Thursday, September 10, 2009

Quiche Cooking Goodbye?

How many decades has it been since I made quiche? Three? Four? Well, yesterday I made spinach quiche, which is the creamy quiche I remember, and a Mediterranean quiche, new to me. It has cheese but no cream ~ rather, tomato paste, fresh tomatoes, anchovies, and Kalamata olives. It's brick-red in color, studded with olive halves in a flowerlike pattern.

Since I don't eat wheat, I made my quiche in a buttered dish with no pastry crust. Julia tells me when you do that, it's now called a gratin, not a quiche. Another thing I learned in this process is how to seed and juice a tomato. All my life, I've painstakingly scraped each section free of its seeds and watery pulp. Not Julia. She slices the peeled tomato horizontally, palms a half and squeezes with her hand. Splat ~ the stuff shoots right out. How simple is that?

Quiche was to be the swan song of my month of celebrating Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. However, I just learned that Barnes and Noble has just shipped my backordered French Chef 2 DVDs. Oh-oh. I will need a break to quiche these four-hour, forty-utensil recipes goodbye. My waistline needs time to quiche the cream and butter inches goodbye. And I need time to practice my newly learned skills. But I'll have further culinary adventures with Julia in the future.

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