the kids had pumpkin soup the day before, they need to use their teeth now and then), quiche sounded boring. I had Grana Padano in the fridge, too (like parmesan, but cheaper and good enough for cooking with it). And this is what I came up with.

Salmon & Broccoli crumble

3 broccoli heads

1 cup oat cream

2 large smoked salmon slices

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup hazelnuts (or just a little more)
10,5 oz Grana Padano/parmesan

2tbsp butter (or substitute of choice)

ground black pepper

Rinse the broccoli ; cut off the hard part of the stem, separate the heads into small chunks. Cook in the pressure cooker for 15 minutes. Drain the broccoli and place it in a greased gratin dish. Pour the oat cream over it and roughly squash the broccoli with a fork. Place the smoked salmon over the mix so that it covers the broccoli.

Preheat your oven at 380°F.

If your food processor is sturdier than mine, use it to ground your cheese. When in doubt, resort to a manual cheese grater, you'll avoid plastic bits flying across the kitchen and the fiddling-with-a-long-stick to make the food processor work again. Do use the food processor to roughly ground the hazelnuts. Add the breadcrumbs, cheese and butter. Process briefly until all ingredients are mixed. Spread the crumbly mixture over the salmon.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until the crust becomes golden.

This was, however, a bummer with kids. The big one decided he did not like salmon this way, which is still a mystery to me as he adores salmon every other possible way.

History junkie - Poisson en croûte

The biggest part of my time is not spent in front of the stove, but in my almost-a-workshop, where I work with ink, paper, fabric and thread - not always together. One of "my" areas is historical costuming, more specifically (yes, I am very specialized... in a number of various domains) the late victorian to early edwardian era, roughly 1870 to 1900. On the other hand, I love books, especially old books. And images, I love images (well, I am a graphic artist after all). Which leads me to my point : I collect bound editions of late nineteenth century fashion magazines.

In case you would be wondering what this has to do with this blog, just open a modern "women's" magazine. browse the pages at the end. I bet you will find a cooking column. And guess what ? It was exactly the same back then.

The recipes are a weird mix to our modern concept of cooking - you will find endeavors most of us find too time-consuming to consider (canning, I'm looking at you), and very basic things. This busy mom is more inclined to try out the latest - as soon as it's not pizza with pasta on it (yes, I found the recipe for this. Carbs on top of carbs topped with carbs. No actual tomatoes included). I am only adventurous to a certain point. This one, I tried out once, and to is now a staple recipe - with a few modern conveniences. It works well with all the fishes I have tried - I would just avoid the small filets like red mullet.

Poisson en croûte - Fish in a crust
2 or 3 large fish filets - you need enough of them to almost fill your gratin dish.
1fennel bulb
1 small onion
1 cup breadcrumbs
parsley

Preheat your oven at 360°F. Grease your gratin dish. Place the fish filets at the bottom of the dish.
Place the fennel, rinsed and roughly diced, the peeled onion cut in four, the breadcrumbs (or stale bread if you don't have breadcrumbs ready) and the parsley in your food processor's bowl and process until no big lumps remain. Spread the mixture over the fish.
Bake until the crust is golden brown.

You can choose your own herbs and veggies mix to add to the crust, of course.
I usually have either stale bread at hand, when it starts to pile up too much and I don't feel like making brad pudding I just process it into crumbs and store them in an airtight container - ready to use, free breadcrumbs, and no waste !

More pumpkin !

Yup, more pumpkin. There aren't that many veggies that I really like in winter. To be honest, I only enjoy endive in small quantities, and I'm not entirely a fan of cabbage either. The kids think more or less the same so...
I had some pumpkin left over from my last soup batch (because I had bought a LOT of pumpkin, and my pressure cooker is big but not THAT big), so I made some gnocchi for a change.

Pumkin gnocchi
1 slice pumkin
5 large potatoes
1 tsp ground cumin
4 eggs
3-4 cups flour
chicken or beef stock

Peel and dice the pumpkin and potatoes and cook them until tender in your pressure cooker. Once cooked, drain all water out and squash the potatoes and pumpkin together. Add the eggs and cumin,  and enough flour to get a dough that holds its shape (if you stick a teaspoon into it, it should stay vertical - I know, highly scientific method).
Take a large pot and bring your stock to boil in it. Using two teaspoons, drop little bits of dough into the boiling stock. When the gnocchi come up again and start floating on the surface, wait for about 40 seconds before taking them out. Repeat until all dough has been cooked into gnocchi. You can either serve them just as they're done or put them in a large, oven proof dish to reheat them, adding ground cheese, tomato sauce, etc... if you feel so inclined.

It does take a little time to make all the gnocchi - to give you an idea I started at 6PM and was done by 6:40. As it was a relaxed evening at home I was able to just serve the kids and make them eat between two rounds of gnocchi. And we have enough leftovers for tonight.

Not dead YET !

