Basic Cheese Quiche

It's December Potluck at I Heart Cooking Clubs. I've picked a quiche recipe and a flaky pie crust recipe from Mark Bittman's  How to Cook Everything. This is my basic "go to" book when I'm looking for a basic recipe. I love the instructions and explanations that make the recipes almost full proof.  There is still room for human error as I will explain.
 
The pie crust is made with the help of a food processor, but realizing that not everyone owns one, Bittman suggests alternative methods. In the past, I've used a pastry cutter or two knives to mix the flour and butter. Bittman describes a mixing method using your hands, "...cut cold butter into bits and rub it and the flour very quickly between your fingers, picking it up, rubbing it and dropping it."  He further explains the basic principal of making a flaky crust. Of the methods I've tried, using your hands is the most fun and this will probably be the method I use in the future.
 
For the filling, you have a choice of milk, cream or half & half. You also have your choice of cheeses. I added some  pre-cooked broccoli to the filling for added color and nutrition. Even though I used a deep dish 9" pie pan, I had too much filling. You would have thought that I would have respected the law of physics, but alas, I didn't want to waste a bit of the rich cheese filling. I soon realized my mistake as the filling spilled over the edge of the crust.

Oh well. I wiped up the mess. I still had a full quiche. It was delicious. My older daughter said it was the best quiche I had ever made and the only one she ever liked. (Gee, I always thought she like the dish. Who Knew?)

 You can find the recipes in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, page 743 and 686. I couldn't find a link to the recipe on-line, but this is a worthwhile book to own or borrow. Check out what other delicious dishes other cooks made for the December potluck at IHCC.  

TWD & BWJ: French Strawberry Cake

I was really excited to bake the French Strawberry Cake. This recipe is hosted by Sophia and Allison and you can check out their blogs if you want the recipe...or, as always, you can check out the book, Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan. 

I was thinking this would be a great recipe this month. We had much to celebrate. There was my husband's birthday, but he likes Mocha cake. And then there was my older daughter's high school graduation but she loves a good lemon tart.

So, today, the day before TWD/BWJ blog day, I made the cake. I would say we are celebrating the first full weekday of summer vacation. It was the first Monday that we could all sleep in and I had the whole day to bake this cake.

Reading through the recipe, I thought this would be one terrific recipe. As the title suggests, it features strawberries and cream frosting. Yum.  Unfortunately, this cake was not as spectacular as I  had hoped. The recipe did say that the cake is "sturdy, firm, adaptable...and drier than most American cakes."  And indeed, the genoise I baked certainly was sturdy and dry. I have to ask myself, "Is it me?" or was that just the nature of the cake?  I just don't know genoise well enough to know the answer. 

I did like the strawberries and the cream frosting, so I'm sure these recipes will find their way into my repertoire.

The Cheesecake Holiday

This past weekend, those of us in the USA celebrated memorial day and this year, those of us who are Jewish celebrated the holiday of Shavuot, also known as the Festival of First Fruits and the Festival of Weeks. It is one of the three agricultural festivals. We also celebrate the day that the Jews received the Torah or Five Books of Moses. It is the custom to eat dairy meals on this holiday. For many this means blintzes and/or cheesecakes. Thus in our family, we also call it the Cheesecake Holiday. I have a feeling that we are not alone in this. 

Like many food bloggers, I too have a collection of cookbooks and cooking magazines that are underused. Of all the many cheesecake recipes I have, I chose the one from Fine Cooking magazine, from April/May, 2010. The article provides a basic recipe and then gives you numerous ways to improvise. The link to the article is here. Just follow the steps in the interactive and at the end you will be rewarded with the recipe.

Because I make cheesecake so infrequently, I decided to make a very basic cake. I used two packages of regular cream cheese, one package of neufchatel and 2/3 cup of light sour cream. I also used low fat graham crackers for the crust. The texture came out rich and creamy. I also prepped some strawberries to serve on top. For those of you who are taking part in the Tuesdays with Dorie/ Baking with Julia blogging group, the recipe for the berries is the one we will be using for the French Strawberry cake. Mix a little sugar with strawberries, let sit and then mash up.

For those of you who would like more information about Shavuot, the link is here.