Spinach-Mushroom Quiche with "Chicken" and Waffles

This dish will be a little southern for many of you.

Chicken and waffles is a Georgia tradition. While some of you can't imagine putting the two together, until you've tried it, this is a case of something you can't deny.

Of course, we're not using real chicken, we're using the meat-substitute Quorn. As we've mentioned before, it is made from the roots of mushrooms.

If I'm a little inexact about the ingredients this week, my wife is trying out the Trader Joes that just opened up 2 blocks away, so I'm not sure what I'll be cooking with.

Spinach-Mushroom Quiche

For each quiche we need:

• Frozen Pie Crust
• 3/4 cup half and half
• 2 eggs
• 1pkg defrosted frozen spinach (or cooked down fresh spinach)
• 1 can mushrooms (or 1/2 pound fresh mushrooms cooked)
• 1/2 lb shredded swiss cheese

First turn on the oven to 350F. Crack all the eggs and pour the half and half into a cup. Beat vigorously.

Stir up the spinach and mushrooms, and put into the pie crust. Sprinkle the cheese on, and then pour enough of the egg/dairy mixture to come somewhat short of the top of the quiche.

Bake for 45 minutes (will be slightly jiggly, but solid), then let the quiche set for 15-25 minutes before serving. (Unless you like volcanically hot scrambled eggs that are runny, in that case, serve immediately).

Fried "Chicken"

Bread according to the method mentioned in this post. I use a mixture of panko and normal bread crumbs this time. I make sure and put salt and pepper in the flour I use for this one. Then I pan fry these or deep fry them, depending on time and quantity, usually at 20 degrees below the smoke point of the oil I'm using, which is usually safflower or vegetable oil. If you do this recipe with *real* chicken, I recommend using a good chicken finger cook time/temperature, more like 5 minutes on each side at 340F, to make sure you don't die of undercooked chicken.

Waffles

Almost straight out of I'm Just Here for More Food, I use the buttermilk waffle recipe, however I use 50/50 whole/white flower.

Serve with the "chicken" on top of the waffle, drizzled in syrup. The quiche goes on the side.

--Michael

Dinner tonight after a suprising convesation.

My wife and I had a strange conversation last night that I didn't expect to ever have. From the recipes given below, I am guessing you know what it was. I'm sorry if I'm brief today. I'll recap how dinner went later in the week as why I'm changing back to a more normal diet.

Fillet Mignon
Lemon Aperagus
Bacon with Macaroni and Cheese
Applesauce

I know what some of you are thinking: I owe him a steak dinner.

--Michael

Hot Hot Hashbrowns, Scrambled Eggs and Veggy Sausage

Today we're serving breakfast at dinner, serving hashbrowns, scrambled eggs with cheese, veggy sausage links, and french toast.

We cook all the french toast per Alton Brown's method. We don't immediately cook the toast in the oven, instead waiting until right before dinner.

We're going to serve the french toast with Boysenberry jam and powdered sugar.

The sausage links have been covered before on this blog and are popular with meat eating and non-meat eating folk alike.

We're going to make the eggs in the electric fryer. This doesn't mean we're frying them, we're just using it because it is a nice, temperature controlled device that just happens to be nonstick (a must-have for egg dishes). We will put 1.5 eggs per person in here (right before dinner, rounding up) and stir in a tablespoon of milk (or leftover half and half) per person. I make this sound much more exact then it is in actuality, where I just pour some in. :o). First off, you turn the fryer on to 200 or so. You put the eggs in and let them start to cook onto the pan. Then you use a spatula to stir them off. As the eggs cook, they will solidify in the pan. Continue to stir intermittently. When the eggs look just a little saucey, take them off (they will continue to solidify and dry out after coming off the heat).

For the hashbrowns, we'll cook them in another pan. We're going to put some peppers from the "Chiles with Adobo Sauce" cans you see in the store to give the potatoes a little heat. Chopping up the peppers into little strips, we'll stir them in with the hashbrowns before cooking, letting them brown with the potatoes.

--Michael

Cheese and Pepper Enchiladas, Fried Jalapeños, and Sauteed ZucchiniCorn

Today we're making food from Mexico.

Main Dish: Cheese and Pepper Enchiladas

This is out of Sundays at the Moosewood Diner. We wanted something simple that dealt with the fact many fresh veggies are not yet available in stores. We use the fresh corn tortillas that are sold throughout the US. They come in a stack and cost about 2 cents each.

Inside they will be filled with chilies, bell peppers, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, cottage cheese and onions. They will be doused in a homemade enchilada sauce made from onions, coriander, cumin bell pepper and chilies.

We will serve them on a bed of rice (as suggested).

Fried Jalapeños

This is an amazingly simple dish stolen from Willy's Mexican Grill. They have something on their menu they called jalapeño poppers. This is a misnomer. A jalapeño popper is a stuffed jalapeño that is fried. What they serve at Willy's isn't stuffed (or even breaded).

They slice longitudinally through the jalapeño in two different directions, leaving parts all connected at the stem, dangling in 4 parts. You then take this and throw it in a fryer (stem and all). You then let it fry till soft, then remove, dry some residual oil off of it then salt and squirt lime juice over it. They're delicious and the frying lessens the heat of the jalapeño quite a bit. They are priced at 50 cents at Willy's, which is quite a bit of markup from my calculation.

Sauteed Zucchini Corn

After not finding something simple enough to complement this rather simple meal, we decided to take to the internets and look for something tasty or tasty enough once adapted. We found this misnamed dish. There is nothing slightly casserolish about this dish, but I think it can be turned into something tasty.

First off, while butter would be tasty and work well with the corn (evoking the "buttered corn on the cob" idea), I think the dish would be just as tasty if lighted up a bit. So we're going to substitute olive oil here for the butter.

