The Emergency Quiche — OR — Don't Let The Fridge Door Hit You Where the Good Lord Split You

Let’s be clear, I didn’t intend to make a quiche this morning. But sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. I got up with the kids after a particularly rough night for the baby (and therefore rough for Mama) and went downstairs for a couple of bowls of cereal and some cartoons. It is Saturday, after all. After breakfast, I was shoving things around in the fridge (and grumbling about the hundreds of containers of leftover stuff) to make room for the milk when out falls the carton of eggs. Now I’m holding the baby on my left arm, holding the fridge door open and fending Alice off with the right, and watching the eggs balance precariously on the little ledge in front of the crisper, teetering on the edge of disaster.

“Didn’t fall that far, can’t be more then a couple broken” I thought to myself. I persuaded A.P. to be my helper and hold the door so I could lean in and grab the carton. As soon as I began to do so, she promptly abandoned her post and let swing the door. It hit my butt and jostled the fridge just enough to move the egg carton. I watched helplessly as the carton rolled over, opened up, and one by one—seemingly in slow motion—the eggs dropped to the floor.

Luckily most of them didn’t burst, but rather cracked slightly and rolled under the island. I gathered them up and wondered what the hell to do with 5 cracked eggs. Well first I had to clean the 3 that exploded on the floor, but then what? Make a quiche, of course.

I had a ready made Kroger pie crust in the freezer from a while ago, some leftover broccoli, wax beans, and always plenty of onions and garlic on hand, so why not? The crust was a little busted up, but it could be somewhat repaired by wetting the broken edges and smooshing them back together. The rest went together in about 5 minutes. Simple! Now I have something already made for lunch, and only 3 out of 8 eggs wasted. Papa win!

Saturday morning egg-drop disaster: Yet another addition to the long list of problems that can be solved with quiche.

Papa's Emergency Quiche

A little lump of butter

1 small onion, chopped (left over from tacos last night)

2 cloves of minced garlic

2 cups chopped fresh broccoli (left over from Asia Feast- blog pending)

1 cup chopped wax beans (ditto)

1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

5 eggs, well beaten (you can also drop them on the floor first, but this is not absolutely necessary)

1 1/2 cups milk

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

pinch of dried rosemary

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and stir in the milk. Season the mix with salt and pepper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. While the oven heats up, sautee onions, garlic in a pan over medium heat. Once the onions start to soften, add the broccoli and beans. Cook for a few minutes to soften everything up a bit.

Dump the veggies into the crust. Mix in the cheese, then pour the egg and milk mixture over it, filling up the crust. Sprinkle the top with some more cheese, rosemary, and some more black pepper.

Bake 35-45 minutes, or until it sets up in the middle.

Muy fresca, muy badass.

The middle of July finds us in the throes of fresh produce season

in the Ohio Valley. The farmers markets are busting with bounty and fruit and veggie stands seem to pop up at every bend in the road. It is the easiest and best time to "eat local" in these parts. This week my Mother in Law stopped at Ebbert’s, a wonderful farmstand in St.Clairsville, OH. Ebbert’s operates off and on throughout the year —with a copious spread of home-grown veggies in the summer, a pumpkin patch in the fall, Christmas trees in the winter, etc. They have only just opened with the first wave of summer crops, and the M in L stopped to get first crack at the new sweet corn, the market’s specialty. While there she also picked up a bunch of little yellow onions, some huge, gorgeous tomatoes, a smooth, compact little cabbage, some hot peppers and yes, some of the famous sweet corn. When I opened the bag, I immediately thought TACO NIGHT.

Taco night has long been a tradition at our house. We started making our own when we realized that around here, good vegetarian tacos are extremely hard to come by. Usually we make a bean and canned salsa plus seasoning packet concoction, wrapped in flour tortillas with lettuce, tomato, onion etc. With the addition of the fantastic fresh produce to my arsenal of ingredients, I decided to step up this week’s taco night with a salsa fresca, and in the spirit of creative cooking I went packet-less with my black bean taco filling. I held the cabbage in my hands, looked at it, thought on it a moment. Then I heard something. I leaned down and listened to the cabbage. It whispered "cuuuuuuut meeee uuuuuup…. puuuuuuut me in a fish taaaaacooooo… maaaaan. The cabbage was right. It was the only thing to do.

