Omelet Pie

Okay, so it's quiche -- a damn good one, too -- but I was all set to write a post about how making delicious quiche is an easy way to feel fancy, I hear my brother downstairs. Pure amazement and the excitement that only those not yet of legal voting age can capture in his voice, he exclaims, "Is that an omelet pie?!" My parents tried to teach him to have refined tastes and explained that it is a quiche on the counter -- a damn good one, too. But my brother is not one to be fooled where food is concerned, just like every other teenage boy. He reviewed the ingredient list thusly:

"Eggs? Cheese? Ham? Pie crust? Yeah, like I said, OMELET PIE!"

Having reached his threshold for culinary semantic nonsense, he cut himself a generous serving of omelet pie (codename: quiche), and happily went back to his video games.

Whether you are refined and enjoy quiche for brunch or you take a more direct approach to life and gobble up some omelet pie in between role playing game adventures, make this quiche today. It's fast, easy, scrumptious, and as simple or as fancy as you want it to be.

Preheat the oven to 350, then start with your favorite pie crust:


I confess that I'm not super great at making pie crust from scratch. I usually use the premade stuff from the grocery store. I was feeling adventurous tonight, though, and I made The Pioneer Woman's recipe. It took a little more patience than I'm used to having, but I managed to make it.

Dump about one cup of the leftover ham from dinner (cut into bit-sized chunks) into the crust. Try to get it into as even a layer as possible at the bottom.


Sprinkle one cup of shredded cheese evenly over the ham. I'm using cheddar because it's what I had available, but let the sky be the limit here. Swiss is most traditional, but if you love cheese like I do (and who doesn't?), you'll want to try whatever you've got.


In a separate bowl, combine 3 eggs, 2 TBL flour, 1 cup of half & half, a tsp of salt, black pepper to taste, and a tsp of that dried minced onion from the back of your cabinet that your dad sprinkles all over pot roast. Whisk it all until combined, then slowly and evenly pour the savory custard over the ham & cheese.


My custard just barely covered the ham and cheese, which means I'll end up with a quiche with a very high filling-to-custard ratio, which I like. If you like your quiche more eggy and less fillingey, add another egg and nother splash of cream, or don't be so generous with your filling.


Mmm. Starting to look like quiche now. A normal person would say this baby is ready to go into the oven. But I've always been a person who can't leave well enough alone, so I grated about a half cup of super sharp white cheddar and sprinkled it on the top.


NOW you may put it in the oven. Leave it there for 45-55 minutes, won't you? It's ready to come out when the eggs are "set", which means they're no longer jiggly and runny. Just say those two words out loud, and you'll know why you don't want to take it out before it's done.

I let mine cool for just a few minutes (it's supposed to be served warm, after all), before helping myself to a slice.


Great bouncing icebergs, was it ever delicious. It (like everything else I like to eat) is very high in calories when you count all the egg yolks, cheese, and - mother of all saddlebags - pie crust, but quiche has this magical way of making you feel like you're eating light. Maybe it's the fluffy texture of the filling. Maybe it's our society's penchant for dieting denial. Whatever it is, it's heavenly. And oh so versatile. Spinach and feta quiche. Bacon and Swiss. Mushroom and tomato. Anything you've ever wanted to put in an omelet (but were scared to try) can go into a quiche. It is, after all, just an omelet pie.

Omelet Pie! Quiche!
2 TBL flour
3 eggs
1 cup half & half
1 tsp dried minced onion
1 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
1 prepared, unbaked pie crust
1 cup diced ham
1 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
1/4 - 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, eggs, half & half, onion, salt, and pepper until combined. Set aside.
Place prepared pie crust into pie tin. Spread ham evenly in pie shell.
Sprinkle mild cheddar cheese evenly over ham.
Pour custard slowly and evenly over ham & cheese.
Sprinkle sharp cheddar over the top.
Bake for 45-55 minutes until eggs are set.
Serve warm in slices, just like pie. Omelet pie.

Make Like Elvis . . .

. . . and gitcha some o' that gravy.

It was a dreary, rainy morning today in the Chicago 'burbs. They type of morning that makes it really difficult to leave the warm snuggliness of your bed and even more difficult to lead a productive day when you do. The type of morning where making a sensible, healthy choice for breakfast (brunch, actually, when I'm being honest about how long it actually took me to get going today). So I did what any reasonable, health-conscious grown adult would do: I made biscuits and gravy.

