Quiche and Crust

Quiches are easy and I make them often. Every time I serve a quiche to friends, they just as often compliment the texture of the crust as they do the taste of the quiche itself. Here's the recipe for the crust, and instructions for how to make any quiche from there.

Quiche Crust (25 minute prep time, 50 minute oven time)

Ingredients
+ 1.25 cups flour
+ 1/2 tsp salt
+ 3 tbps water
+ 1 egg
+ most of a stick of butter (6 tbps)

Preparation

Preheat oven 400 degrees.  

Cut cold butter into the flour. I do this by hand, by cutting the stick of butter into a bunch of medium pieces, and squishing it into the flour until the entire mixture feels like kinetic clay, and looks like this:

By adding the butter to the flour before any liquid ingredients, you're preventing the gluten from polymerizing and forming a tough mesh. This way you get a delicious crumbly crust. Next add the rest of the ingredients, mix until incorporated and knead until homogenous. 

Use a rolling pin to flatten dough on a floured surface. If its too sticky, throw the dough into the fridge to make it firm up. Once its flattened, throw it on your quiche pan -- don't worry about it sticking -- there's so much butter that it's never an issue. Also this recipe makes a little too much dough for a typical quiche pan -- so don't worry about having extra at the end.

There are almost no rules about what to do next -- just whisk together ~1.5 cups light cream and 3-4 eggs together for the quiche guts, and add whatever other ingredients you desire! Cooking those ingredients on a pan beforehand is a good idea (like caramelized onions, softened zucchini squash, or bacon bits). Don't forget salt.

After 30 minutes in the oven, you can use the "jiggle test" (© my mom) , whereby you turn on the oven light and slap the oven door while watching the quiche. If you see ripples travel the surface like a rock thrown in a pond, then its not ready. 

Raspberry Mousse

I'm actually very bad at baking. Last month, I set my oven 100F too hot while making chocolate souffle (more like carbon biscuits). While I work on that recipe, I thought I would try my hand at a cool raspberry mousse. The recipes I found were fairly similar to traditional tiramisu recipes. Best of all, it's pretty hard to burn, since there's no cooking involved. The following recipe is a combination of this and this, without the hassle of single-serving wax paper fanciness.

Pro tip: don't mix too much at the end to have some pretty anisotropy.

Raspberry Mousse (6 dessert servings, ~1 hour prep time)

Ingredients
+ 4 eggs (separated)
+ 3/4 cup sugar
+ 2 lemons
+ 1 packet gelatin
+ ~300 grams raspberries (one of the small plastic boxes)
+ 1 cup whipping cream

Preparation

Take your serving dish (glass is best) and rub butter along the inside. I had to use two 9' pyrex pie dishes. You could also use glass cups for individual servings.

Juice and filter your raspberries. Add the juice of two lemons. Seeds in souffle can be gross. 

Using an electric mixer, whisk egg yolks with sugar until you have thick ribbons. 

Dissolve gelatin in warm water using a hand whisk. It will look like boogers at first, but eventually it will be almost clear, semithick liquid. The smell reminds me of bacterial Lysogeny broth. Anyway, whatever it reminds you of, fold the gelatine and the juice into the egg yolk mixture. 

With the electric mixer, whip the cream until soft peaks, and fold it in with the gelatin/egg yolk/juice mixture. 

Finally, whisk the egg whites until you have stiff peaks. Fold it in with the rest. I recommend not folding too thoroughly, so that you can see some of the layers of egg white and raspberry pink. Pour it into your dishes.  If you have any remaining raspberry juice, you can drop it on top for decoration. Throw the dishes into the fridge for a couple of hours for the gelatin to set, and serve with fresh raspberries (although that's not necessary). Keep for a couple of days.

A review of the Milk Pail

Do you live in the west bay, near Mountain View? Does your work take you by Palo Alto or San Jose? Then I want to tell you about my favorite all-time market: The Milk Pail. This wont be an authoritative source on its history or business, but rather why it's so much better than the surrounding competition (and why you should care).

The Milk Pail is a small, non-franchise market between Mountain View and Palo Alto. They advertise themselves as a European Market. What does that mean exactly? What do they even sell?

1. Unwholly foods. Citing itself as a European Market is a PC way of saying that the Milk Pail is not stuck up its own ass, like so many yuppy independent markets in the area. You wont find the typical foodie brand that other franchised outlets stuff down your throat. You wont find any health supplements, whether or not it's been approved by the FDA. Don't bother looking for the specific brand of Soy Milk that doesn't leave weird residue taste. The Milk Pail sells unadulterated sustenance: cheese, fruit, veggies, bread, bulk grains, dairy, eggs and a limited selection of meats. If you can't cook from scratch, then move on.

