A present of rhubarb from a friend’s garden

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cream, gratin, postaday2013, potatoes, rhubarb, swiss cheese

You have to appreciate a lady when she promises you rhubarb from her garden with a copy of her recipe for rhubarb chutney and the very next day, she delivers said rhubarb and recipe. Bonnie is a peach! I will have to make her recipe so that I can tell her at next month’s French club meeting that it was yummy. I should try to make something else and deliver her some of whatever I come up with. While she was at the door, I was in the process of peeling potatoes because I decided to make a gratin Dauphinois or gratin of potato. It has been the perfect weather for baking and roasting things because it’s either drizzling, cloudy or sunny at a cool 69 degrees. I am not complaining, I love the roasting and the baking, I am only getting concerned for my plants because there is such a thing as too much rain and they can drown. Tomorrow they are predicting between 3 and 5 inches of rain, the grass in the park behind my house is flooded already, tomorrow won’t be pretty for the water logged meadow. Theoretically the next time we are due for sun will be on Saturday. My plants and I will be looking forward to Saturday. I do have to say that this spring has been really great in one aspect, I haven’t been plagued by May flies at all, between the rain and the wind, they were nowhere to be found this season. Hooray for that!

Real men do eat quiche

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cooking, ham, postaday2012, quiche, Sunday dinner, swiss cheese

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This was our Sunday dinner, a good old fashioned ham and Swiss quiche. My hubby requested the quiche mid afternoon and I said good idea. Quiche is very easy to make as long as you have all the ingredients on hand and if not, you have a grocery store near by. The pastry crust is very easy to put together, especially if you have a Cuisinart food processor. The ingredients for a flaky pastry dough is one cup of flour, 7 tablespoons of butter, 1/8 teaspoon of salt and 3 tablespoons of ice water, pulse all the ingredients together until the dough is just coming away from the sides of the bowl and you are done. Scrape the dough onto a piece of Saran Wrap and form it into a disc to put in the refrigerator for at least thirty minutes. This is for one pie crust, for two, you simply double the ingredients and when the dough is ready to roll out, you cut the dough in half with your knife.

Once you have rolled the dough out and lined both pie tins, the oven gets preheated to 400. I like to prepare each quiche separately to make sure that each quiche gets the correct amount of egg and cream. I start with the ham and cheese first, with both pie tins lined with the pastry dough, I layer the Swiss cheese and then the sliced ham and then in two bowls, I crack three eggs into each and I add one cup of heavy cream to each bowl, I grate some fresh nutmeg, add salt and pepper, and pour the cream and egg mixture onto the ham and cheese. Finally, I grate Swiss cheese over the top of each quiches and add a knob of butter to each as well. Into the oven they both go at 400, until they get golden brown on top which takes about 25 minutes and then I turn it down to 350 for an additional 10 minutes. Voila the quiches are ready.

Honestly this recipe couldn’t be easier, I have been making the quiche the same way for years. Why? Because they are so good, you really don’t need to change anything. I would only change the way I make quiche if I were to make a quiche with a different filling, other than that, this one is a keeper.

My hubby is going to take the second quiche with him to work for lunch and possibly dinner, he likes it that much. I hope that the baby boy stops by for a helping or two, because at least if he does, I know that he had something healthy to eat in his body.

More food and family

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cousins, dessert, eating, family dinners, family gatherings, food, postaday2012, spring rolls, swiss cheese, tomato salad, vietnamese spring rolls

By now you must be thinking that I have gone through all of my relatives and no, I haven’t just yet. Today we welcomed my cousin, her husband and their nine children, none of which are twins, at my Tantine’s house. She is the one who is my chauffeur’s mother and my mother’s sister, who is currently staying there as well. At 11:30 this morning my Tantine, Tonton, the baby girl and I got into Tantine’s car to help prepare for the arrival of two carloads of small human beings and their parents. We didn’t come empty-handed, my Tantine made a terrine of potatoes, tomato and zucchini with creme fraiche and swiss cheese, she also brought the roast beef, the bread and the apricot tart. Tantine L. at her house had made a tiramisu and a huge mushroom, avocado and tomato salad. She also spent all day Wednesday making Vietnamese spring rolls for all of us, for later today at dinner. The roast beef and the terrine were simply for lunch.

We sat down to eat, mind you we were 17 divided between two tables, at 12:30, we had the hors d’oeuvre of gratton on toast rounds, gratton is a type of pate, and cantaloupe. The salad was the appetizer, next came the roast beef and terrine, followed by cheese and salad and then the two desserts. My cousin Didier and Vivianne stopped by for dessert and left after coffee.

Since we were killing time until it was dinner time to get back to the business of eating, we played cards for a while and then went for a walk around the neighborhood. When we got back, it was time to sit back down and tackle the Vietnamese spring rolls, to be brief, there aren’t any left. We went through the spring rolls, the lettuce and the mint as if we hadn’t eaten just a few hours before. On top of that we finished what was left of the apricot tart and graduated to ice cream. I tell you it almost feels like I have entered in the French marathon of family dinners, I am not complaining, they are just too great to pass up. The food, the laughs and the conversation, it’s the best.