New Friands

Second version, with the blackberry.

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coconut friands - French Fridays w/ Dorie

Awesome, but when I ate the one little scrap that broke off of a "cakelette", the first thing I thought was, "coconut macaroon!". That's just what these are like. The only difference between these Friands and a traditional Macaroon is the flour and butter, which does affect the density/texture.

Dorie's recipe says to whisk in each ingredient, one at a time. I whisked the egg whites, no problem. I then tried to whisk in the coconut and immediately realized I'd have to change to another "whisking" implement.

coconut in the egg whites

finished "batter"

This was much too thick to mix in with anything but a spoon or spatula, so I switched to a spatula and had a much more pleasant time of things. Then in went the sugar, flour, vanilla, salt, and then the whole stick of melted butter. I did put the whole thing in and will probably put in less next time. I haven't eaten one yet, so maybe it is necessary, but there was so much butter oozing out of the cakes when I pulled them from the oven, I can't imagine it is. Will be interested to hear what other FFWD members say about it.

I topped each with a thin slice of strawberry before baking. I was planning on using fresh blackberries and raspberries but didn't buy them in time.

I have a feeling this is another recipe that I'll be making again. They were so easy and look so beautiful and elegant. I've seen other people's friands around the web and want to use different shapes for the molds next time. They'd make a lovely platter on a buffet.

Mac & Cheese Dinner

Pasta w/ cheddar & gorgonzola, sauteed sweet potatoes & onions, baked with prosciutto and crumb topping, served with roasted cauliflower cutlets.

Got a 10 on Shara's scale (and 10 was the best), along with a thumbs up.

Bobby Flay Inspired Dinner

roasted salmon on a bed of citrus/cilantro slaw w/ guacamole & mango puree

sardine rillettes - French Fridays w/Dorie

I really couldn't imagine what this would taste like, similar to other FFWD members. I happen to be a big fan of the canned sardine, so I wasn't scared, but how to make a meal out of this was my challenge. I had one can of sardines and decided to make 1/2 the recipe, since it was just the three of us and I couldn't imagine we'd want to eat this by the spoonful. Shara, it turns out, would have been happy to! Alan, who doesn't love sardines, still liked it but not nearly as much as we did. We took Dorie's suggestion and had it on Triscuits but Wheat Thins were also good. The Triscuits actually were best - their flavor didn't interfere with the rillettes and the Wheat Thins were a little too sweet in comparison.

For the rest of the meal, we had picky, party type food. I put out a little bowl of cornicions and olives and had a pile of Mesclun on each plate with some cucumber spears. After much research I let my nose be the final judge and used the leftover, decorated Easter eggs to make deviled eggs. We decorated the eggs using various natural dyes - onion skins, turmeric, purple cabbage, so I wasn't worried about anything bad seeping through. I did get rid of the eggs I let soak overnight, so I wasn't completely crazy. They were in a fairly cool place on Easter as well. It turned out to be a very good meal, though I was oniony most of the night and I only used scallions! I also used some dried dill. The flavor of the dill didn't stand out, but I can't be sure it would have made a difference leaving it out, so I'd do the same next time. And there will be a next time. This is perfect cocktail party food.

our natural-dyed Easter eggs

 eggs boiling in purple cabbage and grape hyacinth 

eggs boiling in turmeric and annato seed

light cream cheese, dill and smoked paprika

sardine rillettes

asparagus & bits of bacon - French Fridays w/ Dorie

I'm hoping not to eat too much asparagus because I don't want to get sick of it as I normally do this time of year, but boy, this is a great way to eat it. Alan, who really doesn't care for asparagus unless it's roasted to a crisp thought this didn't even taste like asparagus. I used white asparagus since it was on sale and looked very pretty. I needed to peel them because the skin was very tough. However it peeled very easily with a vegetable peeler. I then cut them in pieces about an inch or so and steamed them in my Pampered Chef microwave steamer. While they were steaming I sauteed some chopped onion in a little bacon fat. I had cooked bacon earlier in the week to use in a broccoli salad and then on pizza. Really gearing up for Passover with all of it! Which is what I was thinking as I sauteed the onion and added in the crumbled bacon - at least I didn't make it right on Passover. I had some lemon cut open already from the broccoli salad and added the juice right to the onions along with a bit of walnut oil. There were so many seeds in the lemon, that made it into the pan, fishing them out was the part of this recipe that took the longest time. It was really a quick dish to throw together and the flavors all worked perfectly. Maybe next time I'll add some toasted walnuts. Another keeper!

