Weekend Cooking
Ah travel! The food, the sights, the food! For me, a holiday abroad is like a culinary tour — morning, noon and night. But I have to admit that it’s nice to return to home cooking.
After our holiday in Tokyo, I was looking forward to getting my hands dirty in the kitchen. And while I love Japanese food, I need variety so I was keen to add a few more cuisines to our meal plan.
I remembered I had a crust in the freezer and so started off the weekend with a brunch favorite– quiche. Many times, I find quiche to be too rich so I like to mix milk and heavy cream or even half-and-half vs. creme fraiche. A current favorite is this Bacon and Cheese Quiche.
Bacon and Cheese Quiche
INGREDIENTS
- 1 frozen pie crust
- 3 large eggs or 4 medium eggs
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3/4 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- Pinch of black pepper
- 3-4 slices of bacon, fried and broken up
- 2 oz. gruyère or swiss cheese, grated
PREPARATION
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Use fork to poke holes in crust along bottom and sides. Bake pie crust for 20 minutes or until light brown. Put aside to cool.
Get large bowl and beat eggs with whisk or hand mixer. Add milk, heavy cream, salt and pepper. Beat again. I like to mix until light and frothy.
Place pie crust still in tin on a baking sheet. Sprinkle cheese and bacon, and then add the egg mixture into shell. Bake 40 minutes until the top has browned and the quiche is set.
Let cool about 10-15 minutes and serve!
Next up on the weekend cooking list was pizza. I had some dough in the freezer and had moved it to the refrigerator to thaw.
Pepperoni 
Pepperoni, Peppers and Red Onion
Super Thin-Crust Pizza
INGREDIENTS
- Pizza dough (I like Cooks Illustrated’s recipe but modify with a cold rise for 2-4 days)
- Pizza sauce (I like Serious Eat’s recipe for Detroit-style pizza)
- Whole milk mozzarella, grated
- Toppings of choice: pepperoni, thinly sliced peppers and red onion
PREPARATION
Place pizza stone in oven and heat to 500 degrees for at least one hour.
Divide pizza dough into size desired (e.g. individual), cover and let come to room temperature while oven warms up.
Flatten and stretch dough out by hand. Ideally, you would let gravity and some handiwork to stretch it out. But I find I cannot get it thin enough before holes start appearing. This may be heresy but I roll out the dough with a rolling pin on some parchment paper. I can get it super thin and the parchment paper makes it easy to transport and place on top of stone.
Once the dough is rolled out, spoon pizza sauce, leaving about a 1/4″ border. Then sprinkle cheese and toppings of choice.
Place parchment paper with pizza on hot stone and bake about 10-15 minutes or until cheese is bubbling and toppings start to brown.
Remove parchment paper with pizza. Toss paper and let pizza cool for a few minutes.
The pizza is so thin and crispy, and the crust really does develop a deeper flavor with the multi-day cold rise. It also freezes well so you can reheat and enjoy whenever have the hankering.
After a few days of eating in, the jet lag started to ebb and I was feeling like I was back at home.