I had become hopelessly hooked * snort * on fish tacos during my brief stint as a resident alien in Southern California. I’d had Mexican food before living in San Diego, but not REALLY. And I’m not talking about fancy gourmet 25-dollar grilled tilapia tacos with radicchio and passion fruit reduction or some such lot. I mean fish tacos like actual Mexican people eat. Fried fish. Cabbage. Salsa. White sauce. Little Mom & Pop taco stands are EVERYWHERE in San Diego County, and I had the pleasure of visiting some of the very best, under the guidance of my buddies and co-workers at the moving company for which I was employed.

In Escondido, right down the street from my apartment (and incidentally only 2 blocks from Stone Brewing Co.) was the stand where I most often indulged in fish taco bliss. It was also where I was introduced to the shrimp taco. Shrimp tacos are just as popular in San Diego, and just as tasty. Maybe a little more so, as a handful of fried shrimp —being individually battered and cooked— has more fried and breaded surface area per volume than does a piece of fried fish.

I decided on shrimp for this meal because 1) they cook faster, and B) they are cheaper. So I was looking at 2 types of tacos, bean and shrimp, salsa fresca and some of those big white corn tortilla chips. Easy.

Preparing tacos is so ridiculously simple that I felt very confident in my ability to rock this meal. The new food processor makes it even easier. My biggest challenge this time was getting the seasoning just right in the bean filling, as too much of any of the traditional Mexican seasonings (I’m lookin’ at you, CUMIN) can be bad news.

Tacos are also a great way to eat fresh and local and cheap. In this simple meal, I was able to use local tomatoes, corn, onions, cabbage and peppers from the farmstand; lettuce, dill, oregano, chives and garlic from my own garden; only a few supermarket items like tortillas and black beans, and feed 3 people for under 15 bucks. Not too bad, eh?

So take a look around. In most small towns, ‘burbs, and big cities these days fresh, local produce can be had. Even if it’s not organic, chances are it’s fresher, healthier, tastier and required less energy dirt-to-table than food from the supermarket. Viva la vegetables, yo como fresca!

Salsa Fresca

3 large, ripe tomatoes

2 medium yellow onions

(sweeter varieties are nice with all of the acid and spice in the salsa)

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1 hot pepper, with seeds removed (whatever pepper you like, depending on your hotness threshold, I used a medium hot banana pepper)

1 lime, halved or quartered for juicing

4 cloves fresh garlic, chopped up a little bit so it will break up in the processor

Salt and black pepper to taste

This is the easiest thing ever to make. Cut up the big stuff into quarters, throw everything into the food processor but the limes. Pulse the processor a few times to start chopping stuff up, then squeeze the lime juice into the mix. Hit it again a few times, add spices, then pulse until everything is chopped up into small bits. I like to let it sit a little while. Refrigerate for a few hours to let it all mingle. It’ll be very wet, so scoop the salsa into another bowl with a slotted spoon so that it drains and doesn’t get too soggy. Done.

Shrimp Tacos

Quantities of all ingredients depend on how many people you intend to feed.

Frozen breaded popcorn shrimp, cook in the oven, follow the directions

1/4 head of cabbage, shredded

Shredded cheese (chihuahua if you can get it, I used mild cheddar this time)

Small corn tortillas

Stack each taco with shrimp, cheese, your fresh salsa and drizzle with the white sauce. Gorge.

Shrimp Taco White Sauce

1/2 Cup Mayo

1/2 Cup Fat Free Sour Cream

1 Lime, Cut in half

1/2 Tsp. Cumin

1/4 Tsp. Chili Powder

1/2 Tsp. Garlic Powder

Appx a tablespoon of each of the following fresh herbs, chopped finely:

Oregano

Dill

Chives

Cilantro

Whip mayo and sour cream until blended, squeeze half of the lime, mix. Add lime juice until sauce gets to the consistency of creamy salad dressing: pourable, but not too runny. Add spices and herbs one at a time, mixing well after each.

Whip it up well and let it set up in the fridge. It was really tasty after sitting for 2 hours, but I tried some the morning after on my huevos rancheros, and it was so flavorful it nearly blew my face off.

