Mini-Quiches Lorraine

I promised that I would post the recipe for the mini quiches from Home Chef from a couple weeks ago and because of travel and then the beginning of the school year, I never got around to posting.  So, here is the recipe:

Mini-Quiches Lorraine
Adapted from: Home Chef recipe

• 4 fl. oz. Liquid Egg (or 2 whole eggs)
• 3 bacon strips
• 1 shallot (or small onion)
• 4 puff pastry dough squares (frozen foods)
• 2 fl oz milk
• 1 1/2 oz shredded Swiss cheese
• Salt & Pepper

 Preheat oven to 400F.  Prepare a 6-well muffin pan (or a 12-well if that is all you have) with cooking spray.  Dice the bacon into 1/2 inch dice.  Mince the shallot (or finely dice the onion).  Thaw the puff pastry.
In a medium skillet, place bacon over medium heat.  Cook 5-8 minutes, stirring occassionally, or until crisp.  Remove pieces to a towel lined plate.  Separate the pastry squares and place each square in the muffin tin.  Lightly lift and press the dough into the cups.  The dough should cover the bottoms and sides, with the corners of each dough sticking over the edges.  Refrigerate tin while preparing remaining ingredients. 
Drain most of the bacon drippings from the skillet (leaving about 2 tsp) and a place over medium heat.  Add the shallots and saute, until the shallots have softened and started to brown.  Remove from heat and set aside.  
Mix the liquid egg (eggs), milk, shallots, 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper in a mixing bowl.  Remove the muffin tin from the refrigerator.  Divide the bacon and cheese between the cups, then fill cups 2/3 full with egg mixture.  Roll and crimp quiche edges and place the muffin tin on a prepared baking sheet (in case they overflow while cooking).  Bake 20-25 minutes or until dough browns and filling is set (doesn't jiggle when pan is tapped).  Rest quiches 5 minutes before carefully removing from muffin tin.

 

Zucchini & Corn

The one thing that I have gotten a lot of this summer so far is zucchini and summer squash.  And this week, we got our first ears of corn.  So, I looked around and finally decided to make a quiche using these two ingredients.  The corn, when I cut it from the cobs was super sweet, a nice surprise so early in the season!

Zucchini Corn Quiche

This is not an original recipe to me.  It is an adaptation of this recipe: http://pinchofyum.com/sweet-corn-zucchini-pie

• 4 tablespoons butter
• Whole sweet onion, diced
• 2 ears sweet corn*
• 1 large zucchini*, sliced very thinly (about 2 cups)
• 1 large yellow summer squash*, sliced very thinly (about 2 cups)
• 8 ounces sliced mushrooms
• 1 tsp fresh basil*
• 1/2 tsp fresh oregano
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 12 ounces shredded cheese (I used cheddar)
• 4 eggs*, beaten
• 1 cup 1% milk 

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Heat the butter in a large, deep skillet over medium high heat. Add the onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. While the veggies saute, cut the corn kernels off the cob. Add them to the pan and continue to saute until the veggies are soft, 5-10 minutes. Remove from heat to a bowl lined with cheesecloth.  Once cooled enough to handle, twist cheesecloth to press out as much liquid as possible (this will prevent the quiche from being too wet.

Stir in the basil, oregano, salt, cheese, and the beaten egg. Line a pie pan (9-inch or larger) with parchment paper or just grease a pan with nonstick spray. Transfer the mixture to the pan. Arrange the top so the zucchini slices lay flat and look nice. Top with a little extra cheese for looks and bake for 40 minutes. Let stand for 10-15 minutes before cutting into slices.

*CSA ingredients

Party time!

Well, it is summer and time for deck parties.  I have been very remiss this past year keeping up with this blog for many reasons.  The first of which would be the fact that I have not cooked as much as I should be!  Second, it has been a crazy up and down year.  The down is the fact that my husband has been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer.  The up is the living that I am making him do (plus all the traveling for school I've done).  This year, so far, I have been Lisbon, Portugal; Paris, France; Tampa, FL; Boston, MA; and Colorado Springs, CO.  Trips to be taken during the rest of the year: Tampa, FL; Stratford, ON, CA (for the Shakespeare festival); San Antonio, TX; and possibly back to Tampa, FL (to see my g'pa and meet with my colleague).  This along with working full time and all the art stuff I've been working on.  I am so proud of the fact that it seems I am getting a handle on painting and drawing now.  Most proud of this painting drawn and then painted from a picture I took outside Monet's house in Giverny, France:

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I adopted these two rascals:

So, yes, I think I have a few excuses, but I think we are settling down a bit now.  And, of course, the CSA has started for this summer, so it's time to start cooking again.  I got lucky in that the CSA started in time for my first party.  I didn't get pictures of the food, but I will put the recipes up because I used a LOT of what I got from both of my CSAs for this party.

