demob happy: start w/good soundtrack, quiche and shut up about it

it's a much belated shot in the ass to get some new music from my artistic director, b. yotchslaap salamander. i said i wanted to do a blog on food and i needed a spring soundtrack to get the ball rolling (note: i will be blaming all unfavorable aspects of the blog on my staff for the duration). i returned home from chicago last week to find a few cd’s pushed through the front door mail slot. so i now have KoL, kate nash, hanne hukkleberg (some plaintive german? singer), herb ohta jr (hawai'i's finest ukulele virtuosos), and the new U2 downloaded to my bb curve. was this antecedent soundtrack obtained through the music industry's legal retail avenues? let's not be naive.

i guess the raison d’être for this blog is that i have to write something or i’ll lose my goddamned mind. i am bored to death. i've been driving myself crazy with guilt over my debilitating time serving propensities. realizing last night that i was lulling her into a coma with turgid ranting over trivial office politics(1) my wife/editor insisted i start writing again and shut up about it. so, i've started....blogging. demob happy(2), i hope.

right now i'm calling it the amateur postmodernist food blog. i'm thinking i'll write some bits about food i like to cook. i’m no slouch in the kitchen but i'm terrible at staying on point so...hey! do they have donuts over there? my editor assures me she can keep me topical, but she's on the wrong side of seven loads of laundry and hasn't yet managed to glue the bird on the junie b. doll for the open cereal box book report, so... i think you should just read it and shut up about it.

credentials? i'm passionate about cooking, and i have a solid vein of objective critical theory from my private protestant pentecostal education (K - college)(3). i’m looking for more out my native English language than what i overhear in the office(4). i’ve written about 14.7 poems and two short stories (mostly in my car at lunch and none of them published), and i adore eating. but truthfully i really just have an abundance of time on my hands when i’m not mouth breathing in my cube.

but why postmodernist? because i took one of those illuminating facebook quizzes "What kind of philosopher are you"(5) and apparently i'm a postmodernist, meaning i'm incredulous to metanarratives. i don't know what metanarratives are either (not really sure it's a word) but i like it because it made me sound so super smart and i am often accused of and certainly enjoy being incredulous towards things; a little something my editor refers to as "snarkiness". not sure this is a word either.

the description also pointed out the self-contradictory problems inherent in post modernism. i don’t see this as a problem.....you can't imagine what an albatross down it is to finally be vetted by the sage fb quiz authors, their various grammatical errors notwithstanding, to know once and for all why i find it uncomfortable to follow any established convention.

concerning cooking, i’m specifically interested in the creative process. for my methodology i borrow from the chilean poet huidobro who said a poem should always be a new object “...like nature creates a tree.” i think this can be applied to cooking. well, my cooking at any rate. even when i follow a recipe the result is never the same. there are a myriad of explanations for this.....maybe i didn’t write down the method correctly, or got heavy-handed with an ingredient. maybe i paired the dish with a different starch or a clashing wine. but now i think it’s my postmodernist tendencies overpowering my ability to follow any set of rules....thanks facebook!

what i have found out in over 10 years of serious amateur cooking is that 80% of cooking is shopping. i think method, oven temp, and cooking time all come second to ingredients. don’t get me wrong.....i love eating good food and pleasing people with something i’ve made is a great feeling. but what really gets me going is planning a menu because at this point there are no limitations and what i end up making could be anything. (this is also why i’m frequently banned from doing the weekly grocery shopping....i end up spending our whole budget on impossibly perfect nectarines or a bagful of baby bok choy that only i will eat.) if i had a mission statement for am/po-mo it would be something akin to an Edward Behr quote i read a couple years ago, “...cooking so straight-forward, that assembles outstanding materials separately and perfectly cooked, that demands, through much labor to humbly exalt nature.”(6)

so diving right into my amateur recipe book i will now include one of the first things i ever wrote down. quiche. penned almost 11 years ago i remember foolishly thinking it would be the one and only way i would ever make quiche. no idea where the original recipe came from but the quiche i made for my daughter’s school function this past thursday bore no resemblance to the original from what i can tell. however, it still disappeared faster than it took me to break six eggs; the secret was a high quality gruyere and a homemade pie pastry that uses an entire stick of butter. so below is the recipe i used last week.

