Ciambelline Valtelline as Cervix

The history of this recipe is lovely. The peoples of the Valtellina valley in Lombardy make these rustic rye rings in communal wood-burning ovens. Each family scores their rings with unique marks so that individuals can easily find their family’s baked rings among those belonging to the neighbors. They hang them on strings in their houses where the bagels last for months in the cool winter months. Over the long months these rings become crispy like crackers. Good to dip in soups or eat with slices of cured meat and cheese. Or, to make into bacon and egg breakfast sandwiches. Basically, they are buckwheat bagels, though in my current world of obstetrics and pap smears, their shape is also something of a daily foreshadowing.

Ciambelline Valtelline as Cervix

Adapted from The Italian Baker

Sponge

1 cup sourdough starter

2 cups warm water

2 cups dark rye

½ cup buckwheat flour

Stir all ingredients together, cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise until bubbly for about two hours.

Dough

1 ½ cup sourdough starter

1 ½ cups warm water

3 ¾ cups unbleached all purpose flour

2 cups dark rye flour

1/3 cup bran

1 tbsp salt

First Rise

Stir all ingredients into the sponge, starting with the sponge and water. Then the flours, then the bran and salt. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until the bread is the color of gingerbread and sticky inside but velvety against your palm on the outside. Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let rise until puffy, about 45 minutes.

Shaping and Second Rise

Divide the dough on a lightly floured surface into 10 or 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a 12 to 14-inch rope and join the ends to make a circle. Flatten the tops of the dough circles with little karate chops delivered with the side of your hand. Place the dough circles on parchment papers set on baking sheets. To capture the heat generated by the fermentation, prop up plastic wrap above the dough with juice glasses and cover with a towel. You can heat the oven at 150 for 2-3 minutes, turn it off, and place the ciambelline inside to rise. These rye rings should rise ½ to ¾ inch high and 10 inches in diameter.

To bake, heat the oven and baking stone to 425. Sprinkle the stones with cornmeal and slide the rings onto them. The rings can be baked on the parchment paper until set and then the paper can be slipped out. Place the rings in the oven and reduce the heat to 375. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, spraying with water 3 times in the first ten minutes. Cook on racks.

They are almost like bagels. Or cervixes, since I’m on obstetrics this week. When they came out of the oven, I couldn’t help but perform cervical screening on each ring for lesions and evidence of parity. I’d say some of these have low grade squamous intraepithelial lesions. But then, the current practice guidelines now say that most of these low grade lesions will regress on their own in a few years, especially in young persons. Current pap guidelines are: first pap at age 21 (regardless of sexual activity), then every three years if normal, and then after 30, if still normal and no HPV+, every five years hence. Hallelujah for evidence-based medicine and for giving the healthy immune system a chance.

Sun Dried Tomato Soup

Red, without question, my favorite color. Last week in the operating room I arrived at a robust hypothesis as to why I have always been irrevocably drawn to red. I think, evolutionarily, it has something to do with blood. In surgery, no matter how hard I try, I cannot fully repress my physical alarm to bleeders, a term which describes cut vessels, not people who bleed. The first time a small geyser of red erupted in the operating field, I do believe I shrieked (a disparaging sign of weakness in surgical culture). Now, when an artery is nicked in my presence, I remain quiet and steady-handed, but inside, my heart gallops like a hoof trying to pound itself right out of my chest. It has occurred to me that perhaps this adrenaline response to blood, and therewith, to the color red itself is caught up in the fabric of biochemical instinct present in every human being. When we were animals, red meant either killing being killed—both situations that require substantial physiologic response. Now, it’s no wonder red is one of the colors for love. For the alarm of joy and fear. For wildness. For emotional survival in the blase Midwestern Midwinter snowdrifts.

It has been said that red is the color of anger, or power, but I think it is more raw than that; red, I posit, is the color of adrenaline. And THAT is why I, a seeker of thrills, love it.

Sun Dried Tomato Soup (because it’s red)

Adapted from My Favourite Pastime

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 shallots, finely chopped (I used one small onion because I didn’t want to make a trip to the store)

½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, drained, and chopped

1 1/2 can (19 oz) diced tomatoes (I used the spicy fire-roasted kind)

2½ cups chicken broth

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste, mixed with 3 tablespoons of water

1 cup cream (I mixed heavy whipping cream with 2% milk, again, didn’t want to go to the store)

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Chives, cilantro or parsley to garnish

Melt butter in a pan (pot). Add shallots and sauté 5 minutes until soft.

