Gorgeous Tomato Spinach Quiche

I think some of you may have picked up that ESFSW and I like eggs - whether it is an omelette (his domain) or a quiche (my domain) we do enjoy a well prepared egg dish. I had been planning on making a fritta one weekend and informed ESFSW of this. His reply was "what is a fritta?" I told him it was like a quiche but without a crust! He thought for a while and said "can we have quiche instead?" I paused for a second and thought...I really didn't want to make a pastry crust. While they are not difficult I seem to be plagued by bad luck and problems that last several times I have made one and I really didn't want to deal with the roller coaster of emotions that go along with a failed pastry crust. Now I know it is ridiculous to have yourself worth wrapped up in the success of a pastry crust and yet some how I do! When one turns out I am flying above cloud nine and when it fails I am in purgatory. I think the most upset and angry ESFSW has ever seen me was when I realized I had seriously screwed up a pastry crust of a quiche. I mean with three ingredients: flour, fat and water, how one earth can one forget one!! And yet I did. I blame it on my roommates! Some how they have frequent success using oil for the fat and so I have tried, and tried and tried and have yet to turn out a pastry crust that I find acceptable. So I went back to my roots and returned to Crisco and butter....ah my old friends! 

What I used:

Crust -

1 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup Crisco shortening (vegetable shortening)

2 Tbs butter

1/2 tsp salt

~ 2 to 4 Tbs ice water

* optional 2 tsp cayenne

Filling - 

1/4 onion - sauteed

10 medium mushrooms sliced and sauteed

2 Roma Tomatoes sliced and de-seeded

2 cups fresh spinach leaves

8 eggs beaten well

1/8 to 1/4 cup milk

1/2 to 1 cup Shredded cheddar cheese

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

~ Crust ~

In a medium bowl measure out flour and salt (and cayenne) - give the ingredients a quick stir. Add shortening and butter. With your hands (take off any rings - saves cleaning them later!) or with a pastry cutter or two knives incorporate the crisco+butter with the flour until the mixture resembles sand clumps. Add 1 to 2 Tbs ice water and incorporate into the mixture until it starts to come together. If it is too dry add more water. Don't over water you want the dough to be a tad dry but holding together pretty well. Turn out dough on to a large sheet of waxed paper. Wrap up and refrigerate dough for ~ 30 minutes (up to 1 day).

ESFSW does have a rolling pin - so a wine bottle stood in as a substitute!

When ready - unwrap dough and form a ball - leave it on the wax paper. Cut another sheet of wax paper and put it over the top of the ball of dough. Using a rolling pin (or anything about a foot long and round). Roll out the dough into a circle. Once it is the desired size and thickness to fit into a pie plate remove the top later of wax paper. Put the pie plate over the top of the exposed dough and with one motion holding on to the bottom layer of wax paper and the pie plate flip. Remove the wax paper and arrange the dough into the plate and style the edges any way you please! Set aside while you prep the other ingredients.

Rolled out dough

Crimping the edges

~ Filling ~

In a fry pan saute onions and mushrooms til they are cooked through in either butter or oil (your choice - just never use margarine because I may have to hunt you down and lecture you on why this is NOT a healthier alternative to butter! I'm a chemist so I know!).

Set the onions and mushrooms aside. Mean while heat a little olive oil in the pan. Once hot add the de-seeded tomato slices to the pan in a single layer. Let them cook about 2 to 3 minutes each side. 

Once those have cooked - turn off heat and set aside. In a large bowl beat eggs with the milk and a dash of salt and pepper (and any other spices you want). If the cheese isn't shredded yet you should get on that! Or in my case get a kitchen helper to do it (aka. ESFSW).

Bring the pie plate with the crust back over and layer the mushroom and onion mixture with the fresh spinach leaves (make sure that they are well washed and dried). Pour the egg mixture over the top of this. Carefully lay the tomatoes on top of the egg mixture and sprinkle the cheese on top and sprinkle some pepper for good measure! Now place the assembled quiche into a pre-heated oven at 375 F. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes. The egg should only jiggle the slightest when it done. Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Assembled quiche ready to be popped into the oven!

The baked quiche resting after all its hard work in the oven!

