Salmon Quiche with Bacon, Asparagus and Goat Cheese (crustless)

Hmmm.  Facelift, you say?  Clearly, that seemed like work.

But!  While our gourmet dinner club flounders, I have an exciting new inspiration I'll be sharing soon that will hopefully kick-start my sharing in 2015!

What's going on now?  Well, my cooking group is having attendance issues--this is life for adults who work full time, try to go back to school and have, you know, lives beyond that.  I was gifted a trip to an excellent cooking school class booked in the new year and THAT'S very exciting.  And I've been talking about blogs a bunch for unrelated reasons.  It was all bound to come full circle.

In the mean time, have leftovers to get rid of?  I did.  (And not the Christmas kind.  Yet.)  Apparently two people don't take apart 2.5 lbs of salmon very quickly.  Quiches are great because they're incredibly durable, flexible, easy to transport and warm and generally just an extremely forgiving dish.

A note on the quiche itself: You're welcome to put this in a pie shell.  That's just never my favorite part and I'd rather shift those calories into delicious fillings.  Speaking of fillings, this quiche is salmon-heavy.  You could probably reduce the salmon by an ounce or even two and still end up with a very nice quiche.

Further, say you don't want salmon in here.  You cooked two chickens last Wednesday and you've got a carcass you need to strip.  Use that.  (Or, duh, that Christmas turkey.  I did one early turkey dinner already and some of it went into a version of this quiche with red peppers.)  And it's winter so you want to know why I inserted asparagus - go ahead and use peppers and mushrooms.  You don't like goat cheese.  Sub in swiss.  I think you see where I'm going here.

If you want to freeze the quiche, bake it, let it cool completely, and put it very well-wrapped (and flat; it will break or squish if you manipulate before frozen) into the freezer.  When the time comes, reheat from frozen at 325 for 20-30 minutes with a foil cover so it doesn't over-brown.



 Salmon Quiche with Bacon, Asparagus and Goat Cheese (crustless)

9 oz cooked salmon

4 rashers bacon

6-8 stalks asparagus

1 green onion, sliced thin

1/2 cup goat cheese

1 1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

5 eggs

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup milk

Preheat the oven to  375 F.

Break salmon into hunks (doesn't need to be precisely bite-sized; you'll cut it into servings as well).  Your asparagus stalks depend on how thick they are.  Eyeball it!  Then chop them into 1/2 inch sections.

Place salmon, bacon, veggies and cheese into one large bowl.  Don't break up your goat cheese too much--the real flavor impact of goat cheese will get lost if it's in tiny pieces.  Crack over the pepper and add salt.

In a second bowl, whisk eggs, cream and milk.  I was going for a mid-range cream consistency as there was extra whipping cream and we drink skim.  You could alternatively use 1/2 cup 10% cream OR I've even tried 5% when I realized I was nearly out of dairy and it worked just fine as well.  Mouthfeel will change, overall presentation or edibility of the dish will not.

Pour the whisked egg mixture over the other ingredients and stir to coat very gently.

Pour everything into a buttered 9" pie plate.  I use a pyrex dish and it comes out very nicely but you could put down parchment if you're concerned about sticking.

Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until the top is brown and the center isn't wiggling like custard.

If you chose to freeze the quiche, pop it in the freezer after it's come to room temperature.  Remember not to let it bend or get squished until it's frozen solid.  To reheat later,  use a throwaway pie plate and bake from frozen, covered in foil to keep from over-browning, at 400 for 25-30 minutes.

Cassoulet-Inspired Stew

For some reason a few years ago, I got obsessed with cassoulet.  Not sure why; occasionally, I just fixate on a dish.  I read about eight recipes and then seared some sausage and chicken in the same pot and made a soup.  

Authentic, non?

Over time, this cassoulet-inspired stew has taken on an ultra-flavorful life of its own.  There are so many flavor notes in this thing I barely know where to start.  As an added bonus, I will also tell you that if you’ve roasted a chicken lately, the two thighs and other remaining meat on your carcass will be a perfect amount of meat for this stew—and since you’re already cleaning off that carcass, throw it in a pot and get yourself some stock base too.

This stew is also chock-full of protein, which is important to me as I lift weights and muscle growth means lots of protein intake.  It’s also on the rich side—the sausage fat gets folded back into the sweating veggies but you can skim it easily when cold and the reheated portions get better and better.  Or, if you're really kicking it in the gym, enjoy your slick of savory yum.

Cassoulet-Inspired Stew

2 sausages, sliced in to ¼ inch rounds*

½ onion, diced

1 large carrot, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 ½ cups chicken stock

1/3 cup white wine

Bouquet garni  (several springs fresh parsley, 5-6 sprigs fresh thyme, 2 bay leaves)**

½ tsp celery seed

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 (19 oz) can white kidney beans***

1 ½ cups chopped, cooked chicken

Parmesan rind, optional

2 cups (loosely packed) rough chopped kale

Extra chopped parsley, for serving

Cook sausages in large soup pot on medium-low heat.  I didn’t specify because almost any type of sausage would work here—I prefer bratwurst as that sage-y stuff is my favourite.  Allow some fat to melt before the meat really gets its sear on.  When cooked, remove sausage rounds from the pot and set aside; retain rendered fat.  

Place onion, garlic and carrots into the pot and sweat for 8-10 minutes, or until they’re golden, soft, and their juices have cleaned up most of the brown scrummies on the bottom of the pot.

Return the sausage to the pot (and any accumulated plate juices); add the next six ingredients.  Bring the pot to a gentle simmer, uncovered, and cook for another 30 minutes, skimming occasionally.  Allowing it to stay uncovered means it will reduce just a little and thicken up.

