httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzIXYQajCLo

Hey, everyone! Well, I hope you are enjoying your summer. I know I am! The weather this summer has been fantastic (it’s really humid where we are, but I’m not complaining). Helenka and I have had two BBQs thus far (which I’m still in the process of editing, so they will be shown at a later date).

For this week’s episode I am unfortunately on my own as Helenka had to move her castle. So I took some creative leeway and cooked up a story about her being abducted by aliens, because how else would you explain why she was not around? 😉 Other than being foodies, we are sci-fi fans, too! Hey, it all fits … somehow.

Getting back to the show … using a recipe I found in the book as a guide, I made two quiches for this episode. The first was the original and the second an experiment where I replaced the ingredients before sampling them both to find out which was the better of the two. I also had some taste testers from an upcoming series I’m doing who gave me some additional feedback.

Keep in mind the book we are reviewing and learning from is based upon the idea of being able to cook better and healthier meals than those found in some American restaurants by using reduced fat substitutes such as turkey sausage along with artichoke hearts and feta cheese in their version of the quiche. My version may not be the healthiest or lowest in fat, but I can say that it did receive a slightly better review. I think the goat cheese had something to do with it; hmm, seems to be the magic ingredient … again. I also replaced the turkey sausage with Pancetta (Italian bacon) which I thought added a very nice flavour and complemented the artichoke hearts and goat cheese (chèvre).

This is not the first time I made a quiche and you shouldn’t be surprised to know there’s a story….

I remember the first time which was not a long time ago or in a galaxy far far away. I was making a spinach quiche for lunch as my sister and her boyfriend were coming over so that they could drive my other sister and me off to the airport (on our way to a brother/sister vacation).

I was a bit nervous as I thought it would be a hard thing to do. It was messy but not hard. I think I had a recipe to follow and also used one of those frozen pie crusts which come in handy if you are making a cheater pie (I’m saving this topic for another blog) or, as in this case, a quiche.

It would appear that there is a conspiracy going on with the size of these pie crusts and quiche recipes (so as to increase sales, me thinks) as they never seem to be the correct size nor have enough depth to be able to take in all the egg mixture. I ended up making two, with even extra left over. As it was my first, I was pleasantly surprised that it was very good and my guinea pigs … umm … family enjoyed it as well (experimenting is fun with them — the family — not guinea pigs).

Thinking I was a bit smarter this go round, I bought deep dish pie crusts and the conspiracy held true again (i.e., not deep enough or big enough for all the egg mixture). So for the second quiche, I got smart and cut down some of the milk but kept the same number of eggs (using double yolks – another experiment – instead of extra large eggs). It was weird to see … though the results were still yummy. The reduction of the milk didn’t hamper the taste or quality of the quiche. I’m getting the idea that quiche would be a hard type of dish to really screw up unless you started using weird ingredients – but, then again, if you like it who’s to say that it’s good or bad.

Why don’t you take a crack [Evil editor groans at the pun] at it and let us know if you’ve found a particular combination of flavours you liked. You never know: we may just recreate it on our show!

Thanks again for watching. Have yourselves a GREAT week and keep sending in your feedback. We love hearing from you!

Enjoy!

B&H =:)

Pictures below are of the two that I had made – very hard to tell the difference though the first two are my creation the last two are the book version (making me hungry just looking at them).

Please note: We try and review the recipes in the cookbook; however, in an effort to respect copyright, we are not able to reproduce the actual printed recipes here. If you do have the book, please follow along with us!