2. What you smell is what you see. I once heard French supermarkets described as superior over those in America because each aisle in France broadcasts a different and wonderful aroma. In contrast, food in the states is shrink wrapped, sterilized and plasticized before its even delivered. The Milk Pail is more like the former: it's messy; the floor resembles the ground at a farmers market, growing denser with food stains as the day wears on. You will not find a perfect pyramid of red delicious apples anywhere, or uniform spreads of pre-cut deli meat. Instead, all the produce is displayed with all the variety of Nature: different shapes and color, sometimes bruised, sitting in the distributor's cardboard box in which it was delivered. Are you a germaphobe? Do you cringe at slightly brown bananas? Is occasional imperfection unacceptable? If so, move on.

3. Cheese, Gromit! As the name suggests, the Milk Pail is an excellent source of cheese. They have an entire room dedicated to cheese, organized by its country of origin. Most of the cheese is not name brand -- the store buys it in bulk and repackages it, selling each cheese in packaged chunks priced by the pound. If you don't know what kind of cheese you like, they have a rotating sample station with 3-5 different cheeses. They also sell fresh bread, delivered twice daily. The best part of it all is the price.

4. The price is right. I am sick of friends telling me how affordable the cheese at Trader Joe's is. It's not cheap. It's just as expensive as Safeway, and by god if you buy produce there, I am judging you. If you want affordable, amazing produce and cheese, the Milk Pail is your friend. The cheese at the Milk Pail is often upwards of 50% cheaper than chain stores. Often, the best cheeses are also on special, and -- bless the Milk Pail's heart -- all the Special items in one location. There are some expensive items in the Milk Pail, like specialty imported goods (which you can specifically request on their website). However, most items are cheaper than any farmers market or store around the area.

Its not a one-stop shop. I don't get everything at the Milk Pail. It's a tiny store, and they couldn't possibly fit more selection in without sacrificing the quality of what they already have. The Milk Pail is not for household supplies, meat or booze. Still, it's amazing the variety of items you can find in the small space that would never be found in Safeway or Trader Joe's.

At least give it a try. Just avoid rush hour -- it can get pretty packed in there. When you're at the register, tell them Alexandre sent you. They'll look at your weird and ask you "Who's Alexandre?"

Please do share your opinion below...

Traditional Biscotti: subsidize your coffee addiction

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

A oft-misattributed quote from Paul Erdos in fact invented by the coffee-addicted Hungarian mathematician Alfréd Rényi. Yes, most of us students are addicted to coffee too. In fact, this morning I woke up an hour later than usual and already had a caffeine withdrawal headache (read: definitely not a hangover.)

I may be bad, but I think my coffee intake is pretty average... I buy one or two coffees every day (I go to a drip coffee bar Beckman Bistro at Stanford SoM). That's like $2.50 every day. If I work 200 days a year (lets face it, that's a reasonable estimate), we're looking at half a grand a year. That is a lot of money that I could be putting into retirement (oh yeah -- check out this awesome retirement guide for graduate students by Brandon Curtis here). I think I can understand why coffee is expensive, between farmers, roasters, distributors and baristas). Pastries, on the other hand, are way too expensive.

Lets start with biscotti. Coffee shops sell them individually wrapped for a couple of bucks. For a dry cookie with six ingredients, that seems really really unreasonable, especially for a grad student budget. Biscotti are extremely easy to make, and last forever.

Fun facts: Wikipedia claims the cookie's name is derived from Latin and refers to their "twice baked" recipe. My Italian colleague Carolina Tropini reminds me that if you want to impress your PI, remember to offer them either a single biscotto, or a few biscotti. Here's a recipe I adapted and simplified (from here). I really like it because it makes consistently good crunchy biscotti. Also, they end up being ~10 cents each.

 

Almond Biscotti (30 slices)

Ingredients
+ 2 cups flour
+ 1 cup sugar
+ 1 teaspoon baking powder
+ 1/8 teaspoon salt
+ Pack of raw unsalted almonds
+ 3 large eggs
+ Splash of Amaretto 

Preparation

Preheat oven to 300F. Don't bother with parchment, these cookies don't stick. 

Mix all the ingredients except almonds together until just combined. It'll be a really wet dough. Don't worry about it. Shape it into a loaf thing like in the photo above and cover the entire surface area with almonds (they'll spread out as the dough rises). Bake it for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean after sticking it into the dough. 