Using fresh spinach means that - it ribbons through the quiche , as seen by this cross section.

We served the quiche with mango and grape fruit salad and paired it with a dry rose wine. It was a lovely meal. and I was thankful that my crust came out wonderfully!

It looks as lovely as it tasted!

Left overs can be re-frigerated and re-heated for up to a week. While it takes a while to assemble and bake it is worth it and yields a meal for 4 to 6 or leftovers if it just you. And is a balance of all the food groups!

Happy Eating!

If you hadn't noticed the pictures in this post are much better than previous posts. That is mostly due to using ESFSW's newest toy to take the pictures and not my tablet. 

Chicken, Mushroom and Leek Pie

Time to document another recipe from the Irish Pub Cookbook!

If you peruse back earlier in the past month I documented my attempted at Om Ali. This required the purchase of filo dough. I had only used half the filo dough, so when I saw that the Potato, Leek and Chicken Pie was covered with filo dough instead of potatoes that it was a great way to use the rest of the filo. 

Here is what I used:

1 large potato (cubed)

1 medium turnip (cubed)

1 lb chicken breast (cubed)

8 Tbs butter

3 cup sliced mushrooms

2 medium leeks (the two in the picture were a little big so I used 1.5)

4 Tbs flour

1 cup whole milk

1 cup half and half

2 Tbs Dijon mustard

4 tsp sage

8 oz filo pastry (thawed)

Most of the required ingredients.

Here is what I did:

Boil the cubed turnips and potatoes for 5 minutes to cook. You can do this up to a couple days ahead of time if you store the cooked potato in the refrigerator.

In a large shallow pan melt 1/2 the butter and brown the chicken.

Browning Chicken

While the chicken browns, slice the cleaned mushrooms and cut the leek into 1 inch slices.

Slicing cleaned mushrooms

All cut!

Leeks and Mushrooms

Once the chicken has browned add the mushrooms and leeks cook for ~ 3 minutes. (In future iterations of this dish I might wait to add the leeks).

Leeks and mushrooms added to the browned chicken 

Add the 4 Tbs of flour and gently incorporate, cook for 1 minute.

Adding the flour

Gradually stir in milk, stirring continuously, and bring to a boil.

Adding the milk

Add the mustard, sage, potatoes and turnip and season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir and then simmer the whole thing for 10 minutes.

Adding potatoes, mustard and sage - thicken

Melt the rest of the butter (I usually just use the microwave). Using a pastry brush, paint the bottom of the pan with butter. Layer filo dough (4-6 sheets). Paint the top with butter.

Filo dough painted with melted butter

Add the chicken mixture on top the filo dough.

Add chicken mixture on top the filo dough

Layer 2 sheets at a time with most of the remaining dough, reserve several sheets. Paint with butter every other sheet.

With the remaining filo dough crumple sheets on top and gently paint with butter, until the entire surface is covered. If you need more butter use it or else the filo won't turn a beautiful golden brown and the entire dish will look a little sad and under cooked when it is finished.

Put the dish in a pre-heated 350 F oven.

Into the Oven!

Bake for 45 minutes - until the mixture is boiling and the filo is golden brown and crispy!

All done!

It is pretty close to the picture!

We were pretty hungry and it smelled so good we forgot to take pictures of our plates including the lovely salad I threw together to pair with it! We had lots of left overs that re-heated really well in my opinion and I had lunch for a week from it!

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Happy Cooking!

Recipe:

1 potato

1 turnip

8 Tbs butter

1 lb chicken

2 leeks

3 cups mushrooms

4 Tbs flour

1 cup whole milk

1 cup half and half

2 Tbs mustard

3 tsp sage (best to use fresh but dried will also work)

8 oz filo pastry

salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 350 F. In a pot boil the cubed potatoes and turnips for 5 minutes. Drain water and set aside.

Melt half the butter in a large pan and brown chicken (approximately 5 to 8 minutes)

Add the sliced leek and mushroom and cook for 3 minutes. Add the flour and stir for 1 minute. Gradually stir in milk and half and half. Bring the milk to a boil. Then add mustard, sage, potatoes and turnip. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes.

