OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Another resource hogging flash applet thingie...click the gray background to begin loading,

photo

then navigate with arrow keys. You'll need something other than Internet Explorer.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Eggs of a Scorned Woman. AKA Seven Pepper Quiche

The Money Shot
Well, the financial aid has not arrived, and it is time to begin studying for finals...but as a change of pace I thought I might try posting a Food Tutorial before swearing off flickr, the blog, and the internet in general for a couple weeks. I have a little work going on, and cheese was on sale. OMG. I love cheese, and hadn't bought any in a month. I'm talkin' pepper jack, sharp cheddar, all kinds of cheese, 8 oz packages 4 for 5 bucks. I mighta overdid it.
So I came home, stocked my many packets of cheese in the fridge, grabbed a colander, and strolled through the back yard, and came up with this.
time to make a quiche
I managed to get a couple zuchinnis, squash, and cucumbers before some type of fungus wreaked havoc in my garden, but lately the only thing I seem to be harvesting are cherry tomatoes and assorted peppers. I'm still learning about the whole gardening thing, but cherry tomato plants are amazing. With a little work I am sure we could engineer biological weapons from them. One tiny green leaf hanging out of a dixie cup, halfway nurtured will grow to cover 35-65 sq ft. The peppers in general are also doing very well, and I've got one habenero TREE. It must be some kinda mutant. If you saw it you would think Chris and the Habenero Stalk.

So this colander situation happens a couple times a week, and seems to be picking up speed. As well as drying, freezing, and giving stuff away, Ive been making a lot of quiches. At least that's what I call them. If you research quiches on the web, it seems the egg mixture isn't just eggs, but eggs and other stuff and they call the mixture "custard". So don't be thinking this is a legitimate recipe or that this is a blog to be taken seriously. This is good stuff though, and it will put hair on your chest.

Sun-Dried Tomatas

This quiche has seven peppers:
bell, chili, poblano, jalepeno,bannana, habenero, and black pepper.
It also takes cheese, and of course eggs. About a dozen'll do ya.
There is one small eggplant (Everything is organically grown...you can walk in my back yard and lick plants. No harm will come to you.)
Some onion, garlic, broccoli... you can put in anything you want,even meat, but the whole point for me is to use up some of these tomatoes and peppers, so I left some room.

Gotta Have Cheese

first start with a couple no-stick pans. (Praise God for No-Stick Cookware.) sprinkle some grated cheese in the bottoms...you really can't overdo this, but a thin layer, that you can see the bottom of the pan through, is adequate. It'll be fine. This Cheese will melt into a thin, oiled crust.

Optional Step.
You can even be so extravagant as to line the sides of the pan with slices...but I'm on a budget.

Getting Started

Then you add your structural stuff, try to make a layer of slices of the firmer vegetables along the bottom (this is simple chris-quiche theory. I believe it makes it easier to get pieces out of the pan). I've actually never messed with eggplant. In my illustrious youth, I was the night chef at an Italian restaurant for a while. We served eggplant parmigiana, but it was already prepped. Often, I imagine, you get more hands-on cooking experience as the lunch chef. The eggplant color and texture tickled me to death :). They just feel funny.

So with this quiche, I started with my slices of eggplant, which I distributed as far as it would go, and filled in the bottom layer with some onions. Poblanos and bells are pretty big and firm, and I use those as well (If you take the trouble to grow stuff to eat, you really oughta save a little corner by your tomatoes to plant some basil, sage, oregano, rosemary and thyme.... that stuff practically grows itself, and hopping out the back door to snatch a few leaves off a plant and throw them in a pan always makes me grin.) Now is a good time to throw in your herbs, black pepper, and maybe a little chopped garlic. I skipped it this time, but a little finely chopped celery gives a great flavor, especially with some chicken chunks.

The Bottom Layer

Getting back on the subject, when you've got a good bottom layer going
You can fill it in with some broccoli, lots of tomatoes, and of course peppers.

hot stuff

Just a few chilis, with a couple jalapenos and a banana or to will be more than enough for a lot of people. Not everyone will want to add habeneros, but if you should, you'll wanna wash your hands thoroughly before you touch your face, or pee.