Keeping with thinking of Passover, I found Smitten Kitchen's Raspberry Coconut Macaroons last weekend and knew i had to make them. I loved that she doesn't like really sugary macaroons and mixing in the raspberry is genius. I didn't get raspberries but blackberries instead. I used unsweetened coconut, about 3 cups, and maybe 1 1/2 cups of regular flake coconut. I stuck with her recommendation for 2/3 cup sugar and then mixed in the 1/2 pint blackberries, almond extract, and 3 egg whites. I played around with the size of the cookie and think the larger ones give more texture variation. The little ones look so cute though! My mother didn't want me to bring any to her house for the holiday because she is already planning on several desserts, but I have to share these with the family. I'll also be bringing a bunch to church for Easter Sunday. No one signed up to bring goodies, so we're all going to chip in.

sort of icky looking, but berries were very juicy

Forgot to mention the ice cream concoction Shara and I thought up together. After hearing about Ben & Jerry's Banana Peanut Butter Greek Yogurt flavor, I thought we could do the same at home. I suggested taking vanilla frozen yogurt and mashing in bananas and swirling in peanut butter. Shara did one better and suggested Nutella. Yeah, Baby! We'll make that again. And maybe play around with other mix-ins too.

toasty, crispy, berry goodness!

crab & grapefruit salad - French Fridays w/ Dorie

I had been collecting ingredients for this over the week and today I finally picked up a can of crab meat at the market. The weather in the North East was practically hot last week. Perfect for a summery salad. This week it's been rainy and cold. I had a tough time getting excited for this dish but persevered to the delight of my family.

 The recipe couldn't be simpler, but the extended drying time for the grapefruit sounded a bit tedious. Of course, being me, I skipped that step and can't imagine it made a difference.  I thought it would be easiest to cut up the grapefruit by splitting it in 1/2 and running a knife around the inside, then in-between the segments. That's how my mom taught me to serve it (with a little sugar on top for me of course). I took out the pieces with a spoon and laid them in a paper towel lined strainer. We were supposed to dry these for at least two hours, but I couldn't understand the logic behind that when lemon juice is tossed into the salad. It's not supposed to be wet, but some moisture is nice and after adding a few spoonfuls of grapefruit juice as well, it was still a little dry. The color of the grapefruit was a bit pale, so I added in a blood orange. Next time I'd mix the juices, mint, salt & pepper, and Tabasco separately so it would incorporate better and not mush up the crab. I would also like to try it with avocado. After chopping and segmenting, we ended up with a tasty and refreshing dinner salad.

To go along with the salad I tried another recipe from the book I've been wanting to try. It's called Socca and is apparently pretty popular, as I just found out from doing a quick web search. David Lebovitz had a post with the recipe on his site. That part we didn't like so much. Dorie recommends stirring in chopped, fresh rosemary and David says to use Cumin instead. Since I have a couple cups of chickpea flour left, I'm willing to try this again. I didn't get the blackened blisters that are hallmarks of the crepe and I expect that will change the taste considerably.

Socca broiling

cocoa sablés - part deux

Made the second batch on Saturday. They came out lovely. I decided to slice all of these much thinner and like the results. The first batch was too thick, even for ice cream sandwiches.

cocoa sablés - French Fridays w/ Dorie

Cooling Cocoa Sablés

Everyone loves cookies and I rarely bake cookies if it's not Christmastime. To be honest, I still have Christmas cookies in the freezer. That's not to say I don't love cookies, I just don't love them as much as I love ice cream. But on to the sablés. Sablé translates to sand, which comes from the texture of the cookie. I found an audio translation at http://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-french/sable, since I kept making my 7 year old laugh each time I'd try to say it. I think I was channeling Pee Wee.

The ingredients are very similar to shortbread - butter, sugar, flour. The texture was completely different and I'm sure it's because I didn't use the extra 1/2 stick of butter and had planned on adjusting the flour but ended up adding a little extra cocoa and didn't really decrease the flour enough.

Very soft butter, given our 80 degree day!

I don't think this is what they mean by sandy texture

I don't think it made that much of a difference in the finished product. I did check out a couple of other FFWD people and one showed dough that was soft enough to roll out. Mine was hardly that soft. In fact, I had to add in a bit of water to get it to come together, like a pastry dough. That did work and I got it rolled into two logs - different sizes because the thought of turning these into ice cream sandwiches, as suggested in Around My French Table, sounded intriguing.