Add the sundried tomatoes, cook one minute, then add diced tomatoes and cook 5 minutes stirring from time to time. Add 2 cups stock, increase heat, bring to the boil and simmer for 25 minutes.

Remove from heat, then blend to your desired consistency.

Return the soup to the pan, add tomato paste, heat gently until piping hot. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in cream and brown sugar, adjust seasoning and heat without boiling.

Serve hot, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese or croutons. Garnish with chives, cilantro or parsley.

This was incredible soup, perfect for days like this Minnesota Saturday, our land once again blanketed in a near-foot of powder snow overnight. Fabulous for extreme frolicking with a snow-loving bulldog–whose frisbee is also red.

Peanut Butter Brown Rice Krispie Treats and Stranger #1

New Year’s Resolution Case 1 of 12.

Stranger 1. He is a charming boy, my adopted Peruvian son, Juan-David. For the first eleven days of January, by fluke of fate, the young suitor of my Peruvian neighbor’s daughter needed a place to stay that was decidedly not the same residence as his love, but as close as humanly possible. KP and I were happy to offer Fuchsia and Lime to Juan-David’s noble romantic quest and thereby, to the cause of young love in general. I think it was a karma-sort of opportunity, myself a newlywed at age 22. But also, a chance to fulfill my January quota for my New Years Resolution 2014: Monthly Meals with Strangers. Juan-David pictured at far left.

What a gentleman. Juan-David and Karl-Peter bonded immediately not only for sharing hyphenated first names, but as soon as they met in the kitchen the first morning to watch the Arsenal match while I made these—sort of for breakfast…because they had peanut butter and brown rice. (These, in addition to my black bean brownies for breakfast, are continued fodder for my nutritional DBT.)

Juan-David endeared himself to me the instant he brought me a gift of 25 pounds of bread flour. An astute and generous young man.

Peanut Butter Brown Rice Krispie Treats

Adapted from Food and Wine

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon sunflower oil

10 ounces marshmallows

¾ cup creamy peanut butter

6 cups brown rice krispies (can get at a healthy food store!)

Grease a 9×13-inch baking pan. In a large pot, melt the butter and oil, and add marshmallows, stirring until all are melted. Add the creamy peanut butter and stir together until homogenous with the marshmallows. Remove from the heat and quickly stir in rice krispies with a wooden spoon, until they are coated. Scrape the mixture into the baking pan, and with wax paper or parchment, or just your fist, pound them down into the corners of the dish. Allow to cool, cut into squares and serve to a young Peruvian who has traveled far– away from summer in Peru to winter in Minnesota–just to surprise his girlfriend visiting her mother (my neighbor) on Christmas holiday. He will love them.

We miss you, Juan-David!

The following is a prayer that was sent to me by a former-stranger-now-kindred spirit, Katie. It has become my meditation for 2014—a painting in tribute to the notion is forthcoming.

Radiant Morning Star, you are both guidance and mystery. Visit our rest with disturbing dreams and our journeys with strange companions. Grace us with hospitality to open our hearts and homes to visitors filled with unfamiliar wisdom bearing profound and unusual gifts. Amen.

Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies and/or Shortbread Morsels

Morcellation is one of my new favorite words from gynecologic surgery. Typically, you morcellate something large, that is, to turn it into morsels so it is easier to deal with. For example, a large fibroid in a uterus might need to be morcellated and put into a baggie to exit through the teensy holes surgeons now make for minimally invasive surgery. But anything could be morcellated, say, a cookie, or a book you have decided is not worth reading anymore, or, a cardboard box and/or superfluous walls in the house when you’ve had a tough day and no one wants to hear about it.

I had no idea how difficult it is to make shortbread. There is just no liquid to bind the gluten—all butter. So much butter. These were incredible, but not terribly food blog-photogenic because of their morcellatory tendencies. Figure A. Well-formed, healthy cookies. Figure B. Morsel.

Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies and/or Shortbread Morsels

Adapted from Starbucks recipe I found laying around

1 ¼ cups butter, at room temperature

½ cup sugar

3 cups all purpose flour

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp water

1 cup mini chocolate chips

Grate the butter and mix in the sugar by hand until it is clumpy. Then mix in flour and salt. Still will be clumpy. Add the vanilla and water until it starts to come together—but it won’t feel at all like it is coming together. You’re going to have to squish it together with the warmth of your hands, still will be crumbly. Roll into a large log, or two, wrap in saran, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

When ready to cook, preheat oven to 350. Cut the dough into rounds 1/3 inch thick. Arrange as many as you can on a baking sheet.

Some people like to brush with egg wash. I only do this for bread, not cookies. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until golden brown. Enjoy.

I’m sure there is some sort of gynecology-relevant histologic analogy I could make with these cookies if I really wanted to go there. But I don’t. Happy OBGYN rotation to me!

Quinoa and Brown Rice Bowl with Vegetables and Tahini

Because this next week in obstetrics clinic I will spend ample time with things germinating, gestating, gesticulating, what have you, I decided to spend the weekend sprouting mung beans for the first time, see what the health food craze with germination is all about. Rumoredly, an adverb lazy people or tabloid journalists use, people who don’t bother to look up real facts, and here so I incriminate myself, (actually, I’m not sure “rumoredly” is even a real word, but I’m also too lazy to look that up–hey, this is a food blog, not JAMA)—So rumor has it, when you sprout beans, nuts and seeds, the complex carbohydrates they have been storing under their shell break down and make new chemicals that are even better for you, like vitamins and other anti-oxidants. How’s that for good news? And all it takes is a jar, water, a cheese cloth, and a dark place. While I included a link to more thorough instructions above, basically all I did for these adorable little green Jack And the Beanstalk potentials is this:

Rinse them off once under warm water, then leave them covered with water two or three inches above the beans, cover jar with a cheese cloth and place in a cool, dark place for 12 hours.
Pour the water out through the cheese cloth and add fresh water. Let soak for another 12 hours in the same place.
Next day, pour the water off through the cheese cloth (don’t take the cheese cloth ever) and return them to the dark cool place for 2-3 days. You might forget about them like me and let them sit even longer. Eventually, when you remember that you want to make this recipe, you’ll find them, and they will look like this.
Bonus tip: the best thing you can do for mung beans is the same prenatal care you’d give a fetus—don’t smoke while you’re sprouting. Actually, don’t smoke ever.

Quinoa and Brown Rice Bowl with Vegetables and Tahini

I know, you’re read this heading and thinking, that is way too healthy to taste good. You would be wrong. It came as a shock, but this is actually really good—when piping hot. As a leftover it’s nasty.

Adapted from Food and Wine

1 cup long-grain brown rice

1 cup red quinoa

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 small onion, finely diced

1 carrot, sliced crosswise 1/4 inch thick

1/4 pound shiitake mushrooms, stems discarded and caps thinly sliced

1 (small) zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced crosswise 1/4 inch thick

Salt

1 head broccoli, stems peeled and sliced into coins, heads cut into small florets

1 bunch kale, large stems discarded

1/4 cup tahini, at room temperature

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons warm water

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1 ripe avocado, cut into 1/2-inch dice

1 cup mung bean sprouts

In a medium saucepan, cover the brown rice with 2 inches of water and bring to a boil. Cover and cook over low heat until the rice is just tender, about 40 minutes. Drain and return the rice to the saucepan; keep covered.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, combine the quinoa with 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Cover the saucepan and simmer over low heat until the quinoa is tender and all of the water has been absorbed, 20 minutes.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil. Add the onion and cook over moderate heat until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the carrot and cook until starting to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the shiitake, cover and cook until tender, about 4 minutes. Add the zucchini, season with salt and cook, stirring a few times, until tender, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil to the skillet. Add the broccoli, cover and cook over moderate heat, stirring a few times, until deep green, 5 minutes. Add the kale, cover and cook, stirring a few times, until the broccoli and kale are just tender, 4 minutes. Season with salt. Stir in the other vegetables.

In a small bowl, whisk the tahini with the lemon juice, garlic, warm water and crushed red pepper. Season with salt.

Transfer the brown rice and quinoa to bowls. Top with the cooked vegetables, diced avocado and bean sprouts. Serve, passing the tahini sauce at the table.

