Choir Practice Pasta

Every Wednesday at 8 p.m., sopranos, altos, tenors and basses meet up for an hour and a half. Do the math and you realize this means an early supper. In this house, it's usually last-minute too. Sometimes we hastily put together bread, cheese and a tomato. Once in a rare while, I'm organized enough to bake a quiche or tarte in the afternoon. 

    This dish is a godsend because (as I proved last night) I can transform myself from garden slot to choral goddess and have supper on the table in a bit over half an hour. 

    All you need is spaghetti, or whatever ever smallish or narrowish pasta you have, and the classic salad called insalata Caprese--salad Capri-style. This Italian flag-coloured combination of ripe tomatoes, fresh basil and fresh mozzarella is ridiculously easy to make--and, I've found, doubles as a lovely, light and summery sauce for pasta. 

   Instead of slicing the tomatoes and fresh cheese, cut them in small cubes, then throw in lots of torn basil and a slosh of olive oil. Maybe a grind or three of black pepper? I assemble the lot in a big serving bowl to cut down on dishes. You can do all this while the pasta is cooking. Then, simply drain the pasta and toss it with the tomato-etc. mix. It's also tasty at room temperature and leftovers work as salad the next day.

   Just remember to put a big pot of water on to boil before you climb in the shower.

Frugal Eating: The Basic Quiche

Occasionally we end up with a plastic container filled with odds and ends of cheese. Eventually they grow moldy and we chuck them out. Not in this Year of Creative Culinary Frugality. 

I think I've mentioned before my enthusiasm for the pre-made pastry shells you can buy here which you simply unroll and pat into a pie tin. I went on-line and found a bog-simple recipe for quiche. 

So...pastry into the pan. A thinly sliced onion on the bottom, slices of leftover cheese--local brebis, Morbier with its layer of black ash and a couple of others on top, then a crumbling of Bleu d'Ariège, the regional variant on Roquefort. Next I whisked three eggs with a cup and a half of a mix of leftover cream and milk. A dusting of nutmeg and fresh ground pepper and it all went into the pan. 

Meanwhile, I'd cranked the oven up to its hottest (about 425 degrees). The quiche went in for 15 minutes, then had 25 minutes longer at 350 degrees. Very good given the little effort involved. 

I'm thinking this is a good catch-all formula for using up dollops of crème fraîche, little bits of chorizo and leftover vegetables. One thing's for sure: we always have leftover cheese.

The Joy of Ripe Cheese:

Our friend, Alma, has been staying with us, hence the paucity of new posts. One of her house gifts was this utterly delectable Brie--one whole kilo. "Bought from Gilles [surname unknown], the fromage guy." She ordered it at the market, a friend of hers picked it up in Fontainebleu and she transported it all the way to Léran. This cheese is as good as it looks with a powdery skin like an elderly marquise. By its second night on the dining table, its blonde satiny insides were oozing like lava.