Tomorrow evening I'm going to bake the second half and make them thinner and not coat the tops with the sugar, but just on the sides, because I would like to make mini ice cream sandwiches to bring to a dinner on Saturday. I did need to give them a try and started to crumble a couple of the small ones into a bowl and these were so crumbly one of them exploded and went all over the counter. I managed to keep most of it in the bowl and it made a nice mix in for my mint chip ice cream. The chocolate flavor was nice and they had a good vanilla flavor to them as well. I really like the color of the special dark Hershey's cocoa.

Rolled, sliced and ready to sugar

Counter covered with "sablé" crumbs

cheese soufflé - French Fridays w/ Dorie

I've made soufflé before. I've made sponge cake before. I'm not scared of the egg white. I am scared of hot and cold and cooking eggs when they're not supposed to be cooked. I'm also usually in a hurry (rushed), so I wanted to give myself time for this recipe. I sort of succeeded. I separated the eggs in the morning, taking care of one task that can be a bit time consuming. I thought I read the recipe thoroughly and saw that I'd need about an hour to bake it. What I didn't realize was I'd need 10 minutes to cook the base and about 10 minutes to let it cool before adding the yolks. The base didn't take the full 10 minutes to make. I also skipped straining the sauce and heated the milk in the microwave. It was the cooling part I wasn't sure about. I put the pan on an ice pack to speed up the process and it did get it down a bit. I also put in 1/2 the cheese, which was just out of the refrigerator. When I was able to touch the bottom of the pan I figured it wasn't hot enough to cook the yolks, so I added those and then the rest of the cheese. For seasoning, I skipped the nutmeg because I put in roasted Szechuan pepper salt for flavoring. Something was telling me that nutty, toasty, roasted flavor would be good. I was thinking of browning the butter but forgot about that idea and added the flour before I could do it, so the pepper salt made up for that mistake!

before egg yolks

after egg yolks

The egg whites beat up in no time and six whites is a lot! I went with my instinct on how much to beat these. I never see "shiny" as recipes suggest, unless there's added sugar. I beat until it stood up tall. Then I added the third to the sauce and mixed it in thoroughly before adding the rest. This is where you have to use judgement as well. There was a definite texture difference between the batter on the bottom and the batter on the top. I wanted it to be the same but didn't want to deflate the whites. I settled on getting most of it to be the same and when I poured it into the soufflé dish, the batter from the bottom of the pan sunk quite a bit in the middle, where I was pouring into (if this makes sense). To fix this, I did a few extra folds of the batter in the dish. I forgot about doing the fancy cap by running a knife in a circle around the middle, but it didn't matter. The folding seemed to take care of this because I didn't worry about making a flat top but just getting it into the over quickly.

As suggested I didn't even look at it until after 30 minutes had passed. At this point, it was getting close to 7 PM, when dance class ends. I was a little worried it wouldn't be done by the time Alan and Shara got home, but then I was also worried they'd be late and the soufflé would be overdone! I don't like having to time the serving so precisely. When they came home, it was ready to be served. I told everyone I was getting dinner on the table. I made a delicious strawberry salad to serve along-side and had that plated and on the table. I wish I took a picture of that. I took the delicious strawberry balsamic vinegar (syrup) and mixed it with walnut oil, a little Dijon mustard, salt, and lots of pepper, tossed in torn leaf lettuce, sliced strawberries and topped it with steamed asparagus. I was going to roast the asparagus but couldn't open the oven for 30 minutes while the soufflé was setting up!

So everything was ready to go. I had turned the oven down to 350 about 5 minutes before they came home and was itching to get this thing on the table. I told everyone dinner was ready and no one came. I then said they need to sit down so I can serve this and ooh and aah appropriately. They did and we loved it. Shara actually loved the salad most! It was much richer than it looks. I used Kraft low fat Swiss slices and sliced into think strips, so there were ribbons of cheese throughout. I'm always surprised by the richness of soufflés. If you make the bechemel ahead of time, this could easily be a normal weeknight dinner, but add in some chopped shrimp or crab - yummy dinner party fare!

Didn't want to wait to get the picture in case it fell! It was pretty sturdy though.

Roti

Last night I was making a very flavorful Moroccan stew and wanted something to go with it but not rice. I thought flat bread would be a good accompaniment but didn't have enough time to let anything rise. Sounds like Passover's just around the corner! Close to the Middle East is India and the recipe for Roti sounded perfect. It took 12 minutes to prep and 10 minutes to cook. I had all the ingredients and it was made with all whole wheat flour! I will certainly make these again, but will add a good deal more salt and/or other flavorings.