I know, I know, it's been stupidly long since I last updated. I don't even have a valid excuse for letting you all miss on the Christmas baking. Seriously, I'm that bad a blogger, sometimes.

To amend myself, I'm going to go with really simple today. No fancy Valentine thingie, just a simple soup that works wonders for the kids each and every time. Plus, it's in season.

Basic pumpkin soup

1 pumkin slice

3-4 large potatoes, the kind that don't hold well when cooked

chicken or beef stock

1 pinch ground cumin

Peel and dice the pumpkin and potatoes. Put them in your pressure cooker with just enough water to not quite cover the vegetables. Cook for about 20 minutes, until the veggies are soft and squish-able.

Add the cumin and stock. With an immersion blender, mix everything until you have a smooth texture.

This usually gives you a rather hearty soup, I like to add a little bit of oat milk to make it more liquid - and to cool it down, too. My kids love a little bit of ground cheese with theirs. And then they lick their plates clean.

You don't need to be very precise with your proportions for this to work. The pumpkin is here for taste and color, and you need to add a little bit of potato to get a really smooth texture, that's all. I sometimes add some carrots as well.

First taste of summer

It's technically a summer dish, but the first round zucchinis appeared at our local market last week, and I couldn't pass them up. No big round tomatoes yet, though, so we just bought some small ones and added them to the stuffing. Usually, we'd carve those out as well and the juice and flesh would go into the stuffing.

It takes a while to cook, two solid hours. But it's worth it. It gets better with reheating, so my advice is to cook it in advance and reheat it. It freezes well - just reheat it in the oven for dinner !

Légumes farcis - stuffed vegetables

2 bell peppers

2 eggplants

5 round zucchinis (you can make do with long zucchinis, but they aren't as easy to stuff)

8 tomatoes

10oz ground beef

10oz ground pork

2 cups hacked stale bread

herbes de Provence (savory, thyme, sage, basil, rosemary)

oat milk

ground black pepper

Place the stale bread in a bowl and pour some oat milk over it. Stir from time to time until all the bread is soft.

Wash the vegetables. Cut off the top off the zucchinis and carve out their insides with a teaspoon (keep the flesh, don't discard it). Cut the peppers and eggplants in half, cut off and discard the stem. Carve out the insides of the eggplants as well. Place the hollowed out vegetables in a large pan with relatively high edges, with a dash of olive oil at the bottom of the pan.

Now take the flesh of the zucchinis and eggplants, dice it and add it to the bread mixture. Add the diced tomatoes, herbs, a good dose of black pepper. Add the meat little by little, kneading small bits of meat into the stuffing - the meat tends to stick to itself and not mix well with the remaining ingredients, so take your time to separate it into smaller bits and mix well. I haven't found a better instrument to do that than my two bare hands :)

Stuff the vegetables, replacing the "lid" on the zucchinis (and tomatoes, if you've found tomatoes big enough to use that way) after wards. If you have too much stuffing, either make little domes over the vegetables, or, if you really have too much, stuff the spaces between the vegetables.

Add a little water to the pan, just enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan. Bake in the oven, 390°F, for two solid hours, or even a little more. Serve hot with rice.

I don't have a set quantity of vegetables I put into the dish, I wash and prepare just enough so that the pan is full. You can pretty much adapt the recipe to other vegetables - onions, potatoes, small pumpkins in winter.

So where did the beets go ?

I haven't forgotten about this blog, I've just been... busy. As it frequently happens with two young children, friends coming over, and way too many projects on my hands.

A while ago, I posted about finding raw red beets. They've been cooked and eaten ! Here's how...

Potée aux betteraves (red beet stew)

2 red beets

about the same volume pumpkin

2 sweet potatoes

2 onions

1 saucisse de Morteau (a very large smoked sausage)

Proportions don't need to be precise, and don't hesitate to mix things up a bit !

Peel and slice the onions. In a large cooking pot or a dutch oven, preheat a dash of oil, add the onions. When the onions are translucent, add the diced Morteau (you can pretty much substitute any nicely salty, smoked or not sausage(s) )

Peel and dice the beets, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin and add them as you cut them to the pot. Stir some more. Add water until it almost covers the ingredients. Cover and let the stew simmer over low heat for.. a long time. One hour is a minimum. Beets take a long, long time to cook, and the more cooked it is, the better the stew will taste.

It is done when the vegetables turn to mush under the fork. And yes, it's very purple. Very, very purple. :)

Mama's note : mix it all together for a baby-proof meal. See background of the picture for proof.

Now, you can perfectly use pre-cooked red beets for this, the tastes won't mix exactly the same but it will be very good, too. I tend to prefer using my cooked beets in salads like say...

Winter salad, take 142358

1 red beet

1 endive

1 apple

1 handful corn salad

1 hard boiled egg

1 handful walnut

Dice or slice the vegetables, hack the walnuts and generally cut everything into small bits that can be easily mixed together. Yes, even the salad. If you're using something with bigger leaves like lettuce, pre-cut the leaves with your kitchen scissors - it makes for easier eating. Serve with a salad dressing made with a dash of walnut oil.

