The Key to Quiche

Pinching and Squeezing-it's not just for food prep

After the whole fish debacle, grades did come out and I didn’t fare too badly. I got two fours and two threes—improving my average a little bit. But Friday turned out to be my glory day! We made a quiche lorraine and I nailed it. I have made a lot of quiches in my life so this was not super new territory for me but as always LCB has their own set of rules and regulations so I was still a little nervous.

We began with making the pate sablage. Which basically means that you are making a short dough that is mostly flour and butter (unlike bread which has water) and you have to crumble up the little bits of butter till it mixes with the flour and becomes super grainy and sand-like. Ordinarily, one would do this in one’s food processor, but of course we did it by hand -the old-fashioned way. It totally gives your hand a cramp and takes awhile but it does make for a flaky crust. Then add a little egg yolk and a little water and salt and voilà—you have something you can roll out to make a crust.

I am on it. I am pinching butter and flour together and mixing away, meanwhile preparing the lardons( basically bacon) and shredding cheese for the interior at the same time. The only difference to how the French make a quiche and how I make a quiche is that they use a tart ring with no bottom and I always do mine in a pie pan. No biggie. But as I rolled out my dough in the bottomless tart ring I realize that I can’t pick it up—it has no bottom. Which isn’t a problem except that I haven’t put the tart ring on the baking sheet so I have to pick it up to put it on the baking sheet and it of course falls right through the ring and I have to re-roll out my dough. Undaunted, I do the re-rolling and get it all set to go for the blind baking portion of the exercise—which is baking the crust with no filling so the crust isn’t soggy when it finishes.

I have always used pie weights for this part but in true Gallic, and maybe specifically LCB fashion, we actually use beans for pie weights. Which is fine —they work great at holding down the dough for baking before the filling is in, but they are old beans. They have been baked like a thousand times. They were all burned and shriveled. Which was kind of endearing, but again—this is a place that prides itself on cleanliness and we are reusing beans so ancient they might have been around when Jesus walked the earth. He might have even eaten a quiche made with these same beans at that wedding feast where he changed water into wine. These beans could be religious artifacts.

In any event, I blind-baked my quiche and then filled it and baked it again and it came out perfect! I was thrilled! At the end of the class Chef held up my quiche and said it was the best one. I literally glowed with pride. I waited anxiously for my grades to come out this weekend and I got all fours on my quiche! I know it’s not fives but I am so proud.

Ma quiche lorraine!

This weekend has been pretty quiet. I didn’t have any plans Friday or Saturday but did get an invitation from the sweet girl to the left of my station. She was telling me all about some clubs and a speakeasy she was going to this weekend. I finally asked her how old she was and she said “18.” I laughed and told her I probably was not going to make it to the club but that she should really check out this bar called The Highlander. She seemed intrigued-especially when I told her I lived above it. She looked at me with real respect and repeated with awe, “you live above a bar?”. I think it will be perfect for her.

Tonight though, I have friends from Dallas in town. So even though I have my usual 7am class, I am hitting the town. I may even wash my hair and not put it in a hair net. To celebrate the occasion I went to have a facial yesterday. A really traditional French facial. At least I hope it was traditional, otherwise it was just weird, because as part of the treatment I got a full facial massage from the inside out. The woman stuck her gloved fingers deep into my mouth and proceeded to vigorously massage my face- pulling, pinching and squeezing from back near my molars and contorting my mouth into what I suspect looked like a quality imitation of the Joker. It was odd, but I was game and let her have her way with me. Not sure I look any better, but I kind of liked it. I might go back. Feeling firm.