Pi Day

I know, I have to jump on any cute bandwagon and how could I not start a new tradition of making (and eating) pie on Pi day. This morning I hurried and got the dough and vanilla pudding made for a banana cream pie. I really like the taste of a whole wheat crust and looked for a recipe that I could use a little less butter and thought yogurt may be a substitute. I looked in Rosie's pie and pastry bible for a crust using yogurt and she actually had one. The amount of butter was the same and the yogurt replaced the water and vinegar. I still cut down a little on the butter. I think I should have put in more yogurt from the beginning and ended up over-mixing it. The flavor was good, but it was a little hard, not flaky. I also used beans for the first time to keep the crust from puffing up. Rosie suggested using a coffee filter to hold the beans and that worked very well. Some of the butter soaked into the filter though.

melted chocolate covering bottom of the crust

I made the crust while dinner was baking and the crust didn't have proper time to cool before being filled. I do believe when baking is rushed, a price is paid. The price paid for this one was a runny filling, since I threw the ingredients into a pot, ten minutes before having to leave for the bus stop. I didn't even measure the cornstarch and now realize I should have used more. However, it was really yummy - put a layer of melted chocolate on the crust to keep it crunchy, drizzled lemon juice on the bananas so they wouldn't turn brown, and the crust design turned out very pretty, I think. 

Shara even liked it. At first she was very skeptical about not having a chocolate base for the bananas, but when she smelled the vanilla pudding, she realized it was the right choice. She ate her whole piece. 

saint-germain-des-pres onion biscuits - French Fridays w/ Dorie

What a quick recipe. Last night I got home from work, thinking Alan had to leave for a meeting at 6 pm. Shara had to do a homework project that gave examples of measuring devices. I thought I'd kill three birds with one stone and make the FFWD recipe, show how I use measuring tools in my hobby, and get dinner on the table in less than an hour. Since the meeting didn't actually start until 7:30, I didn't have to rush as much as I thought but still got it done in relatively little time.

I used my 1/2 cup measuring cup to get the correct amount of chopped onions. Showed how I measured out the butter using the markings on the side of the wrapper and started in with the measuring spoons when it was clear that Shara wasn't interested. Oh well, I tried. What I did manage to do successfully was make some mighty tasty biscuits! I'd put in more onion next time and maybe even add some garlic. The rest of it was great though. I only had skim milk and used 1/2 white flour and 1/2 whole wheat. The color was off from the wheat, but the taste was fine. I was actually surprised they rose as much as they did. I thought I may have over-mixed the dough, but apparently not.

Really in a rush - didn't even flour the board

I did use the more efficient cutting method - a knife instead of a biscuit cutter, but cut them in triangles to give some visual appeal. They made the perfect side for our quick scrambled eggs w/ spinach, onions and cheddar dinner.

Roasted Salmon w/ Lentils - French Fridays w/ Dorie

Last week we were on vacation and didn't even attempt to complete the FFWD dish, yet I will because it was French Onion Soup, one of my favorites. You can read all about the trip at my more personal blog. This week I'm way behind on everything, having come home Sunday night and working all week. As of this minute, I'm actually out of milk, have no idea if there are eggs, and have been going through the freezer for dinners. Alan even chipped in and made a wonderful tuna noodle casserole that we've been enjoying most of the week as well, and just finished last night.

The issue with the Roasted Salmon is a timing thing. I think fish has to be fresh, if you can get it that way. Since I can, and often do get very fresh salmon around here, I'm going to make this tonight and will be late in posting. Roast salmon happens to be one of my go-to meals, and Dorie's lentils are my new recipe of choice for prepping these interesting little legumes. I've tried other recipes where they taste too healthy and turn out mushy and rather unappealing, but her recipe is great. They're almost al dente and have great flavor, I think due to the one little clove added to the pot. More details will follow tomorrow.

Tomorrow, actually now. Last night we made the Salmon and all of us loved it. As I mentioned above, Dorie's lentil recipe is the one I've been making for some time now, but I never thought to puree it and make it into a sauce. The texture was great and Alan commented that he really liked the flavor of the lentils with the salmon. I agreed and Shara ate hers up too! It was hearty and didn't need the roasted broccoli and bread that I served on the side, but I was starving so it was fine with me. The bread was also good for getting the last bit of lentils off the plate!