As "fresh" tomatoes aren't ripe, we elect to used canned diced tomatoes (which are). As we're going to lighten up and simplify the dish, a little bit of acidity in the dish (from the tomatoes) isn't a bad thing, so we're going to half the sugar. In addition, we're going to serve it with ribbons of chopped cilantro on top.

--Michael

What's up with Sunday Dinner

Every Sunday, my wife and I invite 6-18 people over for dinner and other social things. Here is how it happens:

Vegetarian cooking is *cheap*. I can feed all those people with much less than you'd spend on a restaurant for 4 meat eaters, and I cook better than most restaurants that would charge that much for those meals.

My wife and I, both being vegetarians, cook something vegetarian for everyone. We do strive for certain goals when doing so:

• Make dishes from many unprocessed items
• Make dishes that use an interesting veggie or two
• Use spices and herbs in a traditional way
• Make at least one dish that doesn't blow their "what the hell is this?" quota.

We often use cook books. More on this in another post

As this Sunday is the Superbowl in addition to our normal activity, I'll probably try to make something that doesn't require me to step into the kitchen too often to finish.

We're firm believers of mis en place, which is French for "cut everything up and put it into a bunch a bowls before you start cooking". It makes cooking a much more sensual experience to do it this way, as all you're doing at first is "cranking widgets". Your brain relaxes the way that it can on a long walk, as all you have to do is chop, measure, etc. Some would call this "Zen". I call it quite enjoyable. You can smell, feel, and taste the ingredients as you do this lite work. Sometimes we mis en place the whole meal, other times, we do it dish by dish. Sometimes we cheat, and don't do it (this happens most often with baked goods).

Mis en place is a fundamental step that saves time (even counting extra dish time), and reduces the stress of cooking. It clears the mind to do what is most important: Cook things well.

Timeline of Sunday:

• Morning somtime: Wake up
• Morning sometime: shower, etc
• Morning-2pm: Goof off, work on business/websites/HOA/Possible shopping if not already done for the week
  
• 2pm-5pm: Cook as much as can be cooked, and clean up around the house
  
• 5pm-7pm: Play with friends
• 7pm-8pm: Finish cooking, set out utensils and dishes (This step is often "put X in oven, put Y in microwave, go play with friends")
  
• 8pm-12: Play with friends (Alexa sneaks off to throw stuff in the dishwasher many weeks here)
  

Before I go any further, I'm going to reveal something that some of you are going to stick your nose up at so far you smack the back of your head on the ground:

I regularly use a microwave in my cooking.

If you find yourself in this group, I apologize for your mis-education. The microwave is a valid cooking device, just like the stove and oven are. You usually don't want it to be the *only* way to impart heat when you cook a particular dish, but you do want it to be involved in the process for many foods.

The microwave doesn't:

1. Brown food [something you usually want to happen as it tastes delicious]
   
2. Allow you to use the metal pans [if it did, you could use fewer dishes]
   
3. Evenly heat all food [microwaves heat water in food, not the other stuff]
4. Heat the kitchen up a lot [a blessing in Atlanta]
5. Let the delicious smells out of the food into the house
   
6. Require oil/fat to transfer heat to the food [usually a good trait]
   

The microwave does:

1. Heats foods with even water distribution quite quickly [good trait]
   
2. Allow you to warm things without further browning [sometimes a good trait]
   
3. Work completely independent of the oven [good trait for cooking more than one thing]
   
4. Melt things better than any stove ever dreamed of. [great trait]
   
5. Get potatoes dry and hot enough they'll brown by another method sometime before the sun goes red giant. [great trait: potatoes are my nemesis]

So if you don't try to use it to cook everything, it makes *great* food.

So here is an example dish that uses the microwave (when prepared for these Sunday Dinners):

Veggie Sausages

1. We wash our hands
   
2. We buy 2-3 packs of Gimme Lean veggie sausage. We put it in a bowl, and sprinkle with kosher salt and cumin.
3. We form into links (aiming for a triangular prism shape rather than a cylinder)
4. We wash the gooey sausage off our hands
5. We melt a 1/3 of a stick of butter in the pan (we want the browning, otherwise we'd use the microwave)
6. When its almost melted, we put 5 links in to cook.

Aside: Why only 5? This is a secret many people don't get. The element or flame on your stove doesn't heat the food. The heating source heats the pan, which heats the food. Setting the (relatively) cool food onto the hot pan makes the heat transfer to the food (Think when someone puts their cold hands on your warm body in winter and holds them there. Same principle). It takes some time for that part of the pan to heat back up (just like you take some time to heat back up after the unwilling hand warming incident above). If you put too many bits in the pan, the pan won't reheat quickly, it will heat unevenly, and some parts might not get cooked (which is a huge problem if this was real meat). This principle is why most people who make fried food at home think fried food is oily: more on that another time.

7. We cook each of the 3 sides, letting it brown. We pull off and drop into a plastic container on the counter (favor small containers over large ones, even if you have to use more). We pour out then brown new butter if the old is looking burnt.
   


8. We do this for all the other bits, being careful to not leave the pan empty for long (the butter will burn).
   
   
9. We grind some fresh black pepper over the food.
   
   
10. We let the food rest in the little plastic containers for a few minutes
    
    
11. We put food away in fridge until just before dinner
    
    
12. We put food in microwave, then put on a serving plate and serve it.
    
    

Principles in action: We used spices to accent a dish. We browned food that needed browning, but did not fear to reheat via a non-browning method. We served something not too unhealthful.

Try this sausage yourself even if you are a carnivore. It is much lower calorie and fat than real sausage, and tastes delicious and well spiced.

--Michael