The Pie Ho
I want to take a minute to talk about healthy eating. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of yoga and I just want to get into the spirit of that practice with today’s post. I know I post a lot of desserts and a lot of my recipes feature a lot of cheese and butter and potatoes, but I want everyone to know that I can be zen and hip, too.
So today we’re gunna deep fry some fuckin’ tofu.
I wanted to bake something for the release of The Hobbit: and Unexpected Journey, but the release date coincided with what was probably the most hectic week of my life. So here it is, super late in the game, way behind all the other Hobbit posts. Sue me.
This was sort of a haphazard recipe of my own design; everything in it was designed to reflect a certain hobbity sensibility. (Might as well just say “English” sensibility. DID YOU KNOW, The Lord of the Rings is basically just an alternate history of England? Yup, hobbits are basically just the embodiment of ideal Englishness. The more you know.)
We decided to go vegetarian on this pie as well, so here’s what went into the pan to saute pre-baking:
I made this pie for a vegetarian friend of mine. The ingredients are as follows:
- Half a large eggplant
- Half a yellow onion
- Fifteen-ish Austrian crescent fingerling potatoes (though any yellow-ish fingerlings will probably do)
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- Parmesan and Feta cheeses to taste (the more the better in my opinion)
- Fresh basil
- Puff pastry (store bought will work) and sesame seeds to top it
Originally we were also going to put spinach and leeks in as well but I forgot and the pie was fine without them. Maybe next time!
Melt some butter in a large frying pan and saute chopped onion until they’re all brown and delicious. Throw in thin rounds of fingerling potato an saute until slightly opaque. Salt half rounds of eggplant to keep them from wilting too much, add eggplant and whole milk to pan, and then cook until slightly gray and opaque and whole milk has boiled down a bit. Scoop the stew-like mixture into a glass pan and sprinkle the cheeses and bits of basil on top. Layer puff pastry over all and sprinkling sesame seeds as desired. Bake until puff pastry is brown and then serve!
I had never made a quiche before this one, though I’ve watched my mother make tons of quiches over the years. I was walking home from class the other day and after a long hard day I was really craving a home cooked meal but I didn’t want to buy lots of expensive ingredients that I didn’t have. So I thought about what we had and worked from there: we had flour, butter, and water which meant that we had all the ingredients for basic pie crust and I knew we had eggs as well, so quiche was the next logical step. I thought about what else I’d like to see in my quiche and knew that there had to be tomato and cheese and ham. I also wanted broccoli, but I would have had to cook that separately before putting it in the quiche and I was already working WAY harder than ANY college student should have to on dinner (sarcasm, that), so I didn’t get any.