Since these were recipes I've made before, I made a couple of small changes. I needed to buy more lentils and the only ones I could find were the standard brown or red. I got the red and added them to the 3/4 cup of green I still had. In the end, the green ate up the red so there was no color difference in the finished product. The other change was to add some seasoning to the salmon. My sister gave me a great sesame seed seasoning mix for fish that I put on the salmon. I wasn't sure how it would work out, but it was perfect. I think she got it at Marshal's. It's called "Victoria Taylor's Seasonings" - toasted sesame ginger seasoning: sesame seeds, ginger, black sesame seeds, garlic, sea salt, red pepper, toasted sesame oil.

Shortcut: rather than take out some of the lentils and broth to puree, I just took out the clove and carrots and cut them up. Then I took my immersion blender and pureed the onions and some of the lentils. I added back in the carrots and boiled down the lentils a bit. I don't know the texture was supposed to be, but we really thought this was fine.

The next day I took the leftover lentils and put them on top of baby spinach, popped them in the microwave for a couple of minutes and had a great lunch.

salmon and chorizo without pasta - french fridays w/ dorie

Mussels are in the recipe from the cookbook but when they didn't have them at the fish truck I go to, I tried to come up with a bon ideal and, since my daughter's favorite fish is salmon, though, salmon should work. The recipe isn't anything too crazy. It's a tomato based fish dish with added chorizo for the main flavoring, other than the seafood. I've actually made similar before with swordfish, olives and orange for flavors. I had ground chorizo in the freezer that I love to add to sauces like this, so threw in some of that and only used 1/2 the red pepper called for in the recipe. I also had some fennel stems & fronds in the freezer and something told me to use that too, so I did. I've been very aware of listening and following my gut instincts when cooking and making other decisions in life. It's really paid off.

This was our Valentines Day Dinner. What I hadn't counted on was that my daughter would be so sick with a cold that she wouldn't be at all interested in the meal and leave to go and find something else to eat. I also didn't count on not even tasting the chorizo or the red pepper. However, the salmon tasted wonderful. It was still a little soft, not at all over-cooked. I served this with the no-knead bread that I've fallen in love with, but cut off the "dark brown (burnt)" crust. I had also bought a very white Italian type bread for said daughter. Good thing too, because that's the only part of the meal she really liked! Poor kid - I don't think she understands that food tastes bad when you have a cold and it's not so much the food as not being able to smell it. Though she adamantly said she can smell everything! A glass of wine was also consumed. Not sure it enhanced the flavor of the meal, but it did help me enjoy my evening a little more.

Valentine's

My funny valentine is finding it hard to smile the past couple of days, but this breakfast did cause her to smirk. Shara lost her right eye tooth yesterday at lunch on the slightly stale rice crispy treat. This morning while eating an ice pop for her sore throat, she lost the one on the left!

Yes, Shara started with a cold, riding on the heels of the ear infection. Better this week than next though. And she feels good enough to go to school today. I suspect the valentine celebration may be a good motivator.

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French Fridays w/Dorie - nutella tartine

Nutella - yum! I love it but it's such a decadent treat I buy it very infrequently. I also noticed that it's not an all natural product, which does put me off. However, I did buy a small jar and assumed, teach me, that I'd be able to find challah. I knew Brioche would be difficult, and I wasn't up for making it homemade, so I was going to settle for challah, not that we don't love challah, mind you.

Last night I stopped by the market near where I had a meeting scheduled. They had a nice bakery, but the only breads were more of the Italian type. Looking in the bread aisle wasn't much more of a variety. I even looked in the frozen section, hoping for inspiration - a frozen challah? Natural white bread? Anything? Nothing! So I ended up getting some multi-grain English muffins and rethought the whole thing and came up with a delicious breakfast. Toasted English muffin w/ apricot fruit spread, swirled with Nutella. Gobbled up happily by my daughter and not quite the nutritionally absent dish of the original.

I had already bought the Nutella but in my bread hunt, I found a different hazelnut spread, Guianduia, that I'd really like to check out. If anyone has any experience with this one, let me know what you thought. It is all natural, but now I'm wondering if it had chocolate or not. David Lebovitz has a nice post about hazelnut spreads..

Local, sustainable, organic meats

So I'm highly unqualified for a promotion from Foodie Blogroll (need to have a measly 5000 monthly impressions), however, I was still sent the info and checked it out.


"Our friends at Applecheek are looking to engage the Foodie Blogroll community to spread the word about Applecheek farm's Boston Buyers Club - sustainable organically raised meats available to people in the Boston area with monthly deliveries direct from the farm."


