Friday, April 27, 2012

FFWD Catch-Up: Quiche and Batons

Paul has been hard at work on our garden this year.  The great news is that the combination of his hard work (I helped at least once!), some starter plants from Home Depot, and the unseasonably warm weather mean that we already have lots of romaine and red leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula, mustard greens, and radishes.  The bad news is that it's all ready at exactly the same time.  So, all of our meals for the last couple of weeks and the foreseeable future are very heavy on the greens.

I  really want to make as many of the recipes in the book as I can, and I'm so impressed by people who find guest-posters when the recipe is something they don't eat, but I've decided to give myself a pass on recipes that are mushroom or red meat based.  I don't have anything against either ingredient, but despite my recent attempts at learning to like mushrooms I've just never really enjoyed them, and my parents stopped eating red meat before I was born so I've just never eaten it.  So anyway, I decided that instead of making the navarin printanier this week, I would just catch up on a couple of recipes I missed.

I used up several arugula plants in making the Spinach and Bacon quiche.  Other than substituting arugula for the spinach and using turkey bacon, I followed this recipe exactly.  I made the crust and blanched the arugula on Sunday, and the rest was very easy to put together during the week.  The quiche came out beautifully and we both really enjoyed it.


My only complaint - and I've said this before - is that I wish there was more filling.  I just love eggs and custard, and this felt like more of a tart to me than a true quiche.  I think I just need to accept that this is how Dorie's quiches are, though.  Maybe I'll add some extra egg and cream the next time.  On the side, we had salad (used up some red leaf lettuce) with smoked trout (one of my favorites!) and some pickled radishes that I made over the weekend.  The pickled radishes aren't my favorite, but they are very pretty and a good use of radishes, and a relatively quick weekend canning project.


On Sunday I also prepared and froze the Mustard Batons, which I baked off for dinner later this week.  These were excellent.  I may be biased - mustard is one of my absolute favorite foods - but I loved the flavor.  It also gave me an excuse to use up some of the fancy Walnut Mustard I bought on Open Sky (I follow Dorie there, Paul complains that all of our money is going there...).  I'll definitely be using these as an appetizer for future dinner parties.  They're delicious, pretty, and I love anything that can be made ahead of time.  


This was a bit of a clean-out-the-fridge dinner, but I served the batons with some cheeses I needed to use up and a Cooking Light grilled salad (used a whole head of romaine!).  The salad had tomatoes, blue cheese, turkey bacon, and croutons, but for some reason it wasn't my favorite.  I was up for trying grilled lettuce, but definitely think I prefer my lettuce uncooked, although I'd be very happy to be persuaded otherwise if anybody has any favorite lettuce recipes.  We have so much more lettuce to use up!

10 comments:

  1. Well, you have certainly been busy. Everything looks fantastic and so
    delicious. I love to "clean" the fridge and use things up. Sometimes
    hubby never knows what he will be served. We enjoyed this week's
    stew, really delicious although I used beef instead of lamb.
    Great job on your catch-up week.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Those mustard batons look delicious! I have been planning on going back and cooking some of the things I missed from before I joined the group and you are inspiring me to actually do it. Good luck using up all those greens - sounds like your garden is a big success!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm having trouble finding your website! I'd like to read your post if you have one...

      Delete
  3. You can never go wrong with more filling in a quiche. And your batons look delicious, although I chickened out and used pesto in mine. I can't stand mustard.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a great catchup, Jora. Now that BBQ season has started, I've seen some recipes for grilled romaine and was wondering how that would be. Looks like it might not be worth trying? Your quiche and batons look great! I love arugula in salad, but I recently substituted arugula for spinach in a lasagne, and it came out very bitter. I used it raw, so I'm wondering if I had blanched it, as you did for the quiche, if I would have liked it better. I have a book with lots of greens recipes. I'll check the title and post another comment later to tell you. It might give you extra inspiration for your abundance of spring greens.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think part of the problem was that we didn't dry the romaine enough, so it sort of steamed. I think it might be worth trying once...It'd be great to know the title of the book if you get a chance!

      Delete
  5. Your quiche looks perfect, Jora! I'll have to play catch up with this week's recipe :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Way to knock out another round of makeup recipes! Everything looks lgreat.

    ReplyDelete
  7. LOL, I would prefer my lettuce uncooked also - without ever having tried it "cooked" :) Great use of a FFWD! Are you working on making up a few recipes?

    Alice @ http://acookingmizer.wordpress.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I started almost a year late so I've been trying to make up all of the recipes you guys made before I started. It's been a lot of fun so far!

      Delete