Semi-Homemade Meals with Abby and Sara

E-mail conversation a few weeks ago:

Me: And I am more than happy to come help make dinner if you want! It would be fun. So many options w/French food...

Abby: I am TOTALLY Going to take you up on the cooking offer...then I can also be a subject of a blog post. And people don't have to eat microwaveable french fries, which is what I had come up with so far for the French theme.

So now I will be faithful to Abby and make our meal the other night the subject of a post on this illustrious blog.

Our book club read The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Note: this book is critically acclaimed and was loved by many people including my mother. However, none of us really liked it...I could not get into it for the life of me. What gives?) which takes place in Paris. So, naturally, French was the cuisine of choice for our Monday meeting.

Abby and I menu-planned via Gchat at work and decided upon a quiche for our main dish. I found this recipe for a scrumptious-sounding Broccoli Garlic Quiche from now-deceased Gourmet. We vetoed making pie crust from scratch; too laborious for an after-work dinner. Abby informed me that ready-made pie crusts could be ours at the click of a mouse thanks to the urban lifesaver that is FreshDirect.

Abby found a very French-bistro-sounding salad to start with: Endive with Goat Cheese and Bacon Dressing. When I showed up at her apartment early to help cook (knives in tow!), she had all of the ingredients for both recipes ready to go.

I began making the quiche filling right away because it would need 45-50 minutes to bake. I cut up the broccoli into florets and boiled them for a few minutes in salted water, then drained and cooled them. Although Abby does not own a whisk, we made do with her hand-mixer's beater attachment to combine the eggs, half-and-half, garlic, and spices. We added some cheese, but a lot less than this recipe calls for. I poured the filling into the lovely pre-made pie shell and decoratively placed broccoli florets into the egg mixture. Ta-da...into the oven to bake. Making a quiche (with pre-made crust) is oh so easy!

For the salad, Abby began cooking up bacon in a skillet and setting it aside on paper towels once crispy. I used our makeshift whisk to mix together mustard and red wine; once the bacon was cooked, I slowly added some of the bacon fat from the pan. There you have warm bacon dressing! We crumbled the bacon over the endive leaves and tossed it all with the dressing. We didn't end up using goat cheese, but this salad was wonderful with just a little grated Parmesan sprinkled on top.

The quiche came out of the oven perfectly fluffy and moist. FreshDirect's crust was quite delicious too! We enjoyed it with some glasses of wine and steamed haricots verts with shallots and thyme that Abby bought from (you guessed it) FreshDirect's roster of sides. This dinner could be an excellent feature on Sandra Lee's show, Semi-Homemade Meals. We finished with some purchased French pastries, just as the French do!

Book club member Laura B. enjoys a piece of quiche (on a very large plate!)