Due to the overwhelming amount of greens in last week's CSA and egged on by the goat cheese and eggs in my fridge that were about to go bad, I opted to make quiche. I added onions and mushrooms as well as escarole and Swiss chard from the week's farm bounty and mixed it with some cream, Parmesan, goat cheese and of course eggs. I'd never actually cooked with either escarole or Swiss chard before as I've always been a bit afraid of all those big leafy greens.
I have now eaten quiche every day for at least one meal all week long.
I went to Maine this past weekend and brought some fiddleheads back to the city. Fiddleheads are the unfurled fronds of young ferns. They grow wild in New England in early spring time. Although they are also available in canned form, I highly suggest avoiding those at all costs.
I prepared mine after cleaning and trimming them by boiling them for about two minutes and then I sauteed them with butter and garlic and two chopped white mushrooms until they were soft and tender. This was the first time I'd had fiddleheads since I was in college and could get them at the farm stand next door. Sadly, I've never seen fresh ones in my local supermarkets in New York. If you've never had them I highly suggest trying some. Consider them vegetarian escargot.
In honor of the bit of snow that the television keeps calling the blizzard of 2010 I decided to make a pot of soup. At first I was just going to make a cream of cauliflower soup, but then I decided to use mushrooms as well.
Cauliflower Mushroom Soup
1 onion, chopped 1 package of fresh mushrooms, chopped 1 cauliflower, chopped 1 sprig of rosemary 2 bay leaves 1 tbs. dried thyme 2 tbs butter 4 cups of chicken/mushroom stock 1/2 cup of light sour cream 1/2 cup of heavy cream salt pepper
1. Saute the onions in the butter for about two minutes, then add the mushrooms. 2. When mushrooms are half cooked add the cauliflower, bay leaves, rosemary, salt and pepper cook until cauliflower begins to soften 3. Add broth and simmer until cauliflower is tender enough to be pureed. 4. Allow soup to cool and blend soup in blender or food processor. 5. Stir sour cream and heavy cream into blended soup. Serve with sliced scallions and biscuits if you want to bake them!
I meant to make a smiley face, but it looks sort of like angry sadistically grinning pie, but oh well.
I had to use up the pastry dough that was in the fridge from the last pie I made otherwise it would have gone bad. Steak was on sale, so I thought I'd use up the mushrooms and celery in my fridge and make a steak and mushroom pie. Last time I did a steak pie I used Guinness and roughly followed Jamie Oliver's Steak Guinness and Cheddar pie recipe. It was pretty good, but on the whole I don't actually love the flavor of Guinness even in cooking. So this time I decided to make up the pie recipe.
So more or less:
Brown about 1/2 lb of steak with 1 small leek and 1 shallot in a tiny bit of vegetable oil and garlic salt and pepper 2 stalks of celery approx. a package of white mushrooms (I finished the one in the fridge and used about three of the supersized mushrooms that came in the package I bought today, I think I'll stuff the rest of them). I added some frozen pea and carrot mixture along with water and some Israeli mushroom soup powder. Fresh rosemary and thyme Thicken with flour.
Look at that lovely pie filling cooking away.
Unfortunately over the course of pie making I could feel myself getting that awful feeling in the back of my throat that means I'm getting sick. So even though I also made some lovely roasted red potatoes I couldn't really eat very much. But now there's pie in my fridge so hopefully I'll get to continue enjoying it, because pie is like chicken soup. It will make you healthy. Really.
The Duchy of Domesticity is the home of all the domestic projects that I feel like sharing with the world. Primarily at the moment this is pie. Because who doesn't like pie?