Before this experience, if you had asked me what a mung bean was I probably would have said that it sounded like a derogatory euphemism. Mung bean has the onomatopoeia of vitriol. But this bean is benevolent. Maybe even magic. Worth more than any cow.

Pane Nero and Contented Melancholy

Having just seen the brilliant film Inside Llewyn Davis, I, as yet another unknown artist who also knows what it is to be told (again and again), “this won’t sell,” feel more contently misunderstood. Llewyn Davis, as a character, is good company to the starving majority of artists out there wandering the planet. Further, the film does what most today fail to do, and that is, bear direct semblance to real life with myriad loose ends, characters who don’t resolve their roles, questions that remain unanswered, and in how tragedy is not necessarily compensated by joy. The narrative is not the popular restitution story where the underdog gets his day, has his revenge on the Man. In this film I think the Coen Bros have made characters truer to life than most novels achieve—brilliant, brilliant work. I hope it gets an Oscar. The Coen Bros, along with Cormac McCarthy, are the only living artists for whose dark work I actually crave to have my heart broken.

This delightful melancholic mood I am in after the film would go well with a dark, winter rye bread. This Pane Nero is the Italian equivalent of the French pain de siegle. It is the perfect thing to sop up that Hungarian Stew I made ALL last week for dinner.

Pane Nero

Adapted from The Italian Baker

Sponge

2 cups sourdough starter

1½ cups warm water

2 cups plus 2 tsp (250 grams) rye flour

Stir the starter into the water. Stir in flour until completely incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for 3 hours or up to overnight. The longer it ferments, the stronger the taste will be.

Dough

1 cup water, room temperature

1 Tbsp malt syrup

2 cups plus 2 tsp (250 grams) rye flour

3¾ cups (500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp salt

2½ tsp caraway seeds

Mix all the ingredients, including the sponge, until fully incorporated. Finish kneading on a floured surface. Shape into a boule and let rise, covered, until doubled in shape – 1½-2½ hours.

Divide in two and shape into oval loaves, or like I did, a boule and several rolls. roll in cornmeal lightly and let rise, covered, until doubled – about 1½ hours.

Preheat oven with baking stone to 425°F.

Slash loaves with a lame.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Cool on racks.

Pane Bigio and a Helmet for the New Year

For our soul is raised out of nature through the truly sublime, sways with high spirits, and is filled with proud joy, as if itself had created what it hears, or I might add to Dr. WC Williams, what it gets from Mom for Christmas, like a new shiny moped helmet.

Though I can’t ride my moped on these subzero winter days, the helmet arrived in perfect timing for me to rush head first at my OB rotation—an approach to life I take as my first lesson from newborns.

Pane Bigio

Adapted from The Italian Baker

Makes 2 large or 3 smaller round loaves

To make Biga:

5 1/2 ounces / 150 grams all-purpose flour

3 1/2 ounces / 100 grams water

1/4 cup sourdough starter

Mix together, cover and let sit on the counter for 6 to 24 hours to develop.

Dough

1 1/4 cup sourdough starter

1/4 cup warm water

2 1/2 cups water, room temperature

1 cup (250 grams)

Biga

Scant 2 cups (250 grams) whole-wheat flour, stone ground if possible

3 3/4 cups (500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon salt (1 teaspoon more, optional)

Dough:

Stir starter into the warm water in a mixer bowl and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Add 2 1/2 cups water and the biga and mix with the paddle until the water is chalky white and the biga is broken up. Add the flours and salt and mix until the dough comes together. You may need to add a bit more flour, up to 2 tablespoons, but the dough will never pull clean away from the side and bottom of the bowl. Change to the dough hook and knead 5 minutes at medium speed. Finish kneading the sticky, wet dough by hand on a well-floured surface, sprinkling the top with about 3 or 4 more tablespoons of flour.

First Rise: Place the dough in a lightly oiled large bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise until tripled and full of large holes, about 3 hours. Do not punch down. It will be gigantic—bigio (“big” in Italian?)

Shaping and Second Rise: Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and gently shape into 2 big flat rounds or 3 smaller ones, pulling tight on the surface of the dough with your cupped hands to make a taut loaf. Place the loaves, rough side up, on well-floured baking sheets, peels or parchment paper set on baking sheets. Cover with a towel and let rise until there are lots of aid bubbles under the surface, about 1 hour.