Now remove it from the oven, and let it cool down for 10 minutes. Then unstick the loaf and slice it into fairly thin diagonal cookies. Once that's all done, lay them flat back on the same cookie sheet and cook at 320F until browned. The cookies will harden as they cool down, so don't use their consistency as an indicator of "done-ness". Make yourself some coffee and enjoy!

Tiramisu: Separation of Variables

In lab, I study the morphology of rod-shaped bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, Vibrio cholera, Salmonella, and other fun bugs. I try hard to not bring work home with me, especially when I'm preparing raw dishes. When the dish calls for uncooked eggs, I'll go out of my way to buy caged-free. Laying hen cage confinement can increase Salmonella risk between five and twenty times*. If I'm a food snob, it's for selfish reasons‡.

My father makes a killer Tiramisu, but his recipe breaks a cardinal sin of cooking: he doesn't separate the eggs before whisking! When you whisk egg whites, you're actually denaturing proteins, which aggregate and form the stiff foam. For egg yolks, which are a lot fattier, whisking will instead emulsify the lipids (same thing happens in steamed milk). These distinct physical processes are also mutually exclusive. Lipids will prevent aggregation of denatured proteins. For dishes where the whites are cooked separately (such as meringues), egg separation is crucial. Still -- maybe my dad is right -- maybe since Tiramisu calls for the reunification of the egg for the final product, egg separation might be an unnecessary complication!

To test this hypothesis, I have to go against my word and bring research to my kitchen. I prepared two nearly identical Tiramisu dishes, with the only difference being the separation of eggs.

Parallel Tiramisu being prepared! Right: unseparated eggs; Left: separated eggs.

The result? Well, to zeroth order, I think the results are very similar in taste and appearance. There are two noteworthy distinctions: (1) It took way longer to whisk the combined eggs than the separated eggs. Easily three times longer. My arms are tired. If you have an electric mixer, then this isn't an issue. (2) The texture of the 'separated egg' Tiramisu is slightly thicker.

Parallel Tiramisu being prepared! Right: egg whites, egg yolks, combined egg whisked. Left: Separated egg whisking lead to a slightly grainier, thicker end result.

Although we can skip a step by whisking the egg whole, it actually makes the recipe preparation significantly longer without an electric mixer. Well, here's the recipe in its separated form. Combine the first two sentences if you do not want to separate eggs.

Tiramisu (6 dessert servings, ~1 hour prep time)

Ingredients
+ 4 eggs
+ ~400g Mascarpone
+ 7 Tbs sugar
+ 2 cups strong coffee, room temperature
+ One pack of Lady Fingers
+ Cocoa powder and Marsala wine (optional)

Preparation

Whisk† your egg whites until you have stiff peaks. Whisk your egg yolks with the sugar until you have ribbons. Gently fold the Mascarpone into the egg yolks, and then fold in the egg whites.  

Add 2oz Marsala to your room-temperature coffee. Make a layer of lady-fingers in your serving dish by very briefly submerging each cookie and placing it as depicted in the first image above. Add a layer of the whipped concoction. Add another layer of coffee-soaked cookies, and finish with a final layer of the egg mixture.  

Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Right before serving, sprinkle some cocoa powder on top. Enjoy!

(will update with a photo of served Tiramisu)

* Fun fact: the color of eggs is only a function of the hen variety. Hens with brown ears will lay brown eggs. Hens with white ears will lay white eggs.
‡ Fun fact number two: Hens have earlobes!
† Whisking is easier with fresh eggs.

What to cook for your PI: Tomates Farcies Two Ways

You are more likely to cook for colleagues in academia than in industry. Between your living wage and basic nutrition requirements, cooking can be the most practical gift a graduate student can offer. Follow these cooking tips to make a good impression on your PI:

1. Always use fresh ingredients and a recipe that calls for thorough cooking. Even if your PI is a microbiologist, she wont appreciate food poisoning. Leave your leftovers in the free-food area at work.
2. Make sure the dish isn't notoriously time consuming. No amount of hand-prepared fresh pasta using whole-wheat that you spent the last two years growing will impress a PI who gets a whiff of how much time you took off research to make it.
3. Choose a dish that pairs well with graduation. Hey... couldn't hurt.
4. Avoid store-bought prepared foods. Your PI is high class, even if he wears jeans with holes and sometimes sleeps on his office couch. Any dish that 'looks' home made is more respectable than guac and chips. Wine is an exception to this rule, and Two-Buck Chuck is an exception to that exception.

