Sweet Potato and Broccoli Quiche

Quiche is one of my favorite foods of all time. Its a great way to use any leftover vegetables you have lying around. We usually had it at least once a week when I was younger, and I pretty much use my mom's recipe as a starter.

One of the great things about not living in a health conscious household is that unlike with my mothers quiche, I don't need to use skim milk and low fat cheese.

For this Quiche we used a mixture of cheddar, gouda, and Connecticut raw hard sheep's milk cheese. We also are part of a raw jersey cow milk co-op, and I threw some of that milk in as well. I pretty much make up the ratios as I go along, the only constant being the use of 2 to 2.5 eggs per quiche, so that it stays together but isn't too eggy, which I didn't even realize was possible until trying the quiche at Red and Black - the campus bookstore\cafe.

I sauteed the sweet potato and broccoli for a few minutes before adding it in, just to make sure that it would be cooked the whole way through at the end.

Besides the normal salt and pepper, I usually add a bit of vinegar into my quiches. This is because once when I was younger I had salad with balsamic vinegar on the same plate as my quiche, and some of the vinegar drifted across the plate. Ever since then I've been pouring a little bit on top of my quiche, and now that I make my own I can add it in before baking. I also added a bit of mustard powder, an ingredient I have been fooling around with a lot with lately.

I baked the quiche at 350 for 35-40 minutes. It is important to remember after taking it out to let it sit for at least 10 or 15 minutes, otherwise it might not have competely thickened, and it won't stay together as well once cut.

Here it is plated:

( I don't know why but we seem to be on a green bean binge lately)


And here are the people who ate it:

From right to left: Ruby, Sarah, The Buck, Bill, Ben, The Berk, and me


One thing that I try to do while cooking is to find the good in any ingredient, and to use things that may not be considered sexy or sophisticated in creative ways. For example I added instant coffee into the sauce I made for the chicken a few posts ago. I wanted more of a watery bitterness then a full bodied coffee flavor.

Other times however, this is completely unnecessary and we must appreciate the deliciousness of processed food in their original state:


There is nothing better than a box of brownie mix. (except that no pudge fudge stuff) Its so simple to make, and yet so versatile with all of the different things you can add to it. Just don't follow the instructions for "cakey" rather than "fudgy" brownies... ewww
Here we have Duncan Hines brownie mix with chocolate frosting and mini candy covered chocolate things.

First Post

Hey All!

So for the past year I have been talking with my housemates and others about creating a food blog to post meals that we ate whenever we found them to be particularly exciting and remembered to take pictures. I decided the only way for it to actually happen is to make the blog, so that we will feel obligated to post.

And we have quite a meal to start to start the blog with

Today Sarah, Xiaoxi and I took a field trip to Whole Foods in West Hartford to find exciting things to buy and cook. We had a very successful trip, and you will probably see many of the ingredients we bought in the weeks to come.





Swordfish with Caramelized Fennel, Broccoli Rabe and Brown Rice with Barley


This was actually my first time cooking and eating swordfish, so I didn't want to do anything too complicated. Since we got it home just in time for dinner, we weren't able to marinate. Instead I just threw on some salt and pepper, lemon zest, Herbs du Provence, and the green leafy part of the fennel. We broiled it for around 5 minutes on each side. -This is very important. As Sarah's father told us when broiling lamb earlier this week "put it under the broiler for 4 minutes on each side, then take it out. You're gonna look at it and want to put it back in for another minute and this probably won't stop you, but DON"T DO IT. The meat will be overcooked and you will be disappointed."
Of course we did it anyway, for both the lamb and tonight's fish, and now hopefully we have leared our lesson.

The Fennel was sauteed in some butter with garlic and Vinho Verde - wine made from unripened grapes. Broccoli was basically steamed with a bit of salt and more garlic, yay!

Sarah's new thing is cooking brown rice and barley together in our rice cooker, and its pretty delicious and worked really well with the fish.




The secondary aspect of the blog with hopefully be the people who ate it. And here they are:

From left to right- Aliza, Becca, Sarah, Xiaoxi, Sarah, and I was in the empty seat.

We finished the meal off with some vanilla ice cream with a hot salty butterscotch sauce.

Hopefully there will be many more entries to come!

-Avi