Quiching It Up: The French Version

This post is for everyone, but especially Angela, who was the driving force behind my less successful quiche project last winter.

Unfortunately for me, La Vigie doesn’t serve food on the weekends. For the previous three weekends, I’ve either visited people or made simple meals like pasta or soup from a container. This weekend, my friend, Mariko visited me from London and I wanted to give her a real French meal. My French friend, Anne-Constance, offered to cook one. As a result, we paid less and got to learn how to cook like the French.

We started with this whole mess of stuff that we got from the local supermarket. I’ll go through all the steps so that you all can get a sense of the amount of preparation that went into this meal and possibly find inspiration. First, we had to chop up all the vegetables for a ratatouille. These included peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and zucchini. Anne-Constance took small pieces of onion and olive oil and cooked them in the pot before she added the vegetables. She then added salt and herbes de Provence, covered the pot, and let it simmer for the next two hours.




Next, we made the quiche. On top of the pastry shell that we bought at the supermarket, we added a level of slices of Gruyere cheese. In France, you can buy little pieces of ham called lardoons that are coated in fat. Anne-Constance fried these and put them on top of the cheese. She combined two eggs and the yolk of a third with sour cream and milk to make a mixture to pour on the quiche. She then sprinkled a layer of grated cheese on top.

In addition to the quiche, we also had an onion tart, which she improvised using the extra vegetables from the ratatouille, fried onion strips, and small pieces of Gruyere. Our meal also included cooked fennel, which is apparently a traditional French dish. You can buy a piece of fennel at a grocery store in France. It’s about as big as my two fists and has stalks coming out of it. To cook it, you cut off the stalks and then cut it into pieces about the size of an artichoke heart. It can then be sprinkled with olive oil and herbs and cooked in the oven.


This is what my dinner looked like. The little round circles are Lyonnais, which look like little white tubes when you buy them. They are made of potatoes and eggs. We cut them and fried them for a few minutes until they were brown. The green vegetable next to them is the fennel, the mess of vegetables is the ratatouille, and the yellow slice is the quiche.

Amazing as the dinner was, that was not the end of the evening. After dinner, we went down to the bank of the Seine and had bread, wine, and cheese. I’d been wanting to have a picnic along the Seine since I got here and it was just as fun as I thought it would be. As I’ve said before, on a balmy night in Paris, there are hoards of people promenading along the Seine. There are also boats, some with fancy parties that go up and down the river. One of them happened to pull up next to us and started to blare typical French music. It was just like a movie; even the soundtrack was right for the moment.


As for the bread and cheese, they are both so much better in France. At the supermarket, I was very resistant to buying four cheeses, but I’m glad my friends forced me. You’re supposed to have variety and they were all good in their own way. One of them was a small, sweet cheese that was covered in apricots. It’s so odd to have a sweet cheese with fruit, but even I enjoyed it. We had bought the bread at the local patisserie and when we got it, it was warm and fresh. I love bread, but fresh French bread is about the best bread I’ve ever tasted.

I wanted to devote this entry to the meal, but I promise that the next will cover where I went this weekend. There will be lots of pictures of Paris and lots more action.