　

Bean Tacos

Bean filling

1 can (15oz) of black beans, drained and rinsed

1/2 cup or so of salsa

1 ear of fresh sweet corn

A tablespoon or so of flour

2 cloves of finely chopped fresh garlic

A bunch of the following spices, added in a "pinch and taste" kind of method:

Cumin

Onion Powder

Salt

Black Pepper

Chili powder

Paprika

In a small pot, over low to medium heat, dump beans into the pot. Add the salsa, and if necessary a little water to get a good, soupy consistency. This will help it all cook together better. Cut corn from the cob and add. Add garlic. Mix together frequently to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add the spices, one by one, tasting as you go so as not to overdo any one of them. When it tastes good to you, add a little flour as you mix, to thicken it up. It won’t take much. Reduce heat to low and let simmer while you prepare other stuff. It’s ready now, but It will only help to simmer it a bit before go time. I like it to get really nice and thick, so I simmer for about 10 minutes while I set the table, usually.

Spoon the beany mix into a tortilla, then top with onions, salsa, cheese, lettuce and a little sour cream. Eat.

Many thanks to my lovely and talented photographer/wife/breadwinner/babymama for making this stuff look so beautiful and delicious.

Hummus is Yummus.

This week Beth spotted some big ripe mangoes at our local produce market. She loves mangoes, and while she talked herself out of going into the back of the store to see if she could buy a case, she DID come home with a few. I've never been a huge fan, but I do like the little packets of mango chutney that comes with the boxed Indian dinners from Target. Tasty, but there is never quite enough of it in the kit. Then it dawned on me, I could make my own chutney, as much as I wanted, and build an Indian or maybe Middle Eastern dinner around it!

A recent trip to Chicago had re-acquainted the family with an old favorite from the neighborhood. Salaam on Kedzie (right by the brown line stop) use

d to be just a small middle eastern food shop, a counter and a displ

ay case wedged between a bakery and a gyros shop. We discovered on this trip that it had expanded to a full sit-down restaurant, with wait staff and piped-in music , beige paint, drop ceiling and giant prints of sites from the holy land on the walls. Actually it was a very pleasant dining experience. In the old days, Salaam seemed much more authentic. It was cramped and hot, with barely enough room to walk through the stacks of pots and pans for sale and the counter. It always smelled kind of funny—the air seemed greasy, spiced and heavy— and faintly smelled like something might have gotten killed in the back. The old Salaam was home to a few grumpy looking Lebanese dudes who huddled over a small table near the door and would suddenly quit arguing in arabic to stare at you when you stepped in. But OH MAN, the hummus. Smooth and creamy, oily-but just oily enough- and so flavorful that it could be eaten all alone with a spoon when nobody was watching. If I could recreate hummus half as good as this, I would be very impressed with myself and probably run out and write a blog about it.

So mango chutney and hummus... what else? Well, I would leave the pita to the Lebanese bakery downtown, for sure. That left just maybe one more dish to fill out the meal. I decided to take another cue from the Target instant Indian meal and try a curried lentil dish. I knew there was a massive stash of lentils in my cupboard, transported back here from Seattle, where once Beth and I discovered the bulk section of a local whole foods type store, and had gotten a little carried away.

A quick grocery getting run netted me a few loose items I would need to create my Papa-ghanoush (i know that's eggplant not hummus, indulge my funny!) and now the clock was ticking. The boy child took a well-timed afternoon nap that allowed me to get started on the hummus and give it a little time to set up and meld. I'd had homemade hummus a few times before, and while it was always good, it never had that smooth, velvety texture and rich flavor of the restaurant style. There were always little chunks of chickpea and it was usually comparatively bland. I did some research on the internets and found a consensus: to get smooth hummus, you must first shell the chickpeas. Shell the chickpeas? All of them? Jesus, that would take forever! Well, more like 2 hours. I shelled chickpeas through and episode of American Pickers, through a longer than usual phone rant from my Dad, and through the Boy destroying a bowl of peaches an cereal. But finally I had the base for my masterpiece. I was ecstatic. I consulted a few recipes online, combined my ingredients in my fancy new Giada De Laurentis food processor, set it to high, hit the button and... nothing. I hadn't used it yet, nor had I tested it before loading it up with 4 cups of chickpeas and half a gallon of freakin' olive oil. Food processor, despite a bit of pleading, swearing and weeping was a no-go. Frustrated, I transferred the stuff to the blender and gave that a whirl. It was laborious, the blender would only do a little at a time, which I then had to spoon into a waiting bowl to make room for the next load. Ugh, messy and dumb. At this point I tasted it. not bad, but still full of little bits of chickpeas! after I shelled every last goddamned one of them? I was pissed. I blended the whole batch AGAIN, mixing in more olive oil and more tahini, hoping to fluff it up and give it a little more of that rich flavor. It helped a little, but it still wasn't right. Regardless, at this point it was time to put on the chauffeur hat and pick up the girls.

