OLS Week #2: Quiche with a potato crust

Good news for me is that I will get to participate in One Local Summer this year, even though I missed the deadline and the first week of the challenge! OLS is a challenge for participants to create one meal each week consisting of entirely local ingredients. I’m excited for the chance to think creatively and devise new meal ideas instead of falling into ruts and bad habits.

I had to pull out my cookbooks to prepare this week’s local meal. The first I always reach for is Simply in Season: recipes that celebrate fresh, local foods in the spirit of More-with-less. It is a phenomenal cookbook that comes in hand when concocting simple, seasonal meals with ingredients readily on hand. The book is divided into four sections, one for each season. Each section lists ingredients harvested at that time of year and then provides a slew of recipes focusing on them.

The recipe I selected was a quiche using potatoes as a crust instead of a pastry dough. The eggs I already had. At the market on Friday I purchased potatoes, chard, a bunch of onions and a block of very special, flavored cheese. The cheese was a splurge for me as its a little out of my budget. Initially, it seemed a bit of a shame to cut of a chunk and grate into the quiche, as it is so flavorful in its own right and worthy of being sliced and eaten alone.

I liked the idea of using potatoes instead of flour for several reasons. One, it makes a lot of sense. Potatoes and eggs just go together; mixed together for potato pancakes or side-by-side for hashbrowns and scrambled eggs. It’s a breakfast institution. My second reason is because, as of yet, I don’t know of any local sources for grains. This small fact makes planning an entirely local meal very hard for me. As I don’t typically eat meat, grains make up a large portion of my diet either whole or milled for breads. Without being able to use grains, an entirely local meal looks something like chard and squash – not too satisfying, or filling for that matter.
The other beauty of this idea is that it made for a very simple, though not entirely quick, meal. I grated the potatoes, adding in a bit of chopped onion and melted butter and pressed them into a pie dish, baking it for 20 minutes at 450F before adding the contents of the quiche.
For the quiche, I used 2-3cups of chopped chard and parsley, basil, and chives from my patio garden. I grated one cup of my cheese and mixed it in with the greens, and laid these out on top of the potatoes. Luckily, I remembered my garlic scapes at the last minute and threw one of them in too. The egg mixture was one cup of whole milk and three eggs. Unfortunately, this didn’t make enough egg to cover the greens. I hadn’t followed the recipe in the book, which called for spinach, asparagus and bacon, but had approximated an appropriate amount of chard in place of the other ingredients. I was worried that the chard on top would burn. Luckily, it only dried out and became crunchy, falling back down onto the egg. The egg mixture fluffed up as it was setting and the cheese melted its way throughout the dish. The final outcome was incredibly pleasing; the cheese added an extra smoky flavor and the potatoes added a satisfying heartiness.

Maxwell lucked out too with some homemade cookies. They’re made from whole wheat flour and flavored with spearmint and parsley from the patio garden. He seems to think they’re pretty swell and I’ve got high hopes they’ll help him to smell as fresh and sweet as they do!