Thursday, October 31, 2002

Quiche aux Epinards. And thus, with a fond adieu, we bid farewell to quiches.  Next week, we move on to the heartier charms of gratins.  It’s been lovely. The spinach quiche turned out quite excellently, if I do say so myself.  I used frozen spinach, because JC says: “Although it never has quite the lovely taste of fresh spinach, frozen spinach is certainly one of the great inventions.”  I had actually never used frozen spinach before -- spinach being one of the three zillion things I wouldn’t touch when I was young, and me coming to cooking all at once, flung head-on against the Martha/Alice Waters axis of freshness fascism.  And of course I wouldn’t use it for everything.  But for quiche filling it was perfectly respectable, and anything that saves me from cleaning spinach leaves is a good thing.  I let it thaw just slightly, then chopped the spinach block into squares, put it into a pan with some butter, and cooked a few minutes, covered at first to let it thaw out, then uncovered to let the water evaporate.  Ta da!  Spinach. Of course I’m skipping the pate brisee.  I’ve made it many times in the last two months, and except when something goes inexplicably, horribly wrong, it’s become just simple as pie – so to speak – to do.  Though this time I performed the final fraisage (that’s French for squooshing the dough across the counter with the palm of your hand to get the flakes of butter all spread out) with a certain sweet sadness.  Ah, quiche, how I will miss you! I did the prebaking of the crust, the beating of the eggs and cream, the mixing of the eggs with the spinach.  I poured the mixture into the crust, sprinkled the cheese and dots of butter on top, put it in the oven.  Came back twenty-five minutes later to a perfect golden-brown Quiche aux Epinards It was wonderful, custardy and spinachy and cheesy-brown on top, with perfect flakey crust.  Ah, the Art of French Cooking.  “Consider it mastered,” think I, conveniently disregarding for the moment the looming spectre of Lobster Thermidor.  Ho ho. Now it is Halloween – once the greatest of holidays, now a day like any other except that I’m sort of dressed like a bullfighter. Oh, and since we’re on the subject of random subjects: has anyone read the John Updike September 11th story in The Atlantic?  I’ve got one word – god-fucking-awful.  My husband, always the charitable one, could only think maybe the whole thing was an enormous experimental literary comment – “Hey, don’t feel bad, I’m a famous writer, and I can’t write anything interesting or useful about September 11th either.” Sorry about that.  Had to vent.    7:56:38 AM    comment []