Swiss Cheese and Mushroom Quiche @LucyBurdette #recipe

LUCY BURDETTE: At our local farmers market in Connecticut, one vendor sells all kinds of mushrooms. I confess that I am a white mushroom consumer, though I have started using baby Bellas to branch out a bit. But this man's mushrooms look so good that I decided to try a recipe that could use one of his more adventurous varieties. He recommended shiitakes. I found a recipe in the Moosewood cookbook for a mushroom Swiss cheese quiche, and then set about tweaking to taste.

Ingredients

One large onion

1/4 pound mushrooms of your choice

Herbs of your choice (I used dill and thyme from our garden)

Four eggs

2 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cups milk

1 1/2 cups Swiss cheese

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 

 A couple shakes of Tabasco or cayenne

One crust 

Make the crust and set it aside. My father's recipe is pretty darn foolproof, but I tried the Moosewood version this time--cut 6 tablespoons of butter into a cup and a half of flour. Add water one tablespoon at a time until the mixture holds together in a mass. Roll out between two sheets of waxed paper and plop into the 9-inch pie plate. (Delicious, by the way--and not a grain of salt in it!)

Next up: Grate the cheese. Chop the onions and put these to sauté in a tablespoon of olive oil. Wipe the mushrooms down, slice them, and add them to the sauté pan. Cook until soft and slightly brown. Sprinkle in the herbs of your choice. 

Whisk together the milk, flour, and eggs and mustard – I used the food processor and it couldn't have been easier. Add a few drops of Tabasco sauce.

Layer the ingredients into the crust: Cheese, followed by vegetables and herbs, milk and egg mixture.

Bake at 375 until golden and the center is set.

Serve this with a green salad at the temperature you prefer – hot, warm, or room temperature. 

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries--find them wherever books are sold! Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest--Instagram too...

Now a question, do you post reviews and photos of books you've read on Instagram? I hear it's quite a thing these days....

Wild Mushroom and Farro Soup

by Sheila Connolly

Here’s another recipe from Ina Garten’s cookbook, Make It Ahead. Let’s start with that farro—what the heck is it? No, we’re not talking about the 17^th-century French gambling card game. But nobody seems quite sure what it is. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

There is some confusion as to what farro is. Spelt (Triticum spelta), Emmer (Triticum dicoccum), and einkorn (Triticum monococcum), are called farro in Italy, sometimes (but not always) distinguished as farro grande, farro medio, and farro piccolo, respectively. Emmer grown in the Garfagnana region of Tuscany is known as farro, and can receive an IGP designation (Indicazione Geografica Protetta), which by law guarantees its geographic origin. Emmer is by far the most common variety grown in Italy, in certain mountain regions of Tuscany and Abruzzo. It is also considered to be of a higher quality for cooking than the other two grains and is sometimes called "true" farro.

Yeah, sure, okay (Ina, what have you gotten me into?). Simple solution for the rest of us cooks: go to your grocery store or health food store and buy a bag of the stuff, or order it on line. Bob’s Red Mill has it. (And I daresay you could substitute any of the other grains mentioned if you can’t find farro.)

Then there are the mushrooms. Ina wanted me to use dried crimini mushrooms. My local grocery lacks imagination, so they had only one kind of dried mushroom, and it was not crimini. So I used porcini mushrooms. They worked fine. Likewise, there was little choice in fresh mushrooms, so I used sliced shitake mushrooms. Use whatever sturdy mushrooms you can find at your own store (but not the more delicate ones like oyster mushrooms).

Dried porcini mushrooms

Mushroom and Farro Soup

1-1/2 oz dried wild mushrooms

3 Tblsp olive oil

4 oz pancetta, diced

3 cups chopped yellow onions

2 cups diced carrots

4 tsp minced garlic

3/4 cup farro (or other grain of the wheat family)

12 oz fresh mushrooms, stems discarded, sliced

4 cups beef broth

3 large sprigs fresh thyme

kosher salt and pepper

Cover the dried mushrooms with 6 cups water in a medium pot and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat, cover, and set aside for at least 20 minutes. Longer is fine.

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. Add the pancetta and let the fat render for a few minutes, over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the carrots, coat well with the oil, and continue to cook until the carrots are tender.

Add the garlic and the farro and cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the fresh mushrooms and cook for 5-7 minutes, until the mushrooms begin to release some liquid.

Strain the dried/soaked mushrooms through cheesecloth to remove any lingering grit (saving the liquid!). Chop them coarsely and add them to the pot, along with the strained liquid, the beef broth, thyme, 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, partially covered, for 45 minutes, until the farro is tender. Discard the thyme.

2 Tblsp flour

2 Tblsp unsalted butter, room temp

4 oz creme fraiche

1/4 cup minced parsley

In a small bowl, mash the flour and butter together to form a paste, then stir by spoonfuls into the hot soup. Simmer for 5 minutes (to cook the flour), then stir in the creme fraiche and taste for seasoning.

Serve hot.

The result is a very tasty soup, hearty but not heavy. Serve with a wholegrain bread and you’ll have a nice meal for a winter’s evening. (And this recipe makes plenty of leftovers!)

All right, I know I've told you more than once that the next book in my County Cork Mystery series is coming out soon (February 3rd! at bookstores everywhere!). I was trying to figure out an appropriate way to go from exotic mushrooms to Ireland--and then I realized that on one trip to West Cork I had taken a lot of mushroom pictures. I was there at the beginning of December, and there were still mushrooms everywhere--and here they are.

Yes, that first one really is purple!

And here's the book. In An Early Wake, Maura brings music back to Sullivan's, and someone dies. But the music lives on!