It's my last year of law school, which for some people means a downhill coast to freedom. But as luck would have it, my year is as busy as ever. But there is still time for food. First, I'm excited about my food law and policy seminar. You know it's going to be a good semester when your first assignment is to visit a grocery store and to read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. Second, a student still has to eat. Here are a few things I've whipped up recently:
Remember my last post about the Food Porn photography event? Well, after two hours of infamous Los Angeles traffic, my cousin and I never made it to the event. We scrapped our plans and headed to my sister's instead, and we all feasted on a giant dish of japchae, or Korean noodles. Japchae is dangmyun (sweet potato noodles) mixed together with marinated beef, spinach (or in some parts of Korean, pah), carrots, mushrooms, and onion. Everything is tossed together with some soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil, then topped with a sprinkling of sesame seeds. It's a popular dish at big Korean parties and potlucks. So how did our japchae taste? Pretty good, but nothing like my mom's.
Faced with a glut of berries from the Santa Monica Farmers Market, I armed myself with a new tart pan and made my first ever fruit tart. This is a butter crust (made from scratch), vanilla cream, and organic berries.
The finished product. Thanks to the guy at Sur La Table who steered me toward the fine mesh strainer that, yes, turned out to be perfect for dusting confectioner's sugar.
Then I turned around and used the tart pan to make this mushroom gruyere-swiss quiche for a potluck. Again, a butter crust, oyster and crimini mushrooms, and both swiss and gruyere cheese. I later trimmed the crust (I let it hang over after seeing my tart crust shrink).
A healthy dose of eggs, whole milk, and cream later, voila - a savory, soft, DELICIOUS quiche with a flaky crust. You can see that I could have done a better job beating together the cream and eggs, but I was in a rush, and trust me, it tasted no worse for it. And note: I think the quiche crust turned out better than the tart's since I let the butter chill in the freezer for a bit before making the dough.
