On the Origins of Food Appreciation…
As dawn breaks behind me over Puget Sound I slowly sip my frothy cup of coffee and take in Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” longing for my soul mate. Awake, Dina, that I may see you smile, hear you laugh, smell your scent, taste your flesh as I kiss your hand…my very own moveable feast. I cast an occasional glance behind me to see the Sun’s latest revelation. Thank you for the Olympics, my latest observation. I am smiling…
Who was the first person to attempt to make food more appealing to the palate, to transition sustenance to a guilty pleasure? What was their thought process? My mind drifts away to that pivotal moment in a cave somewhere in Ice Age Siberia, to a girl cowering in her deerskin next to a roaring fire. Let’s call her - oh, I don’t know, Tayla. And Tayla, like me, is drinking her version of coffee – minus the contribution of coffee beans – as the sun comes up. But Tayla is most assuredly not smiling. She silently stews and clings to her bowl :
“This bison is awful. Urgh has done nothing but bring me the same rotten meat every day for the last month. Always gesturing that he’s too tired to catch the live animals. And chastising me because my face contorts horribly at the sight of him….bringing home the latest version of Sabre-Tooth Tiger-kill. Well, maybe if he actually learned to throw his spear and sharpened it once in awhile…”
She looks around at the miscellaneous other carcasses and puddles of blood about the cave. There lay the remnants of a bear cub and a few buttercup flowers. She snatches them and tosses them into a nearby stone bowl, grabs a nearby stone, and hovers the stone menacingly over the flowers. “Urgh, if you drag one more bison leg into this hearth…” She pushes the stone into the flowers and starts to twist it with emphasis over his imaginary face. And her contorted face yields to a look of puzzlement then to amazement. “You know, I could mash enough of these into something I could spread over the …. oh I cannot bear to think of it … and it wouldn’t taste as bad…”
I’m not a bad cook, which is to say I can follow most directions and am rather judicious in my decisions to depart from a recipe. But a mad, creative genius (glancing at my wife’s picture) I am not. Perhaps, someday, but not today. Better to continue studying under my culinary sensei for just awhile longer. Not the least because she’s rather cute….oh and I adore her.
So friends, as we launch into yet another fun-filled morning here in the wonderful Pacific Northwest join me for some quiche in honor of long suffering Tayla:
On your own hunting expedition, collect:
Italian Sausage: 1 lb
Cheese, 3-cheese Italian blend (Anything close to this will do), 1 cup
Eggs: 6 large (preferably not directly harvested from the nests of large, predatory, and temperamental birds)
Heavy Whipping Cream: 1 pint
Salt: 1/2 tsp
Onion: 1/4 cup
Tabasco Sauce: 1/2 tsp
Medium casserole dish
Pie crust: Home-made or store bought, made/purchased separately
Olive oil: 1 tsp
Instructions:
1. Heat the oven to 350
2. Thinly coat the casserole dish with olive oil. No…..the INside…
3. Roll out the pie crust and fit it inside the dish
4. Mince the onions and cut the sausage into small pieces, then cook the sausage through
5. Mix the cheese, sausage, and onion together and sprinkle half of it along the bottom of the dish
6. Beat the Eggs, whipping cream, salt, and Tabasco sauce into submission… er an age appropriate mixing bowl and pour half into the dish
7. Apply the other half of the cheese, sausage, and onion mixture to the dish
8. Pour in the remainder of the eggs et. al.
9. Introduce the dish to the oven….just in case they haven’t met before (It’s generally a good idea to be introduced before things go into other things)
10. Without the lid on the dish, bake for ~ 65 min or until a butter knife comes out of the quiche relatively mixture-free
11. Let the quiche stand ~ 10 mins…or until you can justify ignoring my directions….
12. Make yourself a “Bloody Bison” (Work with me on this…..my coffee’s now cold because of my devotion to you) and offer a toast to Tayla.
Quiche La Cave Man
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