Baking: Thirty minutes before baking, heat the oven with baking stones in it to 450°F. You can also use a cast-iron or aluminum griddle that is a least 3/8 inch thick or preheated heavy baking sheets. Dimple the tops of the loaves all over with your fingertips or knuckles and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Just before baking, sprinkle the stones or griddle with cornmeal. Gently invert the loaves onto the stones. The bread will look deflated when you initially put it in, but it will puff up like a big pillow in no time. Bake for 25 minutes, then shift the loaves to equalize baking. Bake for a total of 45 to 55 minutes, until the loaves are a deep golden brown. Cool on racks.

Big pillow is right. Enormously fluffy and tasty bread. One of my favorite recipes to this day. Almost as big and dome-like as my new bomber helmet. I might wear it to bed tonight…or maybe I’ll let it rest on my other skull.

Hungarian Sausage and Ale Stew

These are unfortunate times in the Midwest. My hair froze today as I was too impatient to wait for it to dry before heading to the car. KP contends that his nose hairs froze. According to my mother, “Frostbite is not a fashion statement.” Because of temperatures below twenty below, the state of Minnesota is shutting down tomorrow, except for where I work. So I will bundle myself into a marshmallow state of androgeny, stuff my socks with oxidizing iron warmer packs, KP will squirrel insulation on top of insulation in our attic, and I will make for the severalth this fantastic stew because it is the very definition of Hot. This, with a slice or two of toasted rye bread, will practically tuck you in at night. It’s times like these that cause one to flex one’s flexitarianism. God knows I’ll need some meat on my bones to make it through tomorrow.

Hungarian Sausage and Ale Stew

Adapted from Food and Wine

8 ounces thick slab bacon, sliced 1/4 inch thick and cut into 1/4-inch strips

1 large vidalia onion, thinly sliced

3 large yellow bell peppers, thinly sliced

3 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced

12 ounces Hungarian sausage (kolbÃsz) or 12 ounces chorizo sausage, thickly sliced (spicy)

1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon sweet paprika

1 3/4 lbs plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped (I used grape, because I had them and honestly thought they were the same thing—come to find out they are not)

1 cup red ale or 1 cup lager beer

1 bay leaf

kosher salt

fresh ground pepper

sourdough bread, grilled for serving

Directions:

In a large enameled cast-iron casserole or Dutch oven, cook the bacon strips over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 8 minutes.

Add the onion and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until very lightly browned, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the bell peppers and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and lightly browned, about 5 minutes longer.

Stir in the sausage slices, crushed red pepper and paprika and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and cook until beginning to break down, about 5 minutes.

Add the beer and bay leaf and bring to a boil.

Cover partially and cook over low heat until the vegetables are very tender and the sauce is slightly reduced, about 15 minutes.

Season the stew with salt and pepper and serve with bread—I used Pane Nero.

Too bad frozen hair makes me look like Cathy the comic strip. If this were the eighties, I always say…

Salmon Potato Cakes with Dill Sauce

Before the coming Season of Birth commences on Monday (aka, my OB rotation), I made salmon cakes for a fancy kiss-KP-and-freetime-goodbye breakfast. Plus, the dish seemed a thematic bridge between the recent holidays spent in the Pacific Northwest, a hotbed of superior salmon cuisine, and the study of brave female spawning which I shall presently undertake. I was highly skeptical of finding good salmon here in Minnesota, but the People’s Co-op had fresh salmon from a farm in Canada. The way they displayed the catch, nothing short of riveting (albeit a false representation of the life experience of a farmed salmon—borrowing the leaping gusto of river salmon, but I’m being critical). Oh by the way, Omega-3 fatty acids are essential for baby brain development, all ye pregnant.