Biscuits and gravy ("B&G" from here on in) are a gift from the heavens. This recipe is actually a gift from my dear Aunt Linda, who got it from her dear southern grandma. Aunt Linda shared her southern breakfast secrets with me the last time she was in town, and I've been itching to practice them since. As if it wasn't bad enough that I made my whole family partake in the caloric smorgasbord, I'm gifting this recipe to you, too. I plan dragging as many people down with me as I can, frankly. Be careful how much of this you eat unless you plan on having the mass to drag down lots of things in the near future, actually.

Anyway, the first step to biscuits and gravy is to actually make the biscuits. Aunt Linda didn't show me how to make them from scratch, so now I'd like to introduce our hero:


Have no fear, Bisquick is here! I made the biscuits according to the package directions; it made 7 biscuits instead of the 9 it claimed it would. Lying Bisquick bastards. Oh, and because I'm a caveman (as I've mentioned), I don't have a biscuit cutter. I do, however, have a drinking glass. Several, actually, and it works just as well as your fancy-pants biscuit cutter. Oh, and if you're too fancy-pants to use Bisquick, feel free to make biscuits from scratch, just don't think you're going to find a recipe for them here. And if you're super fancy and just want to make biscuits out of that exploding canister, feel free. I won't tell on you. The point is, make some damn biscuits.

Now that we've got the B, let's work on the G. Here's the REAL hero of our show:


One pound of regular breakfast sausage! When you go shopping, please have the good sense just to buy regular sausage. Save the hot, sage, and maple sausages for another day. Oh, and Aunt Linda's advice here is to buy the cheapest sausage you can find because that tends to have a higher fat content than the fancy brands. And for this recipe, fat is good. Fat is very, very good. So fry it up!



Just keep flipping it around and chopping it with the spatula while it cooks over medium heat. Wait until the sausage is pretty much all done before you decide if it's rendered enough grease. If it hasn't, don't freak out. Just wait 'til no one's looking, and . . .



Throw in a couple tablespoons of butter. Stir it around until it's all melted, then grab your all-purpose flour.



Throw it in. Now, Aunt Linda didn't measure how much flour she put in, and neither did I, but I would feel safe in saying this is about one sparse cup of flour. Stir it around so everything gets spread around evenly. The flour will absorb the fat and start to form a roux as it cooks. The roux is the base for the gravy, so you want to make sure you take good care of it so it can take good care of you.



See that golden brown goodness bubbling toward the bottom of that photo? That's roux. Most gravy recipes tell you to cook it 'til it's golden brown. Aunt Linda says the trick here is to cook it until it's "almost burnt". That's what her granny said, that's what she does, and you can't beat the results. If you're afraid of going from "almost" to "fully" burnt, cook it until you get that rich, golden-brown color those other recipes are always talking about, then cook it for a full minute or two longer. Trust Aunt Linda. Trust her granny.

Let's turn this roux into gravy, shall we? Take some milk (2% or whole is best, but we'll talk about that in a minute), and pour, baby, pour.



Seriously, let it go. It'll feel like WAY too much milk, but trust me. Trust Linda. Trust Linda's granny. Again, I didn't measure because neither did Linda, and neither did Linda's granny, but I would estimate I added about 4 cups of milk. Now, Linda (and Linda's granny) say that 2% or whole milk is best, but don't fear if you're a caveman like me and only have skim milk. The only difference between them is fat, so you know what I added? Yup, MORE butter. A added a couple more tablespoons with the milk. If the thought of this is simply too sinful to bear, you probably shouldn't be making b&G you can add a splash of cream or half & half to make up the difference.



Now it's time to take your whisk, and - while continuing to cook over medium heat - whisk, baby, whisk. Make sure you scrap all that flavorful goodness off the bottom of the skillet as you go along. The flour will start to soak up the milk pretty quickly to become thick, delicious gravy. Here is a good time to salt and pepper generously. And I mean GENEROUSLY. Undersalted gravy is just about the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Here's a neat trick to see if it's thick enough:



Dip a spoon in the gravy, pull it out, and swipe your finger across it. If it all falls down and you can't see your finger swipe anymore, it's too thin; keep whisking! If it runs just a little, you're in good shape. This was actually a little thicker than I wanted (notice how it didn't run, like, at all), so I just added a little more milk. That's one of the greatest things about gravy: it's almost never too late to fix it if something goes wrong.