I clicked on the link to the farm's site and was very impressed with all they had to offer. I know it's organic, but it is a little pricey. If you're in the area, it would be a good opportunity to place an order. You can order online and pickup is for Sunday, Feb. 19th. noon - 1:30 PM at:
City Feed and Supply
672 Centre St, 
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 
www.cityfeedandsupply.com


I'm certainly tempted, but we won't be in the area that day. It's not clear if this is going to be a recurring event or not. City Feed and Supply looks like a really cool store and good excuse to take a trip to Jamaica Plain. Maybe make a pilgrimage to the original JP Licks too! I actually think I have a free sundae left on my frequent buyer card!

Super Salmon Supper

Pickled ginger, sweet potatoes, scallops, salmon, mesclun, broccoli, in a sesame, ginger juice, chili oil, coconut, and almond dressing. Phew!

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gorgonzola-apple quiche - french fridays w/ Dorie

Part 2 - eaten and am now enlightened
We ate the quiche for dinner tonight and my daughter took one bite and opted for an egg. Alan and I both enjoyed it very much. Honestly, the crust was excellent, but that's not what I'm supposed to be concentrating on. So the filling was very tasty, but we both agreed the apples were lost. Now this wasn't the best batch of apples I've had, so I'm not that surprised. The blue cheese did overpower in some places because apparently I wasn't very good with my distribution. I had no clue the filling was made with soy creamer, but if there had been more of it, I may have. Many quiche I've tasted and made have a very creamy, custard filling. This one had more "guts".

I didn't think everyone i the house would want the quiche, so I made sure to have a side dish I figured would be a winner. I cut up some sweet potato, tossed with Garam Masala, and roasted. I also roasted asparagus w/ brown butter, then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. This recipe was from A New Way to Cook. Looking back, this is the cookbook that made me rethink how to cook, but limiting fats but keeping the flavor. The asparagus called for 1 tbsp + 1 tsp butter. You melt the butter and cook until it browns. Then brush it on a cookie sheet, lay out the asparagus, brush on more butter, salt & pepper, and roast for about 1/2 hour. Long story short, I had quite a bit more butter left, so I brushed it on the sweet potatoes and then cut up another apple, sprinkled  it with more Garam Masala and browned it in the butter. Yum!

gorgonzola-apple quiche - french fridays w/ Dorie

Part 1 - since I haven't tasted it yet.
Yesterday morning I made the dough and started rolling out the crust this morning. I used white wheat flour and a stick of butter. This was from the Pie & Pastry Bible and she calls for 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar. That's the biggest difference between a basic tart dough. I rolled the dough out to a round, but had to go to the bus stop before I could get it as thin as I would have liked. I had it wrapped in plastic, since that's how I rolled it, and then just popped it into the pie plate, all wrapped, until this evening. If became a dome and I was able to pull off the plastic and press it into the plate.

You can sort of see from the picture that it wasn't big enough and after I baked it, it did shrink up quite a bit. But the smell was wonderful! I didn't put the foil & beans (blind baking) in it before baking, so it did puff up even though it was very cold when it went into the oven.

I'm sure making this as written would be wonderful, but this recipe didn't do much for me so I decided to experiment. I'm not sure if that's the best way to go. If I'm looking forward to a recipe, I want it to taste as delicious as possible so am careful about changing things. I was going to get Gorgonzola, but got cheap and went for the reduced fat bleu cheese. I get it often and really can't taste much of a difference between that and full fat. On the other hand, there's nothing like the wonderful Great Hill Blue Cheese. It's one of my favorites. Now I'm second guessing my decision and wish I'd gotten a good quality Gorgonzola! The other major change I made was to switch the heavy cream for Silk Soy Creamer. Now I have no idea how that's going to turn out. When I mixed it with the beaten eggs, it became sort of gelatinous and it didn't look close to being enough filling. I remember other quiche I've made, using the same size crust, and the recipe called for 4 eggs and 2 cups of cream. I'll be curious to hear what other's experience was with this.

I baked it for 1/2 hour and it looks and smells just fabulous. I took Dorie's suggestion and added a handful of walnuts. I'm not sure how much of this cheese 2 oz. would be. I had a 5 oz. container of crumbles and can't imagine using half of it. 2 oz. of a cheddar is a 2" cube. I think this would be about 1/3 a cup, which seems way too much. Maybe Gorgonzola is a bit more mild.