Makhouda D'Aubergine (or Batu Quiche)

After spending the whole day in the kitchen I must say I'm relieved to be able to sit down and type instead. It's not like a whole lot of cooking was going on. No, I was stacking away all the groceries from last nights run and decided to clean out one of my drawers. Then my kids decided to clean out my baking drawer, now that was like opening up a can of worms. But it was finally clean and the girls were very proud of themselves. Except that the counter tops had all kinds of stuff that had to be washed or trashed, that was of course left up to me!

For dinner tonight we are having an eggplant quiche. It's the kind of quiche that has everyone in the house salivating when I just mention that it's on the menu for dinner. Well worth the time it takes to make it and very forgiving.

Preparation time: 45 min. + 45 min. baking; Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 ~500g	Eggplant (large)
	Salt for sprinkling
3 tbsp.	Oil
1	Onion, finely diced
1	Red bell pepper, finely diced
8	Eggs (L)
1/4 cup	Minced fresh parsley
1 tbsp.	Minced garlic
250 g	Emmental cheese
1/2 cup	Bread crumbs
1/4 tsp.	Ground rose buds
1/4 tsp.	Ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Chili powder
1/4 tsp.	Coriander powder

Method:

The tough part about this recipe (and the main reason why I don't cook it more often) is the dicing. It does take a bit of time to get everything cut to the right size. Today I spent about 30 minutes just dicing the eggplant, onion and peppers! I dice everything to around 5 mm.

If you are using Asian eggplants then you should use at least 2 of them and maybe even 3. What is wonderful about this recipe is that you can have more or less eggplant and it doesn't change the taste all that much. If you have the time, once you've diced the eggplant sprinkle it with salt and let it sit for at least 30 minutes. Then wash it and pat it dry. Needless to say I usually skip this step.

Instead of red bell pepper you can use other peppers. I've used green bell peppers and capsicums as substitutes and the quiche still tastes great.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, add the eggplant, onion and pepper and cook until they are golden brown. Stir the vegetables occasionally.

While this is cooking you can get the rest of the ingredients ready. Chop the parsley, mince the garlic and dice the cheese into 7 mm cubes. Sometimes when I cook this dish I don't have all the proper ingredients. Instead of parsley I've used coriander leaves and the cheese varies according to what is around. In Sri Lanka I use the local Gouda, in the USA Swiss. If I want to be fancy I use some Gruyere.

Then lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl and add ALL the ingredients to it. Make sure that the vegetables have cooled down a little bit before you add them. If they are too hot the egg will get cooked and the quiche will not be as tasty.

Turn the mixture into a 2-quart souffle dish or into ramekins or muffin pans and bake at 180 C in a fan oven (200 C/400 F conventional). A 2-quart souffle dish will take around 45 minutes to bake, while the smaller dishes take less time. You'll know that it's done when the top is golden brown and puffed and when you insert a knife it comes out clean. Be careful if your knife hits a melted piece of cheese it won't come out clean even if the quiche is done!

It can be served pipping hot with a fresh green salad and bread or just by itself. Wonderful to use to fill sandwiches the next day! Can also be cubed up and served with cocktail sticks as an appetizer or snack.

This recipe was adapted from "The Vegetarian Table North Africa" by Kitty Morse

And here is a Chef friendly version

Caramelized Leek Quiche

Oh my, oh my! Last night I could hardly sleep. 60 page views in one day AND the discovery of a caramelized leek quiche that was amazingly delicious. So delicious that it just had to be shared.

When I went grocery shopping on Monday (restocking after Paris!) not only did the savoy cabbage look good but so did the leeks. They were massive and fresh. I've always had problems with leeks. All the recipes that I know use the dark green part of the vegetable, but in Europe and the USA most of the dark leaf is cut off leaving light green leaves and a white stalk. But I was in the mood to buy what was cheap and fresh looking so I bought two huge stalks of leek.

Somehow I had in my mind that I wanted to make them into a quiche, it just felt right. So I went to my old friend (Google!) and asked him for a recipe. This is the one that I chose:

http://www.marthastewart.com/315984/caramelized-leek-quiche

But you know how that goes, one has to modify the recipe a bit to accommodate ones specific situation! So I'll post my modified recipe here.

