Real Men Make Mom Quiche.

Mothers' Day will be this coming Sunday, but unfortunately, my son William will still be in Pennsylvania. However, he has decided to move here; the tickets have been bought, vacation time has been scheduled and he'll be arriving the weekend of May 26th. We're all feeling a bit excited and nervous at the same time; it's been three years since we moved to Utah and he decided to stay behind. Talk about new adventures!

Anyway, if he was here for Mothers' Day, I would love to see a demonstration of the culinary skills he acquired while working as a cook. Now we've all heard the saying, "real men don't eat quiche"; well I want to see it made. I know he reads my blog, so Bill, pay attention as you'll be tested soon after you arrive and settle in.

Quiche was already written about in January 2011, but I'll do a quick recap.

Basic Quiche

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups half n’ half
4 eggs, beaten
1/8 tsp salt (can be adjusted up or down dependent on ingredients added in)
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
1 – 9” unbaked deep dish pastry shell

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine half n’ half, eggs, salt and pepper. Pour into pastry shell; bake for 45-50 minutes, or until egg mixture is golden brown and set.

See guys, easy peasy, so now I'm going to throw in a curve ball...Asparagus. It's basically a super vegetable; low in calories and sodium; contains zinc, iron, folic acid, vitamins A, C, E and K and whole bunch of other minerals I won't bore you with. The popular type seen in stores is a green color which will become woody as it grows older. The tougher the stem, the older the asparagus, so look for those young, tender shoots.

There is a white variety which is basically the green type that has been grown inside a hill of dirt; the sun kept off of it to keep photosynthesis from occurring and turning the vegetable green. I love this type in Vietnamese Crab Asparagus soup, and I'll post that recipe one of these days.

For the quiche, I steamed 10 spears of asparagus till fork tender; and sauteed a quarter cup of diced onions in butter, on medium heat, till soft, but not browned or burned. I added the onions and a half cup of shredded Swiss cheese to the basic quiche mixture. After pouring the mixture into the pie crust, the fun really began. I started to place the asparagus spears in a tree design, cutting some of the spears in half to make smaller "branches" for the tree. Now the spears will float a bit in the liquid, so don't expect a perfect design, but from the picture above, I'd say it came out kind of cute.

So there's the challenge for you real men out there; make a quiche for your mom on Mothers' Day. It might not turn out perfect, but in her eyes, you, and it, will be.

Mary Cokenour