Salmon Potato Cakes with Dill Sauce

Adapted from Food and Wine

2 pounds medium red-skinned potatoes

Sea salt

1 pound skinless wild salmon fillet

Safflower or sunflower oil for greasing and frying (I used sunflower)

Freshly ground pepper

1 bunch scallions (about 6 scallions) coarsely chopped

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger

1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon tamari

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1/2 cup plain dry bread crumbs

Dill sauce for serving (recipe below)

Preheat the oven to 350°. In a large saucepan, cover the potatoes with water. Add a large pinch of sea salt and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderately high heat until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and let cool slightly, then peel. Transfer the potatoes to a large bowl and mash.
Meanwhile, put the salmon on a lightly oiled rimmed baking sheet and season with salt and pepper. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the salmon is medium-rare inside.
Gently flake the salmon and add it to the potatoes along with the scallions, eggs, garlic, ginger, onion, tamari and sesame oil. Mix well, then fold in the bread crumbs. Season with salt. Form the potato mixture into fourteen 1/2-cup patties.
In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1/4 inch of safflower or sunflower oil until shimmering. Working in batches, fry the potato cakes over moderately high heat until browned and crisp, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a large baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining potato cakes, adding more oil and adjusting the heat as necessary. Bake the salmon cakes for about 15 minutes, until heated through.

Serve with Dill Sauce.

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

juice of 1/2 a lime (about 1 tablespoon)

1 heaping teaspoon dried dill

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Ooh, baby. These were so good, I felt guilty for eating them for breakfast. I would swim upstream through the Willamette or the Columbia to enjoy them again. I am sincerely hoping that is not what this next rotation will be like, but if so, I’ll be sure the salmon cakes are sizzling in the skillet at the end of it—at home.

Kale Quiche as Bowling Fuel

I am so done with cookies. Now that I’ve written that, and stared at it for a few seconds to reconcile what’s written with what holds true, I immediately disagree with myself. BUT. For the time being, I feel like taking a break from cookies—the holidays cookied me out. Whole grains and a palette of vegetables will be what I’m painting my mouth with from here until further notice.

Kale Quiche

First you have to make the crust:

½ stick cold unsalted butter

3 tbsp cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces (I did this, but you could also just use more butter)

4-5 tbsp ice water

1 ¼ cups unbleached all-purpose wheat flour

1/2 tsp. table salt (I used sea salt)

1 Tbsp. sugar

Cut the butter into 1/4 ” slices, then into quarters. Measure the shortening and cut it into small pieces. Lay it all out on a sheet of wax paper and put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes.

Process flour with the salt and sugar in the work bowl of a food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add the butter and shortening and process in short, quick pulses, until dough comes together in uneven clumps. (Don’t use a continuous pulse, as this incorporates the fat too quickly.) All the flour should be coated, and the dough should kind of look like cottage cheese curds. Scrape down dough and add remaining cup of flour; pulse again, with short, quick pulses, until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl, about 4-6 quick pulses. Using feeding tube, pour water mixture into bowl and again use short, quick pulses to incorporate into dough. Pulse till dough is mixed and comes together. You should be able to see tiny pieces of butter in the dough. Remove dough from work bowl and flatten into a 4″ disk and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 45 minutes, or up to 2 days, or freeze for later use.

Now you fill it with the entrails of a proper quiche:

3/4 c. chopped kale, thawed and well-drained

1/2 c. finely chopped onion

2/3 c. shredded cheddar jack cheese

2 bell peppers (whatever color you love)

4 large eggs

1 c. skim milk

1 tsp ground mustard

1 tbsp flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine kale, bell peppers, onion and cheese in pie crust.

In a medium bowl, whisk eggs, milk, ground mustard, flour, salt and black pepper. Pour into pie crust.

Bake 50 to 60 minutes or until knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

On an entirely unrelated note, I bowled the best game of my life a few days ago. I think it was because of eating healthy dishes like this kale quiche. The new personal record to beat is now a sizzling 104. My brother pulverized the whole family, scoring some astronomical figure like ten hundred thousand, I think it was 243. He made it look so easy, with his signature dance after every strike.

But everyone has their own style when it comes to bowling alley panache.

I, on the other hand, always manage to turn bowling into some strange human pretzel war on self, getting tangled in my own limbs running three yards with an eight pound ball.

Hence, the smug thrill of finally breaking One Hundred.

Because I only go once every couple of years, I find myself snapping photos of my family performing their bowls like a tourist at a foreign zoo. But my mother has asked that I include no further photos of her “kyphotic back” and so those photos are only available at a price (which will go into the Mother-Daughter Pedicure Fund) at my private exhibit.