Quiche Lorraine

So I was reading this article about feeding yourself on $15 a week. He mentioned quiche. I've never had a quiche before, but my friends speak highly of it. I wouldn't know a quiche from a bag of caviar. But I had some eggs, and my handy dandy Betty Crocker book, so I had a go at it.

First up was the crust. Flour, salt, shortening, water. Easy! And so:



I don't have the fancy tools that normal people have, so sometimes I have to substitute. Here, I substituted the "cutting shortening into flour" trick that I watched my gramma do, and my mom showed me eons ago:



Lo and behold, after adding some water and getting kind of nervous, it became dough:



Now, like I said, I don't have the nifty tools other people do. Here, I substitute a pint glass for a rolling pin:



Worked pretty well, eh?

Well, I had to roll all that dough back onto the glass to lay it on the pie pan. That wasn't going to work, the glass was way too short. So I substituted again:





And now the crust is trimmed up and looking fine:



And I used the leftover crust to make some, um, cinnamon sugar squares or something. I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time:



While the oven was heating (because God forbid I should remember to turn it on before shit is ready to go in it), I started cooking the bacon. I can't fry bacon, I have some sort of deficiency. So, I substitute. I love my George Foreman grill:



While the bacon was cooking and the oven was heating, I mixed the eggs, milk, and, um, something else. It called for a dash of nutmeg, but it's cheaper to buy spices bagged instead of in a jar, so I got the bag. You can't get a dash from a bag, so I just took a teeny pinch. Like so:



And the oven's heated (you can tell when it stops making the popping noises. Also, there's sometimes a "fwoomp" noise.) So, in with the pie crust and cinnamon sugar squares. Meanwhile, the bacon's done!



So I take the bacon drippings and cook the onions til they're soft but not brown. I was going to stop about three or four minutes before I actually did. I was worried I might start browning 'em. But I figured, hey, I kind of like brown onions, so I'll keep cooking 'em. Most of my problems with cooking comes from worrying about over-cooking, and as a result, under cooking. I digress. Onions got cooked. Bacon got crumbled into the egg/milk mixture. Cheese and flour were added, and though the onions looked like they might be a bit much for the amount of mix that I had, I threw them in there anyway. Would Betty Crocker lie to me?



Ding! The crust is done. I don't want to get crazy here, but I think that looks like a damn fine crust:



The cinnamon squares, however, looked pretty shitty. They tasted even worse. Lesson learned: don't be putting the sugar on some dough and blithely throwing them in the oven. In the future, maybe put some butter on there and then sugar 'em when they get out. These were basically gross.



So one thing led to another, you know how it is. The whole shebang went into the pie pan, and it looked like it could actually be something resembling dinner.



Betty Crocker suggested that I use some foil to cover the crust so it doesn't burn. Well, the most important ingredient when I cook is "holy shit, please do what you can to not fuck this up," so the crust was foiled.

Now, my oven is kind of, well, bockety. The numbers on the knob are mostly worn off, and I don't think they actually correspond to what's going on in the oven anyhow. So I set it for what I hoped was 325, and set the timer for 35 minutes. It was supposed to cook for 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted near the center came out clean. The timer went off, I checked on it, it was still in a fairly liquid state. I set the timer for five more minutes and checked back on it. I did this about six times. For serious. It took an extra half hour.

But lo and fucking behold, it was a quiche.



It was a little undercooked. I think I need to get one of those oven thermometers. But it was fantastic, cheese and onion and bacon bits - holy crap,it was the best thing I've eaten all week. It more than made up for the mashed potato casserole from last week. I'm going to try it with tomatoes next week, but first I have to figure out how to roast 'em, since that would just add to the liquid. I think it might be good with some bell peppers, too, but I don't want to get too crazy here.

I'm getting my hand mixer this week, so there will be some mad crazy frenzy of whipped things forthcoming. That's fair warning.