I'm joining my PI and his family for Thanksgiving later today, and I'm bringing a couple of Crustic Baguettes and Tomates Farcies Two Ways - a French stuffed tomato recipe. Before sharing the recipe below, here are some possible Autumn dishes that would also work well*:  Hasselback Potatoes (or anything with taters), Bread Pudding, Beet salad, or a nice bottle of Malbec.

Tomates Farcies Two Ways (12 servings, ~1 hour prep/cook time)

Ingredients
+ 12 Tomatoes (not too ripe)
+ 6 garlic cloves
+ 2 yellow onions
+ Parsley
+ Butter, Salt & Pepper
+ Splash of White Wine or Vermouth
+ Parmegiano Reggiano

Farce Type I (traditional)
+ Ground Beef
+ Bread crumbs

Farce Type II (vegetarian)
+ 1 Leek (chopped, dark green discarded)
+ 2 Bell Peppers (seeded, chopped)
+ Mushrooms, one basket
+ Dried Italian Herbs

Preparation
Wash your tomatoes (see above note about food poisoning). Cut the top off each tomato carefully; they will be the tomatoes' hats! Again, carefully remove the seeds using a spoon, but do not remove the meet on the tomato wall. Sweat the tomatoes by salting their insides and turning them over while preparing the next paragraph. Also, start preheating the oven to 460F, 260C.

For either Farce, start by blooming the onions in melted butter over a pot (with high walls, since we're adding lots of ingredients). Once translucent, add the seeds and let the juice evaporate, then add the garlic and parsley. Promptly start adding the ingredients in the order they are listed under each type of farce, waiting a couple minutes between each ingredient.  

Once the meat is cooked, or the veggies are softened, carefully stuff the tomatoes with the farce, adding enough to overflow slightly. Top them off with some Parmesan, add the hats, and throw them in a casserole dish, and throw that in the oven for twenty minutes. If possible, try to use a good looking casserole dish -- these tomatoes do NOT like being moved more than once. Enjoy.

Contributing Sources: La Tartine Gourmande, Vegetarian Cookery School, Petit Larousse de la Cuisine

*No, these are not all links to this blog. Sheesh.

Baguette Variations of the No Knead Bread: "Crustic Baguette"

Awhile ago I posted the link to the New York Time's no knead loaf. I've made this recipe dozens of times, and I still love it, but I think at this point my version has strayed significantly enough from the original that I can justify posting it here. Let's call it "Crustic Baguette" for now.

What are the main changes? I'm impatient, so I've removed the second rising time completely. Also, instead of making a rustic loaf using a dutch oven (which most of my friends do not have), the recipe now makes baguettes on a cookie sheet. Its faster and easier.

It's easy and a very forgiving recipe. Don't be discouraged if things get messy -- it will still taste delicious. Just don't forget the salt.

No Knead Baguette (makes two baguettes)

Ingredients
+ 3 cups all purpose unbleached flour
+ ¼ teaspoon yeast
+ 1¼ teaspoon salt*
+ 1 ¾ cups water

Preparation 
   The night before, dissolve the yeast in the water, and mix in the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl with a spoon until everything is incorporated. Then cover the bowl with a towel or plastic wrap, and leave it overnight.
   The next morning (at least eight hours later), it will have at least doubled in size and the surface will be dotted with bubbles. Using heavily floured surface and hands, get the dough out of the bowl and rip it in half. The surface of the dough should have enough flour not to be sticky, but try not to incorporate flour into the bread. As the name indicates, you should not knead the dough. Instead delicately shape each half into a long rod. I do this by gently squeezing, not pulling. Plop them on a cookie sheet (don't worry, doesn't need to be nonstick). The loaves will look kinda flat, but they'll rise in the oven.
   Preheat the stove to 450. Fill a loaf/cake pan or dutch over with water and put it on the bottom rack of the stove. By the time the oven is preheated, the water will be boiling, imitating the moist condition of professional baking ovens. Once the oven is preheated, score the baguettes with a knife, and throw them on the second rack of the oven. Bake for ~20-30 minutes, or until they look delicious. 

  * DO NOT CUT THE SALT: Literally every time I've made this recipe, I look at the amount of salt required and shake my head and think "No way that's way too much salt. I don't like as much salt as the average person. I'm watching my sodium intake. I can enjoy this bread with less salt. People have too much sodium in their diet, and I'm better than them. I'll just use half as much".  Then, lo and behold, the baguette just tastes of wet cardboard.