Melt the remaining butter. Paint the bottom of a large baking dish with butter, layer 6 sheets of the filo dough on the bottom of the pan. Paint the top with butter. Then cover with the chicken mixture. Layer 2 sheets at a time painting every other sheet with butter. Crumble the last of the dough on top and paint with butter. Bake for 45 minutes in the pre-heated oven.

A Valentine's Day In

I am not a huge Valentine's day fan but, it is still nice to take the time to prepare a nice meal. ESFSW and I had gone to Stone Brewery for dinner the Saturday Valentine's Day as our night out. It was a great end to a nice day spent in Fallbrook. The meal as always was delicious (despite ESFSW not being able to get the sausage sampler) and the beer sublime like usual (mostly because they had some of our favorites! Russian Imperial Stouts how we love indulging in your dark malty complex and intense flavors!) But, enough about Stone for now...there will be a separate post on them anyways in the days to come. Valentine's day fell on a Tuesday this year and as I have a standing tutoring appointment that night ESFSW and I decided to postpone our Valentine's day for the following day and we would eat in. I was in charge of everything except the grilling and the table setting. We made cheddar mustard risotto, sauteed mushrooms and leeks and grilled steaks (hmmm...we seem to do those a lot judging by my posts...we don't really! I swear!).

Menu: Cheddar Mustard Risotto, Sauteed Mushrooms and Leeks and Lemon Marinaded Grilled Steaks

Rough Recipe: Cheddar Mustard Risotto (Tweaked slightly from Nigella Express Recipe)

You can access the recipe by clicking the link or picture above. My tweaks were minor and instead of recopying the recipe and potentially forgetting a step I thought I would just outline what I changed. I made sure to get Extra Sharp Tillamook Cheddar to make sure there was a good strong cheddar flavor. I have been tempted however to get some Irish cheddar and try this recipe with that (but I digress). I also used Trader Joe's vegetable stock. What is nice about this stock is it has a deep color and strong flavor which melded well with the cheese and the mustard. I did use slivered green onions although I have skipped that ingredient in the past and never missed it. The two biggest changes is the amount of mustard I added...lets say it was an overly generous squeeze out of the stone ground mustard bottle. Hey ESFSW has two bottles, why not use lots! Although I probably could have used a smidge less than I did use. Now despite being at Trader Joe's just prior to cooking dinner to buy a bottle of Zinfandel to go with dinner I did not buy wine for the risotto. So I whipped up a 1 part water, 1 part apple cider vinegar with a Tbs of sugar to replace the white wine. This does give a more intrusive flavor than a white wine would have given, but it adds to the complexity of the cheddar and mustard. While, risotto can be time consuming this recipe really isn't too bad as long as you have everything prepped and ready before you dive in. 

Rough Recipe:  Sauteed Mushrooms and Leeks

Mushrooms - trimmed and sliced

Leeks - chopped into 1/2 in thick pieces

garlic

butter

Melt butter in a fry pan add garlic and saute gentle. Add mushrooms and saute. When the mushrooms are half way cooked add the leeks and cook til they have softened but the green parts are a deep bright green. If you want a more buttery flavor drain the juice that cooks out of the mushrooms when cooking before adding the leeks. If the pan seems too dry then add more butter as you cook. Serve immediately.

Rough Recipe: Lemon Marinaded for Steaks or Chicken

1 gallon size zip-lock bag
olive oil
Lemon juice
Lemon zest
garlic (3-6 cloves, peeled and crushed)
salt
fresh ground pepper
(any other desired herbs - fresh will yield more flavor)

Combine all the ingredients in the zip-lock bag. Add meat and let marinade in the refrigerator for up to a day. Flip the meat over at least once to get both sides marinading evenly.


~
This was a pretty good joint venture for ESFSW and I. He helped a lot with shredding cheese to cutting up mushrooms and leeks for me and then of course being the Grill Master! The final result was wonderful and a whole lot less stressful compared to going out on Valentine's Day. And we felt all special lovey feelings that couples in love are suppose to experience mid-February. The wine on first sip was a bit of a disappointment but after letting it breath a bit more it opened up nicely! Good suggestion from the Trader Joe's employee - Leonhart Zinfindel.

There was also dessert, but you'll just have to wait for the recipe to hot chocolaty goodness!