Since cooking for one is a bit of a drag sometimes (ramen: easy and delicious), whenever I have someone over for dinner (this doesn't happen often, since I know maybe 6 people here), gluttony tends to be the order of the day. Complicating this, though, are all of the issues one encounters when one has very few actual cooking appliances, one's oven is an utter mystery, and ingredients, while labelled in English, are still befuddling (vegetable suet?). It's like when ixoj and I first started cooking together, before we had proper, grown-up equipment like rolling pins and colanders and multiple pans, and were propping up cakes with oatmeal canisters (which I'm certainly not above doing now).
Anyway, I was determined to have a proper Easter feast--buoyed up by a momentary parting of the clouds and a brief cessation of snow. No leg of lamb or hot cross buns (the latter strike me as more appropriate for Christmas anyway--the whole currants and cinnamon and mixed spice (the British equivalent of pumpkin pie spice) and whatnot), but after an amble around the muswell hill farmer's market, i ended up with a fennel, radish, and landcress salad (I'm a sucker for an enthusiastic farmer waxing eloquent about a foodstuff I've never heard of); celeriac, Jerusalem artichoke, and pear soup; leek, spinach, and goat cheese quiche; asparagus (this bit was thanks to tesco); excellent bread courtesy of friends; and lemon pound cake w/ lemon curd and strawberries.
[Sidenote: in case you have an incomprehensible oven like myself and you try to make a lemon pound cake and take it out when the top is dark brown and turn it out only to discover that it's completely uncooked in the middle and the batter starts to run out all over the place, you can actually slide the cake back in the pan--cooked side down--and put it back in the oven and it will eventually cook through--and the sugar syrup you drown it in will help it stay together, especially when you cut it into slices in an attempt to camouflage the disaster. And if you try to cream the sugar and butter with an immersion blender since you don't have a mixer and your arm is cramping up from desperately trying to achieve a fluffy consistency with naught but a wooden spoon, the cake will be a little more dense than you might be used to, but it's still perfectly edible, by which I mean addictive, especially when smothered with lemon curd.]
Anyway, it was all good tasting, appropriately spring-like, and I think, post-cake-but-pre-quiche, I may have finally deciphered all of the different symbols on the oven--apparently the setting I thought was 'cook like a regular oven' just turns on the upper heating element extra high (read: broiler. I think.).
Leek, spinach, and goat cheese quiche
375 F / 190 C, about 35-40 minutes
Crust (from Smitten Kitchen)
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch (or, in the UK, corn flour)*
1/4 t. salt
3 oz / 6 T unsalted butter
1 egg
*Note: corn flour in the UK is fairly similar to cornstarch in the US. according to the wisdom of the Internet, though, this is apparently not the case for corn flour in the EU.
Mix together the flour, cornstarch, and salt. Cut in the butter however you like--fork, a couple knives, or rub it in with your fingers--until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add the egg, and mix until you have a dough. Roll out into a circle and press into a 9" tart or pie pan. (Or, if, like me, you don't have a rolling pin and don't feel like using a soy sauce bottle, you can just press it into the pan.)
Refrigerate for at least 30 min.
Filling
olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, smashed and/or diced
3 medium leeks, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
nutmeg, to taste
a couple sprigs of thyme, chopped
large bunch spinach, chopped
about 8 oz. goat cheese (or more if you like--I just added it until it basically covered the base of the quiche)
3 eggs
1 c. milk
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds. Turn the heat to low, and sauté the leeks and onion slowly until soft and caramelized (about 30 minutes). Add the nutmeg, thyme, and spinach--stir until the spinach is just wilted. Remove from heat.
Beat together the eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper.
Crumble the goat cheese over the crust. Add the leek/spinach mixture, and then pour the custard over the filling. Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, or until the filling is set and a knife inserted in the middle comes out fairly clean. Let it cool for 10 minutes. Good tasting warm or cold.
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