Thursday, May 20, 2010

Back and pie

Without real ability to take maternity from school, and since I initially didn’t get around to posting updates, I decided to take an official maternity leave from blogging.
Now Or is 3.5 months old, so I guess it’s time.

What has been happening with our lives since my last post? Well... not much:
• We did a ton of cooking and baking. Highlights include 2 Cook’s illustrated recipes: tomato pesto and super chewy brownies (recipes to come) and Uri’s become a pro at cooking fish in a variety of ways.
• I finished my MBA. That is, I’m done with all my classes/ assignments/ finals. I still have two tiny things left… commencement (i.e. graduation ceremony) and finding a job (minor detail).
• And, of course, we had the cutest baby in the world!
Today is special not just because of this come-back post. It’s also Shavuot, which means it’s the anniversary of Uri and I first meeting. More precisely – it’s our 10 year anniversary. We aren’t doing much in the way of celebrating (we’re waiting for my parents to come next week and babysit, and then we’ll do something romantic, like go to an action flick with a bunch of friends). But we are going to try to have a nice dinner in the shape of a Quiche Lorraine with a nice salad on the side. The recipe is from a book I got last year called “Ratio”, about the ratios of baking. It includes 2 ratios: The first for the crust and the second for the custard that goes inside.
Crust - 3 parts flour: 2 parts fat: 1 part water
This is fairly simple:
1. In a mixer you mix 300 gr (or 12 oz) flour a pinch of salt and some sugar and any other spices you want to flavor your crust – I used half regular flour and half whole wheat.
2. Pulse in 200 gr (8 oz = 2 sticks) of cold butter cut into cubes.
3. Pulse in liquid – start with a couple of table spoons and add as needed until a dough is formed. This could be substituted wholly or partly with 1 egg or yogurt/ buttermilk/ sour cream
4. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Then roll the dough out, fit inside your tart/ pie pan and stick in the freezer. Pre-bake (aka “blind bake” for 10-12 minutes in a 180C (375F) oven . Take out and cool

Custard - 2 part liquid: 1 part egg
1. Saut̩ whatever filling you want in the quiche Рin my case, a fried some bacon, and used part of the fat from the bacon to saut̩ 3 large leeks. I also toasted some pecans in the oven. Let everything cool.
2. With a hand blender blend 1 cup cream, 2 cups milk and 6 eggs.
3. Place the filling into the pre-baked crust, pour the custard mixture in. The book suggests doing this in two stages, ie – filling, custard, filling custard reblending the custard in-between. I doubt this actually makes a difference.
4. Bake at 170C (325F) for 1 hour (the book says it can take up to 2 hours) until the custard almost sets, which means it’s still wiggly in the center of the quiche.

After the fact –Or chose this night to have a hard time falling asleep and it took us about an hour to put her to bed. By that time we weren’t really in the mood for calmly sitting down for a meal … the quiche was still good… but the celebration not so much.