Baking week-end

There was a bit of a baking orgy this week-end. We spent Saturday and Sunday with my parents and ended up with three cakes for four persons. My Mom baked a candied fruit cake, my husband turned the way-too-early strawberries into a yummy strawberry tart, and I made a gâteau d'Aunis - because I was out of bread and hungry. Then after we went home on Sunday evening, dinner consisted of an onion tart (and some leftover rice).

The onion tart is one of those recipe that I have stored in the back of my head and don't need to look at my recipe files to make. No precise measuring, not too many ingredients - that's good in my book ! The only real difficulty is surviving the onions without weeping yourself to death. I do have a secret weapon : safety goggles. The kind you find at the hardware store for dealing with plaster or other stuff you don't want to get into your eyes. A friend of mine uses diving goggles.

Onion tart

1 pastry dough

10 onions

2 tablespoons mustard

7 oz (one small package) almond cream

1 egg

2 tablespoons flour

oil

1 big glass of dry white wine (optional)

Roll out your dough over a floured surface, grease a tart mold (I used a large, not very high one, but you can also use one that is smaller but higher, it doesn't really matter), place the dough in it.

Peel and thinly slice the onions (with the goggles on ;) ). Heat a good glob of oil in a large pan, once it's hot add the onions and cook them, stirring regularly, until they're very tender. This time I had some white whine leftover in the fridge, so I added it to the pan at the end and let it evaporate.

Pour the onions into a large bowl,  add the cream, the flour, the mustard, the egg and mix well. Pour this filling over your dough. Fold the dough's edges over the filling.

Bake in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes at 360°F. The filling should be golden brown and the dough dry and firm to the touch, just a little golden. Serve hot.

Below is my usual recipe for the cake. I changed it a little this time - I had egg whites remaining from the strawberry tart my husband had made, so I used only one full egg and replaced the other with 4 egg whites I had beaten until stiff. It worked just as well.

Gâteau d'Aunis (Aunis cake)
6 oz vegetal butter substitute
7 oz sugar
2 eggs
8 oz flour
2 oz candied angelica
1/2 cup cognac or rum

Cut the angelica into small pieces and put it in a bowl with the alcohol.
Beat the sugar with the butter until it gets white-ish. Still beating, add the eggs one by one, then the angelica and alcohol. Lastly, add the flour.
Grease a mold (mine is about 10 inches wide and 2 1/2 inches deep), pour the batter in it. Bake in the oven, 40 minutes at 390°F.

A not completely picture-less stew

Have you ever tried taking pictures of a really thoroughly cooked stew ? Well, mine didn't look that pretty. I tried, it looked horrible, so I'm just going to show you the pretty big pot we used to cook it. So the stew is in the picture, it's just not... visible.

We started cooking this with pork, but we changed this time after looking at what was in the fridge - one used-to-be-a-laying-hen chicken, fat and tasty but in need of a good boil so as not to be too chewy.

Kiwi stew

1 chicken, cut into pieces, or pork...

10 kiwis

3 leaks

4 carrots

Oil, salt, pepper, ground red chili pepper

Cut the meat into bits no bigger then a child's fist.

Wash and thinly slice the leaks. Peal the carrots and kiwis and cut them into small dices or slices.

Heat a dash of oil in a big cooking pot with a heavy bottom. Add the leaks first, stir regularly until they get a little softer. Add the meat, stir some more. Lastly add the kiwis and carrots, pour water in the pot until about an inch below the level of the ingredients, add salt, pepper, and a small pinch of ground chili. Let it cook for one to two hours - you can cook it a day or two in advance, and reheat it for half an hour or more before serving. Just check that there's still enough water and add some so that it doesn't get dry.

Hachis parmentier

A simple winter basic, cheap, easy to cook in large quantities. You can freeze some of it and reheat it in the oven later.

Hachis parmentier
6 large potatoes
2 tbsp butter or vegetal sustitute
1 cup oat milk
11 oz ground beef
11 oz ground pork
 2 large onions
thyme, laurel, rosemary
salt, pepper to taste
optional : 1 cup grated cheese

Peel and dice the potatoes, cook them in a pressure cooker until you can squash them with a fork.
Peel and thinly slice the onions. In a pan, heat one dash of oil over strong heat, put the onion and stir them regularly until they get a little transparent. Add the meat, separated in little clumps, salt, pepper, and herbs. Stir and sauté  the onion and meat mix until the meat is nicely golden.
Squash the potatoes, adding the butter and milk as you go (you can also use one small cup of almond or rice cream instead of the butter + milk).
In a large oven-proof pan, spread the meat mix first, and the mashed potatoes on top of it. Add some cheese on top if you wish/can. Cook in the oven at 250°F until the top is lightly golden.

It's one of those dishes that reheats well, so don't hesitate to cook it in advance and just reheat it for dinner.