For all of you who just hate vegetarian food, this is for you. The final product tasted unbelievably as if it had some type of meat in it!

Feeds 4. Prep time 1 - 2 hours depending on how you do the pastry.

Ingredients:

Pastry:
	6 oz	Four
	3 oz	Butter, cold
	1/4 tsp.	Salt
Filling:
	2 tbsp.	Olive oil
	500 g	Leeks (white and light green part)
	2 tsp.	Fresh thyme leaves
		Salt and pepper to taste
	100 g	Gruyere, grated
	3	Eggs
	125 ml	Whipping cream

Method:

For the pastry follow this link http://vinitasfamilyblog.blogspot.de/2014/09/basic-pastry.html

So I made the pastry and then went out to the store to buy the Gruyere and the thyme. Here in Germany you usually buy herbs in a pot. I found this very weird in the beginning but I've figured out how to keep (at least!) my basil alive so I can reuse it over and over, so now I love it :)
Here is my thyme plant that now adorns my kitchen windowsill. Lets see how long it lasts!

Back at home I rolled out the pastry and put it in my favourite flan pan. It's an amazing non-stick pan that I bought many years ago. The pastry is always crisp and it never, ever sticks. And because it never sticks I can slide it right out of the form onto a plate so I never have to cut my quiches or flans while they are still inside and thus damaging the non-stick coating.

I pricked the base with a fork and then stuck it back in the fridge.

Then I cut up the leeks. First quartering them and then cutting them into slices around 1 cm thick.

Then I had to deal with the thyme leaves. Oh now that was a royal pain. Having first washed the thyme the tiny leaves kept sticking to my hands. But I painstakingly removed the leaves from the stalks until I had what looked like enough.

Then the fan oven went on at 180°C to pre-heat for the pastry shell. Into a large skillet went the olive oil and it was heated on medium-high heat. And then went in the leeks, thyme and salt & pepper to taste. The thyme smelt divine. The leeks need to be stirred every now and then because you want to caramelize them (i.e. make them brown) and not BURN them, which I very nearly did. You also want them to be evenly cooked (and caramelized) and stirring them will help you achieve this.

With the leeks cooking and the oven heating I took out my pie dish and coated it with aluminium foil and filled it with baking beans. Now for those of you who are looking for an alternative to those expensive artificial baking beans that you can buy in the store. I have the answer: mung beans! I first used mung beans because I wanted to roast some to make some mung kauwm (which is a yummy Sri Lankan sweet meat that requires roasted mung flour). I never got round to using the mung beans for anything other than baking beans. I've been using them for years and they work wonderfully.

By this time the oven was hot so in went the pie shell to bake for 20 minutes.

While the leeks were cooking I grated my cheese and mixed together my eggs and cream with more salt & pepper to taste. Now if you are wondering why I didn't follow the recipe here the answer is simple. It looked like I had too many leeks and the milk and extra egg would not have fit in my dish. Plus I really hate to waste egg white.
If you are short on cream I think that whole milk would work fine. I know my mum always made quiches with milk in Sri Lanka and they turned out delicious.

Once your leeks are caramelized they will look like this:

If you have time allow them to cool.

After 20 minutes take out the pie shell out of the oven, remove the baking beans and the foil and put the shell back in the oven to bake for a further 10 minutes or so.

Now the original recipe says you should let the pie shell cool before you fill it but I had to fill it immediately because I had to have the quiche cooked before I went to pick up my girls from their musical project. And if I let the shell cool, then the oven would have to be reheated again which is really a waste of electricity. And so I sprinkled half the cheese into the base of the hot pie shell, put the leeks on top of it spreading them out to fit in all the corners and then poured over the egg and cream mix. On top of that went the rest of the Gruyere and then in the oven for a total of 30 minutes.

Off went the oven, the door was propped open to let some, but not all, the heat and out of the front door I went. Off to perform my soccer mum duties!