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.

Three, But Who's Counting?

Now only three more days till Julie and Julia opens. Four till I see it. This week I'm making something from Julia Child's groundbreaking cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking ~ a timbale. I was going to pick something I'd actually heard of before, but this appealed to me. Webster's defines timbale as a creamy mixture baked in a mold. I've eaten these little molded mousses in French restaurants, most recently at Le Titi de Paris. So smooth and flavorful, so subtly flavored, such a decadent way to get my greens, oh my. Julia's recipe is for asparagus, but I'm going to use broccoli.