Gruyere cheese tart

Last night’s dinner was amazing. I LOVED it. And I so meant to take a photo. I’m trying to get better at taking photos of what I cook but I keep forgetting. I was so annoyed with myself when I realised that yet again I’d forgotten. But especially this time when the tart looked perfect. Absolutely 100% perfect. And there’s no evidence.

So a little while back I bought some gruyere cheese. I bought it for a particular recipe that I’d wanted to make for a while but had never got around to making. And ever since I’d had the cheese in the fridge I’ve not been able to find the recipe. This is the only down side to having too many recipe books. I have started a recipe index to help with this but it’s not finished, so it erm…wasn’t very helpful.

So, I had this gruyere cheese and its use by date was fast approaching. So I decided to use it in a pie type dish. I’d never cooked with gruyere before so I looked up a few recipes and picked one for a gruyere and asparagus quiche. I used filo pastry instead of a pie case and called mine a tart  (just cause I like the name, and get a good giggle out of trying to imagine my gruyere cheese poking its sexy legs out seductively from under it’s plastic wrapping) and I altered a few other small things.

So, my tart involved some softened spring onions, a few eyes of bacon diced and cooked for a few minutes, 3/4C gruyere, 3/4C cream, 4 large eggs (whisk eggs and cream together before adding the rest to this mixture), the ends of the asparagus (after partial softening), seasoning, all in the pastry then tomatoes and the remainder of the asparagus spears on top. Hot oven for about 25 mins.

And it was heavenly. I don’t usually add cream to my quiches, pies or tarts, preferring them to be a little lighter than that, but I had cream that needed using as well as the offending cheese. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why it was so good, the cream…

Ahhh…..cream……I’m off to day dream about whipped cream now, whipped cream and what? Ah scones with jam and cream for sure….day dreaming away….

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sushi

When you think of sushi what comes to mind? Rice? Seaweed? Wasabi and soy sauce? Do you think of the whole sushi train experience, a take away miso soup, or just a quick ‘big roll’ as they are commonly referred to in Australia?

For me, I see your traditional big roll and inside is raw salmon and avocado, my favourite combination of ingredients in a sushi roll.

However, contrary to popular belief, sushi is not all about raw fish. That would be sashimi. Sashimi is a whole other kettle of fish (no pun intended). Of course, on your standard sushi train you can get both, and a variety of other Japanese dishes like stuffed fried bean curd parcels, fried chicken and so forth. But it is the sushi I have come here to write about today.

Why am I writing about sushi today? Primarily because it was sushi that we had for dinner last night.

I’ve never managed to get myself some sashimi tuna or salmon for home, so sushi at home never includes such delicacies, unfortunately. One day when I learn more about where I live I will source it. Has anyone else used sashimi tuna or salmon at home?

So, sushi at home usually consists of chicken, always avocado and usually carrot and cucumber. Last night I also sliced up finely green onions and capsicum which went down really well.

We started with a mug of miso soup and drank that while we put our sushi rolls together. That’s always fun isn’t it, putting it all on the nori sheet and attempting the roll? There really is a knack to it which includes how much rice, how much filling and where you put the rice and filling in relation to the edges of your piece of nori. I can make them relatively well these days, but I had a lot of fun when I first started, constantly ending up with these horrible looking lumpy sushi rolls, many of which didn’t close together because I had too much filling.

One of these days I am going to be brave enough to make sushi a dish at  a party I throw. Even if it’s an appetiser. I’m so going to do it.

Whilst I enjoy eating sushi because the flavours and it’s good for me, I also enjoy it for the condiments. At home I have pinch bowls just like they in the sushi places and we squeeze some wasabi and soy sauce into it, mix it up and dip the sushi roll in. Usually we have pickled ginger as well. Taste sensation everywhere. It’s the dipping and the adding of ginger that really adds to the experience for me. In so many ways I think that’s strange, but then again it makes the meal a little novel. There aren’t many foods that we eat that you pick up and dip into something before taking a bite. A sausage with sauce on the side comes close, but it’s not quite the same.

One of the trickiest bits about making sushi at home though is for me (by far), the rice. This is such a delicate art of rinsing, cooking for the perfect amount of time, cooling for the perfect amount of time and seasoning with the perfect amount of liquid. I’m getting there with that too and this time my rice was the best it has been. I was quite pleased with myself. Especially considering that once upon a time rice was my weak point. I quickly learnt the value of heavy pots and pans once I had my own place, especially for rice. I honestly don’t know how I did the cheaper pots for so long now that I know the difference, but I digress.

So, I enjoy sushi, shop bought and home made, and I enjoy the process of making sushi at home, and the novelty of the dipping bowl. And I love it even more if it is preceeded with a mug of miso soup. So much so, that even though I’m not having sushi just now, I’m going to make a miso soup. Yumm….

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the non-traditional

It wasn’t until just now when I was thinking about all the yummy things I’ve made recently that I haven’t had the time to share that I realised I like to cook some traditional dishes with a non-traditional change. I also like to cook traditional dishes, just as they were, traditionally that is.

The meals that got me thinking about this were our vegetarian tacos and vegetarian nachos.

I wouldn’t usually eat these two meals so close together in time, especially with the corn chip/health thing. But we have a young person staying with us at the moment and we’re taking her on a multicultural food tour, we’ve had japanese, mexican, malaysian, italian, australian, english, french, indian, chinese, vietnamese and probably a couple of others as well.

I guess sometimes, food is about needing to eat. Sometimes food is about the joy of cooking, sometimes about creating. And sometimes it’s about the enjoyment of eating.

These, time and desires influence the choices we make of what to eat on a day to day basis. And how we modify recipes to suit the mood, occasion, need or desire.

What recipes have you altered? I change almost everything I make. Every cake gets it’s butter and oil substituted out for example. If it’s vegetarian night then the meat in a dish might get changed for beans or lentils, I’ll swap the herbs around.

But sometimes this creates a whole new dish. Adding vegies to a dish changes it, changes the way the sauce will hold together for example.

That doesn’t make it bad, or good necessarily, that is to be decided in the eating of course. And what better way to decide than to sample your food.

And that’s the ultimate test in our house. Upon eating a new dish-would I eat this again?

And if the answer is no the recipe gets changed, or scrapped if it was really that bad.

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