After optimum thickness and seasoning level was achieved, it was time to grab a plate, a biscuit, and the biggest ladle I could find.



You can leave the biscuit in tact, split it in half (shown here), or rip it into bits ("chewed") before dousing the whole operation with delicious gravy. Either way, run (do not walk) to the table and get this in your face as quickly as possible before you have a chance to begin to calculate how many calories you're consuming (please don't calculate it. Some things are better left unknown).

Now as this is just about the worst thing a person could eat if they're watching their health, I advise you to exercise restraint with how often you add this to your meal plans. And by restraint, I mean try to keep it at or below twice a day. Hey, those leftovers aren't going to eat themselves, right?

Aunt Linda's Granny's Sausage Gravy
1 lb regular breakfast sausage
2-4 TBL butter as needed
1 sparse cup all-purpose flour
4 cups milk

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook and crumble sausage until done. Add butter if needed to add grease.
Add flour; stir to coat evenly.
Cook, stirring frequently, until roux turns a rich, deep, golden-brown.
Add milk and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk frequently, taking care to scrape the bottom of the skillet, until desired thickness is achieved.
Serve hot over biscuits.
Join a gym.

Awesomesauce!

Applesauce, dudes. That's the word of the day. I love applesauce, but it's so hard to find the good stuff in the stores. It's usually so sweet I feel like it should say Hershey's on the label. Or the "strawberry applesauce", which -- upon a closer look at the ingredients -- is actually just applesauce with Red #40 in it. Mmm . . . Red #40! Just like mom used to make! And don't even get my started on the ingredient list! Even the supposedly unsweetened natural applesauces have an ingredient list so foreign that I might as well be reading my shampoo bottle. All science aside, it really burns my ass when the first ingredient in something this simple is water. Um, helloooo! APPLEsauce. Not WATERsauce with apple flavoring. Jerks.

Anyway, I was pissed about this a while back so I decided I was just going to make my own. I mean, how hard could it be? It's apples and sauce, right? Well it turns out I was dead wrong. It's not made up of apples and sauce. It's actually just apples, and it's actually way easier than I ever imagined. It's simple, fast, and so wholesome you can feel good about eating it all the time. And best of all, YOU are the captain of the SS Applesauce when you decide how much of what to add to enhance your delicious, rustic applesauce. Shall we begin?

Take ordinary apples and peel them with an ordinary vegetable peeler.


I'd like to draw your attention to something here: you don't have to be perfect when you peel the apples.

Leaving a little skin (just a little) on the apples makes for a more interesting look and texture in the finished product. Just don't go crazy. You're looking for "rustic", not "nasty".

Next, give your apples the potato treatment and cut them into fairly equally-sized chunks. Make sure you cut the core out. If you have one of those things that looks like a wagon wheel that cores and slices your apples at the same time, now would be a good time to get it out. I'm a caveman and don't have one, so I just used a knife. Anyway, just cut up the dang apples, and throw the cores in the trash.

Just like potatoes, throw those evenly-sized chunks into a pot large enough to hold them.


Unlike potatoes, do not add any water! Take them to the stove and cook them over very low heat.


Make sure you take your NCAA bracket off the stove before you start cooking. Safety first. Don't be like me. Anyway, the only real tricky thing here is resisting the temptation to add water. Apples are approximately 99.999% water, so they don't need any extra. If you start them cooking on low heat, you'll start to draw enough water out of them that it won't scorch the apples on the bottom of the pot. If you're a fraidy cat, go ahead and add a tiny amount of water (just enough to cover the bottom of the pot) before you put the apples on the stove.

As more water gets drawn out of the apples, you can turn the heat up to a medium-low setting. Just toss them around occasionally until they soften up some. How soft, you ask? Soft enough to use this:


It took me just about 10-15 minutes of slow cooking to get the apples soft enough to mash. I like to mash with the heat still on for the first minute or so. The reason for this is because mashing squishes out even more water, and the heat will cook it off. We don't want to lose all the moisture, obviously, so take the apples off the heat after about a minute and keep mashing.


It's a good way to let go of some aggression. Mash away until the applesauce is the consistency you want it to be. If you like you applesauce a little on the chunky side, stop sooner. If you like it more on the puree side of town, keep going 'til the neighbors complain. That's the beauty of this: it's completely up to you.