When I returned to the kitchen, the heat was really on. I spent so much time effing with the hummus that I had prepared virtually nothing else. I furiously peeled and sliced 6 huge mangoes, dumped them in a big skillet and started adding spices to be cooked down with the chutney. You know what's hard to slice? Mangoes. Once that skin comes off i had a hell of a time holding on to them and not cutting my fingers off as I sliced them into little pieces to be cooked. Not a drop of blood lost, I crushed garlic, chopped onion, peeled and sliced ginger, then... a whole tablespoon of cayenne? Dang, that's alot of hotness, but what do I know, right? in she goes.

On to the lentils. Luckily, lentils cook relatively fast, and I had a pan of bubbling curried goodness in no time. I did overlook a pretty important ingredient while shopping, one can of pureed tomato, which I thought I might have in stock at the back of the cupboard. No dice. I did, however, have a handful of plum tomatoes that were almost too ripe for anything else, so diced and mushed all to hell, into the pan they went. While the lentils cooked I started a pot of rice, and now all systems were go, and it was just a matter of finishing up in time to eat, clear, bathe the children and execute bedtime before their good will ran out.

After a brief food processor tutorial by my wife (who simply put the bowl on the base correctly and started it right up) I was back into the hummus, striving for that golden Salaam standard. I blended and oiled and spiced and blended and blended and blended. Still hard chunks, though they were very small. It was not working. Plus now the spice balance was off a bit. Curses. And very little time to do anything about it! I dumped a Hail Mary final glump of olive oil into the bowl, tossed in another hit of garlic, beat it up a few more seconds and decided to call it. It was dinnertime.

The mango chutney cooked down beautifully and filled the house with a glorious sweet/spicy smell. But even after it cooked down for nearly 45 minutes there was still and enormous amount of it. Oh well, hopefully it's good, eh? The lentils came off pretty well, good consistency, though they did suffer a bit without the added moisture of the tomato puree. The curry really came out nicely, particularly when mixed with a bite of rice and chutney. The chutney turned out to be very good, but HOT. I don't know who uses that much cayenne, but let me tell you, It ain't me. Next time I'll cut it in half. What am I talking about, I have like 4 containers of the stuff in the freezer, there needn't be a next time for chutney.

Then I put out the hummus. Beth knew the high standard I was shooting for with this dish, and she reserved comment. It was decent, but I knew this hummus was not going to dethrone Salaam as the best. (It actually used to say "Salaam is the Best" on their oil-soaked receipts.)

The meal on the whole was pretty successful. Beth and I had our fill, Alice asked for Mac & Cheese, and then did what I took to be an impression of me, tearing up bits of pita, throwing them in her bowl and chanting, "Don't for get the garlic, you got to put in some more garlic" and I made an incredible mess of the kitchen. All of the dishes I prepared were new to me, and all of them were at least edible, which I take as a personal victory. Therefore I say, even when it isn't perfect, hummus is yummus.

PAPA MAKE THAT: A blog you will like.

As many of my online friends (and some of my old school flesh and bone friends) may know, I've recently bowed out of the rat race to stay my ass at home and raise babychildren full-time. Well, almost. I can't give work up altogether, I wouldn't know how to act.

One of the most important roles I've assumed in this new job is "cooker of the foods." Now I've been known to scare up a meal or two, but cooking has never been my main thing. My Mom is a great cook, and no doubt thanks to her influence, both of my sisters are great cooks and what you might call "foodies" if you were so inclined. "Food and cooking enthusiasts" might be a less obnoxious term. It seems people in this family come by the cooking gene naturally. So I thought I'd give cookery a try. Somebody had to do it, might as well be me. So far I think I've done ok, but I haven't ventured very far out of my comfort zone. I intend to take some risks, learn some new things about myself, and eat a hell of alot of delicious food along the way.

Weekly (some times more often, probably sometimes less) I will challenge myself—or shall I say Beth will challenge me— with using some kind of new and interesting ingredient, be it something that was crazy on sale, something weird in the market that caught our eye, or maybe unexpectedly copious bounty from the garden (think zucchini!) I also welcome suggestions for interesting ingredients from you. It's sort of like TV's Iron Chef, without all of the skill and much less Alton Brown and squid.

I hereby invite you to read along as I cook, eat, learn, love, win, fail, succeed and stumble my way through the kitchen on this quest to keep my family alive, full and happy.