This Step isn't for Everybody.

I almost forgot... as your doing the fill in, sprinkle in plenty of cheese. Tomatoes have a lot of moisture, and the cheese really helps out with firmness, and tastes good, too. It is on sale.

Cheese is on sale

After I get all my goodies in, with lots of cheese, I throw a couple handfuls of sun-dried cherry tomatoes across the top. I know I got lotsa 'maters already, but SDT's have a different flavor. You can't get it any other way.

Just Prior to Baking

Just prior to baking, before I put my eggs in, it looks like this:

Now You're ready to beat your eggs

For beating the eggs, I use a Ryobi 18volt lithium-ion drill, with a paint mixer, kept aside in the kitchen. I have no blender, ( I lost it in the divorce, and haven't gotten around to replacing it) but I'm sure that would work better. These jokers need to be fluffy. Really. A big wad of yellow foam.

I lost the blender, in the Divorce.

After pouring up my eggs. I throw both pans in a preheated oven for about twenty minutes at 405-415. Then it's time to pull 'em out for a second and throw a layer of cheese slices on top. I used slices of pepper jack here, but anything will do. Sprinkling parmesan on top gives a little crispy, cheesey, brown crust, as the parmesan sinks/sticks to the underlying cheese slices and slowly starts changing color...

(I can"t believe I forgot to shoot a bracket for this picture. You'll just have to use your imagination.)

I put it back in the oven and keep an eye on it. Another Ten minutes or so makes it look like this.

The Money Shot

These will cut up into 12-14 lunch-sized servings of quiche, that I'll individually wrap (after eating a couple), and freeze. I'll pull a piece out as needed and nuke it for 1-2 minutes, and eat it without guilt. I'm sure it's healthy, though I imagine it packs a pretty good cholesterol punch.

BTW, these are high dynamic range images, for those who care. High Dynamic Range technology was first developed and used to photograph Mushroom Clouds It lets you combine multiple exposures into one image, and tone map them. Each picture in this post is the result of combining Three to Five separate images. once I started I was kinda committed. Unfortunately, a couple of thee composites are substandard. I have never seen it done with food... remember you saw it here first. The software is a free download, and even with only one jpeg to work with you can fake it and transform a picture-

Blogpost

You can get a better look at the difference Large
Probably the most noteworthy aspect of these food shots is the lighting...under my kitchen cabinets over the breakfast bar, I've got a couple grow lights where I'll start seeds and cuttings. I tell myself that it helps early picked vegetables ripen... it also truly jacks up your reds, when you hdr.

7 comments:

  1. Um, it looks delish and sounds great but is there a way to modify it for those of us who don't desire hairy chests? LOL

    Love your style, Chris. LOVE IT!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, it's a very forgiving recipe...I never make it the same way twice I'm sure you and Moose can figure something out. Are you sure he doesn't like a hairy chest?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I sat here almost droolin as you made this... until I got to the picture of the sun dried tomatoes. Since I look at the pictures then read what is around them I was really confused as to why you were adding caterpillars to your food.

    No seriously... go back and look

    *shudders....

    ReplyDelete
  4. I thought y'all ate that kinda stuff out there...caterpillars, chocolate covered ants, tofu. lol.

    You're right, I musta got a little sloppy with my photography.

    ReplyDelete
  5. No it wasn't sloppy photography lol. It was what my mind saw.
    I think I have been fighting bugs outside for to long this season.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The HDR thing...laying three or more pic over one another...whoo hoo! Ya get just a little bit off, and the software doesn't know what to do. Sometimes it cranks out trash, and sometimes a beatiful mistake. That second shot of the SDT's DID look a little like big, juicy Grubs.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I double checked with Moose juuuust to be sure. He said he def likes my chest sans hair, especially since his has enough for both of us. LOL

    ReplyDelete

Oh Yeah! Comments make my DAY!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

The occasional visitor from REALLY far away is surprisingly satisfying.