Ta-da! Applesauce!

Ingredients: Apples

Spoon some into a cup and enjoy it plain, like this:


Believe me when I tell you, friendo, that there are few things better than warm, fresh applesauce. OR you can try it like this:


Ingredients: apples, cinnamon, nutmeg

Mmm, that's the good stuff. Play around with additions. My personal favorite thing to do is add a dash of ground cloves. I like to pretend it's a little more sophisticated. Now, if you feel bound and determined to add sugar, I would recommend adding it during the cooking process so you don't end up with a gritty (nasty) finished product, but do yourself a favor and try it in its pure form first. You'll thank me later.

Best of all, from start to finish, it took me less than a half hour to eat applesauce. I made this when I should have been getting ready to go to work. It's such a low maintenance recipe that I actually made it while I was making and eating breakfast and then making my lunch for the day (which you can bet your boots included homemade applesauce). Top dry cereal with it, add it as a snack to your sack lunch, whip it out when you're having pork chops for dinner. People will be very impressed, just so long as you never, ever tell them how easy it is.

I won't tell if you won't.

Awesomesauce
Ingredients:
Apples (yield approx. 1/2 cup of sauce for every apple)
Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, etc. to taste

Peel, core, and slice apples.
Cook over low heat for 2-5 minutes, increase heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally until apples are tender, 5-10 minutes.
Mash approx. 1 minute.
Turn off the heat and continue mashing until apples reach desired consistency.
Optional: mix in desired spices in desired amounts to taste.
Devour. Feel good about life.

Promote & Run

Hello, lovelies! I know I haven't been putting much up, but there truth of the matter is that there isn't much to put lately. My excuse up until last Wednesday is that I'm in a show, so here's a little shameless self-promotion.

If you're in the Chicagoland area (and if you're reading this, you probably are), come see my show! It's an intimate, true-natured telling of William Inge's famous Bus Stop (made famous in the mid-50s by Marilyn Monroe herself). You want details? I got your details right here! No really, right here:

The Guild Theatre presents: Bus Stop by William Inge
3/25 - 4/17
Friday & Saturday - 7:30pm; Sunday - 3:00pm
$18 general admission; $15 students and seniors
At The Des Plaines History Center
781 Pearson St.
Des Plaines, IL 60016
For tickets, please call 847-420-8079 (be sure to call ahead as seating is very limited)

***

So there's that. I was an actor once, a million lifetimes ago, and now -- by chance -- it seems I am one again. I'm like the Michael Jordan of acting retirement. Or something.

Anyway, the new excuse that took over last Wednesday is that we are now in the throes of Lent. I'm one of those Catholics who only goes to church on Christmas and Easter but who also feels guilty if she doesn't give something up for Lent. My second-biggest vice (second to Diet Coke, and - let's be honest - I am nowhere near ready to give that up) is obviously sugar. I obviously love to bake. I love to find recipes, make them, taste them, improve upon them, and taste them again. And again. And again. Once I caught myself wondering why there weren't any desert options for after breakfast, I decided I'd give it a rest until Easter. Sugar is impossible to avoid completely, so I've cut out anything where sugar (or its evil twin, high fructose corn syrup) are among the first three ingredients.

Goodbye, cookies. Goodbye, pop. Goodbye spoonfuls of sugar directly out of the canister. Kidding about that last one, but don't think I haven't seriously considered it on some of my more desperate days.

So with nothing to bake and no time in which to bake it, this blog has been collecting a little cyberdust. Not to worry, though. You're only bored if you're boring, right? And the Domestic Motherfucker is NOT boring. So until Easter comes, you can look forward to more than just cookies and brownies. I'm going to put an effort into making and posting more savory recipes fit to feed a family of hungry Irish Catholics and beyond. I'm working on pursurading my Aunt Linda to let me share her closely-guarded homemade recipe with you. She finally cracked and gave it to me, and it's just too good to go undistributed. Barring that, I'll come up with something. I'm going to have to find a way to replace all the calories I'll no longer be getting from a steady diet of Peeps and day-old sweet rolls, anyway.

As for this weekend, though, I'll be hanging up the first part of my moniker to become the Traveling Motherfucker. I'm heading to Las Vegas this weekend, and I can't wait to share my adventures with you.

Viva Las Vegas!