another change of address

Quiche for a Week

In an effort to cut food costs down to the utter minimum, I’ve been researching recipes for things I can stick in the fridge and reheat for several days on end without getting sick of eating it. I’ve also observed that if I don’t eat something substantial before noon, my whole day goes to a comatose crap. The solution? QUICHE!

This quiche I just made is magical, though I fear it’s so rich it might not pass the week of leftovers test.

I’ve also learned, in my recent internet recipe madness, that the “quick” and “simple” versions of recipes usually skip something important. Omitting that extra step, though non-fatal to the final product, usually just makes it a little… eh. So my latest strategy, when rifling through hundreds of online recipes for the exact same thing, to go with the slightly-more-complicated version. In this case, it means bringing the milk & cream just barely to a boil before mixing in the eggs and other things. I think the food chemistry of this is that it helps the whole thing become more solid without the “cheat” of adding flour.

So, based on this recipe, I bring you the glory that is the Dill-Spiked Ham & Cheese Touchdown Quiche. Best prepared to the sounds of weekend football on TV and good coffee gurgling in the pot.

Ingredients

1 9-inch deep dish frozen pie crust, mostly thawed
1/4 lb sliced cured ham steak, cubed (see note 1)
1/2 small red onion
1/2 cup frozen mixed bell peppers (see note 2)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup whole milk (see note 3)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3 large eggs
2 oz cheese of your choice, coarsely grated (1 cup) (see note 4)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp smoked spanish paprika
1/8 cup chopped fresh dill (or whatever fresh herb you want) (see note 5)

Preparation

Bake the pie crust according to package instructions, then transfer crust in pie plate to a rack. (Preheat, stab it all over with a fork, etc.)

Reduce oven temperature to 350°F.

While the pie crust is baking, heat cream, milk, pepper, cayenne, paprika, and salt in a 1- to 2-quart saucepan until mixture reaches a bare simmer, then remove from heat.

Whisk together eggs separately. (I used the measuring cup I used for cream.) Gradually whisk eggs into hot cream mixture until combined. Stir in ham, onions, peppers, 3/4 of the dill and cheese and pour into piecrust. Sprinkle the rest of the dill over the top, and top that with another few shakes of paprika just to make it pretty. Bake until filling is just set, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer quiche in pan to rack to cool slightly, about 20 minutes.

This is how I made it. It turned out beautiful but possibly a *tiny* bit wet. It could have cooked for a couple extra minutes, but I also think sauteeing the onions & peppers down beforehand and draining off the moisture would also have served to firm it up. Obviously, the veggie version of this could easily sub mushrooms or a bunch of spinach for the ham, but again, watch the moisture content. I also lightly glazed the edges of the pie crust with the whisked eggs to give it a nice glaze and protect it from burning. It’s stupidly delicious. I’m going to take a nap now.

Notes on Ingredients

1. I could have used bacon, but the ham steak - one big flat round - was the same price as the bacon, and doesn’t require cooking. One less step - plus the extras can easily be tossed into a chef salad sometime later this week. My new cooking strategies are always geared toward eliminating waste.

2. Trader Joe’s has a great selection of frozen prepared veggies for good prices. Peppers are wonderful, but at $2-$4 a pound, you can never have the green, red and yellow variety unless you’re cooking for a dozen people. For $2 or $3, I got a pound bag of already-sliced peppers, used very few, and now I still have peppers for the next time I want them. That was my best guess at quantity - I don’t measure stuff unless it’s crucial to food chemistry.

3. I didn’t have whole milk, so I used half & half, and used 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1 cup half & half.

4. The original recipe called for Gruyere. That would no doubt be awesome, but c’mon. I couldn’t find any plebe cheese at Trader Joe’s, but the cheapest hunk I could find was this utterly ridiculously great New Zealand sharp white cheddar. It’s just hard enough to do the work of something like a Gruyere, but is half the price, and retains its zing nicely.

5. I had dill left over from making potato salad earlier this week, so I threw it in the quiche. GOOD CHOICE. Dill served to add a freshness and cut the richness of so much cream. New strategy: since you can never buy just a little bit of fresh herbs, I’m going to plan a bunch of meals that can make use of the same bunch of basil, dill, cilantro, etc.

Now you can have your quakes and read them too!

Ever since visiting the Science Museum of Minnesota and seeing a very large (as in three stories of atrium space large) installation of an “instrument” that used an algorhithm (or several) to turn a constant feed of seismic information into notes played in this giant… suspended… plunky reverberating thing, I’ve been obsessed with using seismic information in a similar way. Now that I live in California, any time I feel even the slightest of rumbles I immediately go to the US Geological Survey to see if there’s indeed been an earthquake.

As always, the answer is yes. Every day there are a hundred earthquakes just in the Bay Area, none of them typically felt or noticed. If I have the time, I usually end up spending at least an hour reading (or trying to read) the graphs, charts, maps, information, historical earthquake readings, information pages about volcanoes or tectonic plates, etc. In other words, I fixate like a six-year-old in a dinosaur store.

After last night’s earthquake, I’m up this morning still thinking about how to get some kind of feed when LO AND BEHOLD, I see that my dear, charming, lovely friends at the USGS have provided

AN ENTIRE PAGE OF FEEDS TO FREAK OUT ON.

I nearly spilled my coffee. You have to understand, the fixational lobe of my brain, the one that controls repetitive thoughts and has caused me to walk out into oncoming traffic while stuck on an idea, has been seeking this Holy Grail ever since I saw those giant musical vertebrae of seismology. I can now have, delivered straight into my Google Reader, updates for every 2.5 magnitude earthquake or higher within five minutes (domestically) or 30 minutes (internationally).

FREAK OUT! That’s not all. If you haven’t experienced the shock and awe and flight-like 3-D awesomeness of Google Earth, please do. Do it on my behalf - it’s a huge program, and my crapped out little iBook can’t run with the big boys anymore. The feeds page says that it’ll map earthquake data RIGHT ONTO GOOGLE EARTH.

I can’t express to you the ferocious agony I am experiencing at not being able to do this RIGHT NOW. Will someone please send me a very large gift card to the Apple Store so I can get a computer that can actually display letters at the same time I type them - not five seconds after?

I’ve now set up feeds so I can see every legit earthquake, everywhere in the world, for the past seven days. I can also see “shake maps” that are color-coded by intensity for the US and Canada. The best part about the shake maps? If you look very closely, down at the bottom, you will see the extra-sciencey disclaimer “NOT REVIEWED BY HUMAN.”

It may well be that the robots are taking over, but the darling, wonderful scientists at USGS - clearly the best government agency ever - want to make sure that you know the difference. I wish I could vote for a seismologist in this election.