In the last five minutes of cooking, grab your kale and stir it into the stew.  When it’s cooked down and wilted, pull the bouquet garni but if you’ve used parmesan rinds, leave them in until the soup’s done.  It’ll just ooze salty cheese taste into the soup indefinitely.

For serving, sprinkle on the extra parsley.  A crusty, seedy loaf goes really well with this broth.

*Tip: To make this easier and keep your knife less goopy, freeze sausage for approximately half an hour before slicing.

**Bouquet garni are just a bundle of herbs.  I place mine in a tea bag rather than tying them up as it’s neater.  I didn't chop the herbs into the soup to keep it a little clearer but that's definitely a fine alternative.

***You could substitute nearly any bean here but I prefer a light-colored variety for aesthetics.  In the version pictured above, I'd used canned chickpeas as they were what I had on hand.

Yes, You Heard Me--Lard!

I'm working hard to get into the head-to-tail movement.  I have enormous respect for the folks who already do this.  The fact is, however, that tripe and sweetbreads and brains still weird me out.  Most of you are probably not surprised and, in fact, are nodding your heads.  

What we can do as average home cooks who find lacy caul fat a little scary is make sure we make the most of what we do take home.  Figure out how to use the cheaper or unusual cuts to make them palatable (ham hocks); figure out how many ways the resultant by-products useful (jus) and never just chuck a bunch of bones (stocks).

For me, the next step involves getting into fat.

Is fat flavor?  Yes, absolutely.  Do I make involuntary faces biting into a quarter-inch hunk of white jello?  One hundred percent.

Don't get me wrong.  I love me some bacon.  Crisped-up fat edging a good pork chop is bliss.  Without tallow, hamburgers would be awfully sad, and a slick of schmaltz over roasted vegetables is a thing of bliss.

Quick lesson--

Schmaltz is chicken fat.
Tallow is beef fat.
Lard is lovely ol' pork fat.

I encourage you today to take stock of the excess fats in your kitchen.  They're easy to store, keep for a good long while, lend great flavors to your sear or sautee and have a medium-high smoke point.  That is to say, they'll burn long after butter, but you don't want to use them in a stir-fry.

Tallow skimmed off the top of cooled beef stock.

So where are the fats in your kitchen commonly found?

Real heritage pork chops, not the kind you find on sale for a dollar at your local chain grocery, have a good round of fat on them.  Even I, who like a little fat, do not want the whole quarter inch from those chops.  Cut it off and save it--what to do is coming.

Chicken fat off a roast can be saved.  Same with beef.  You may already leave the fat on the top of a bowl of homemade stock to seal it.  When you break it, do you just chuck the creamy layer on top?  You could skim that and hold on to it as well.  Fats from beef or chicken stocks are especially good used as the lubrication to soften your soup veggies in--you're adding a layer of flavor you're already trying to highlight in a chicken noodle or beef and barley.  I always boil my smoked ham hock before tearing it up for some Split Pea and Ham soup--the fat off the top of that cooled liquid has all the smokey, salty, piggy flavor of the original meat itself.  Why would you use vegetable oil when you can hug your diced onions with smoked hock taste?

Alright, you've sold me.  Now what do I do with those hunks of fat you told me to cut off my meat?

Well, friend, it's time to render fat.  This method can be used with any fats you have around but in my household, generally speaking pork is the product I buy with any "real" amount of excess fat on it that I'll remove before even cooking.

Rendering Fat

Note: With this scrap method, you will not have lard you can use to make pastry unless you like meat-flavored pastries.  Leaf lard is required from a pig to make snowy-white, non-meaty rendered lard and that's not what you'll be cutting off your porkchops.

fat
water
cheesecloth


You can do this with any amount of fat you like--photos here show the fat off of two well-fed pork chops.  Just two!  And I had enough resulting lard to slick a number of pans.

Take the fat you've removed from the chops and cut into small (a large dice is optimal for me) pieces.  Try to keep the pieces as uniform as possible; this will help an even rendering process.  The fat does not need to be completely meat-free; you don't have to scrape it clean. 

Place fat in a small pot and cover with at least an inch of water.  This doesn't need to be precise but it should be more generous than not.  Bring water to a gentle simmer.  Let the pot simmer, uncovered, for a while.

"A while" depends on the quantity of fat you're rendering.  Check it every twenty minutes or so to ensure it's not actually boiling--the water is there to insulate the fat with an even cooking temperature and render down the solids into smearable liquids.  The water eventually steams off and you're left with just the rendered lard.

You can tell the fat is rendered when it colors.  It will start to shrink and become golden just like fat you fry.  Little bits may float off and hang out at the surface.  Stir your pot once in a while to ensure the pieces aren't sticking to the bottom.

When the fat is totally shrunk and golden, you've rendered as much as you can out of it.  Place a cheesecloth over a sieve to ensure you catch even those little floating brown bits.  These would burn in further cooking and shouldn't be a part of your final lard.  Remember that fat can get hotter than boiling water--be very careful at this stage.  Pour the fat through the sieve into a heat-safe bowl.  Give the solids enough time to be cool enough to touch.  Bundle the cheesecloth with the rendered hunks inside and give it a twist over your bowl to get all your liquids out.

Cover with plastic wrap pressing directly down on the lard and move to the fridge.

If you're worried you didn't evaporate all the water, in a few hours, you'll find out.  The water will rise to the top of the fat and form beads on the surface.  Pour this off and put the plastic wrap back down.  This will have no ill effects.

Your lard can be kept in the fridge for a month or two or freeze for more extended life.  

Or don't wait--go fry some potatoes.

Want to read up more on fat?  Check out the highly-educational Fat by Jennifer McLagan or this love-song, Schmaltz by the omnipresent Michael Ruhlman.