music pairing: calexico (feast of wire) or horace silver (song for my father)
wine pairing: pinto gris from oregon, off-dry sparkling wine (blanc de noirs), or a mimosa since it’s breakfast and your kids will think you’re drinking orange juice.

quiche filling

6 eggs
1½ cups evaporated milk
¾ cup heavy cream
1 10oz. package of frozen, chopped spinach (defrosted)
1 cup diced ham
2 tbl finely chopped onions
¼ cup small diced red bell pepper
2 tbl butter
½ cup shredded irish white cheddar cheese
½ cup shredded gruyere (or high quality swiss cheese)
1½ cups shredded parmesan cheese
½ tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground black pepper
½ tsp salt
½ tsp garlic salt

pie pastry

1½ cups flour
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
8 tbl butter
¼ cup vegetable shortening
¼ cup plus 2 tbl ice water
extra flour for rolling the pastry

make the pastry first. this is the hardest and possibly most frustrating part. it took me years to get pastry right. just remember you want to keep the butter in the pastry solid/cold. you will have time to prep the filling while you let the ball of dough rest for 30 minutes.

whisk to combine flour, sugar, and salt.
using a pastry cutter or two butter knives cut flour with a very cold stick of butter until you have pea sized nuggets of butter.
quickly cut in the vegetable shortening.
add ¼ ice water to form a ball, adding additional water if dough won’t stick together.
wrap pastry ball in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes while prepping the filling.

preheat your oven to 425 degrees. you’ll want to use a towel or something to squeeze all of the water out of your defrosted spinach unless you want your quiche to be green.

thoroughly dry spinach.
lightly sauté ham, onion, and bell pepper in butter for about 3 minutes, and let cool.
whisk eggs with evaporated milk and cream.
add veggies to egg mix along with cheeses and seasonings.

lightly flour your pastry ball and roll it out to a 10’ round, keeping the thickness of the pastry to at least ¼ inch. the easiest way i’ve found to get the pastry to the pie dish is to fold it. fold the pastry round in half and then fold again into a quarter circle. place the point of the quarter folded pastry in the center of the pie dish and unfold. pinch up the edge of the pastry around the pie dish and pour in the filling.

positioning the pie dish in the center of the oven bake the quiche at 425 for 15 minutes then reduce the oven temp to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 25 minutes.


(1) yes, i’m aware that more people than a few people are out of work right now and that i could join them at any time per my “at will” employment status. i usually refrain from talking about my horrible failure of a career, however when i do uncork about my job i usually don’t stop until my wife’s eyelids are struggling to stay open and she’s sorry she asked.

(2) demobilization; broadly applied as a british idiom – a feeling of relief at imminent release from a time-serving burden, such as a career.

(3) at no point was i ever taught evolution or sex education (at least not in the classroom, if you know what i mean) at the schools i attended; math and science were taken less seriously than home economics and ceramics respectively; at least half of my 9th grade biology class was a deep immersion in the tenants of biblical creation. in 7th grade we were taught that there were certain musical notes, specifically in rock and blues songs, that the devil used to speak to young people (see Winkie Pratney, Doorways to Discipleship, Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis, 1977. ISBN 871231069).

(4) non-words, kadigans, and horribly butchered idioms used in everyday speech at work (but mostly by my boss), e.g. "really nail the head on the coffin" or "make a mountain out of an anthill".

(5) "What School of Philosophy Best Describes You" with the result Postmodern.....“You are incredulous to metanarratives. Truth is relative to all the elements of history and social location. You seek diversity and fragmentation as well as the dissolution of power structures that oppress people. You are probably a feminist and you probably critique social mores through the use of deconstruction. Unfortunately many don't consider you a philosopher: logical self-contradictions abound in postmodern theory, but you certainly have a lot to offer in the way of social critique. You are a postmodern.”

(6) Art of Eating #69, Edward Behr critiquing the food from Normand Laprise’s Quebecois restaurant Toqué!