Braised Pork 

For this batch, I used my time-honored braised pork recipe, but mixed up the herbs a bit because of what I had available:

• 1 3.5 pound pork shoulder roast*
• 6 sprigs fresh thyme
• 4 sprigs Thai basil*
• 1 can chopped green chiles
• water
• salt & pepper

Trim the fat on the roast.  Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  Place in a large Dutch oven.  Add green chiles, thyme and basil.  Pour water over all until halfway up the roast.  Bring to a boil and then cover and reduce heat to simmer for about 3 hours or until the roast reaches an internal temperature of 180 - 190F.  Remove from the Dutch oven and cover with foil.  Allow to cool until able to be handled.  Pull pork, removing most of the fat as you pull.  Serve with BBQ sauce.

Homemade BBQ Sauce

I also prefer to make my own BBQ sauce when I make my pulled pork.  And I always get positive comments when it is all said and done.  Unfortunately, I no longer have my sorghum, so I substituted molasses.  It gave it a darker flavor which I wasn't sure about, but in the end, everyone liked it.  I would like to find sorghum again because it is perfect for my BBQ sauce.

•  3 cups ketchup
• 1 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 4 thyme sprigs

Place all ingredients in small saucepan.  Heat until boiling; reduce heat and simmer 1 minute.  Adjust flavors as needed.

 Memphis-style Coleslaw

So, if you are going to serve pulled pork, you need coleslaw, right?  I don't eat it myself (have never liked raw cabbage), but there is always someone who wants cabbage with their BBQ.  And, of course, I had just gotten cabbage from the CSA, so why not, eh?

• 1/2 medium head green cabbage*, shredded
• 1 small head radicchio*, shredded
• 2 carrots*, peeled and grated
• 2 Cups mayonnaise (I used olive oil mayo)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 Cup seedy mustard
• 1/4 Cup cider vinegar
• 2 Tbsp celery seeds
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Wash and prepare the vegetables and place in a large bowl.  Mix remaining ingredients in a small bowl and then pour 2 cups of dressing over the vegetables and mix well.  Add more dressing as needed.  Allow to marinate in refrigerator a minimum of 3 hours before serving.

Bourbon BBQ Baked Beans

 And of course, since I had BBQ sauce left over and other fresh veggies, I decided to go ahead and make baked beans as well.

• 4 (15-oz) cans Pinto Beans, drained & rinsed
• 8 oz bacon*, cooked & crumbled
• 1 onion, diced & browned
• 4-6 cloves garlic*, minced and browned
• 1 large red pepper, diced and sauteed
• 1 Cup BBQ sauce
• 1 Cup brown sugar, lightly packed
• 2 Tbsp molasses
• 2 Cups homemade chicken broth
• 1 Cup bourbon (I used Knob Hill)
• Salt to taste

Drain and rinse beans and place in crock-pot.  Saute the vegetables and add to crock.  Add remaining ingredients.  Mix well.  Cover and cook for 10 hours on LOW or until the beans are the consistency desired and the alcohol has cooked down.

*CSA ingredients. 

Beef Stew

I apologize for the lateness of this post.  I was in Ann Arbor running around all day yesterday before attending the second day of the Ann Arbor Folk Music Festival.  I suppose I could have found a coffee shop to camp in and write this entry (goodness knows there are endless choices of coffee shops in Ann Arbor).  But I decided to do some rare shopping while I was there.

John has been telling me he was craving beef stew with barley for a little over a week now.  And of course, since he brought it up, I started craving it as well.  Despite the fact that I had just made a batch of Brunswick stew, I felt this would be a good thing to keep him stocked up for the next week.

I did some research to try to learn how to make effective beef stew (mine usually turns out more like beef soup). Once I had cobbled together ideas for what I thought would be an effective recipe, I gathered the ingredients that I had on hand.  Then on the way to John's place, I stopped and picked up the rest.  I chose to use a red blend from my stash for the red wine, a decision I might rethink if I use this recipe again, however, it was tasty wine, so while not as hearty as I might prefer, still nice enough.

I wanted something that I could start on the stove, but finish in the crockpot.  This recipe worked very well for this purpose.

Hungarian Beef Stew with Barley

• 1 1/2 lbs stew beef
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 large sweet onion, diced
• 8 small (or 2 regular) red peppers, sliced
• 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 lb red-skinned potatoes, large dice
• 3 carrots, coarsely diced
•  3/4 cup barley

1. Prepare the vegetables.  Season the beef with salt and pepper.  Heat olive oil in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add 1/3 of the beef to the pan and sear on each side.  Remove beef and set aside.  Repeat two more times with remaining beef.

2. Add onion and peppers to pan.  Cook, stirring, about 5 minutes or until vegetables begin to soften.  Add flour, paprika, caraway seeds and garlic.  Continue cooking for 1 minute.  Add wine and stir, cooking, until thickened, making sure all dark bits are stirred up from the bottom of the pan.  Add the remaining liquids, mix well.  Cook about 1 minute more and then remove from heat.

3. To assemble: Place carrots and potatoes into the bottom of the crockpot.  Place beef on top and then pour wine mixture over all.  Cover and cook on LOW for about 6 hours.  Adjust seasoning and add barley.  Mix well and then cook, covered, for another 1-2 hours on LOW, or until the barley is cooked.