Let Them Eat Quiche

My return to pastry and a Top Chef style exam

I am a quiche lover, against all odds.

Despite my dad’s French roots, I grew up in a household that turned its nose up at quiche. Whenever quiche was served or suggested, my parents would lament that everyone in the United States had eaten too much quiche in the 1970s and 1980s when it was all the rage. So — like a song that’s overplayed on the radio — any mention of quiche would illicit a grimace. Frittata, however, was acceptable.

I’ll admit that before moving to France, I can’t remember trying a good store-bought quiche. The pastry shell is often too soggy and the custard too firm. French bakeries had not yet become a trend in California, and classic American bakeries didn’t have quiche (see: out of fashion).

I came to love quiche in high school when I made one from scratch for the first time. A friend and fellow Francophile invited me to her house to make her grandmother’s Quiche Lorraine recipe (I can’t remember if we did this for French class extra credit or pure pleasure but in either case, you can imagine the type of teenager I was.) This version included onions that were cooked down and nearly caramelized, which is always a good idea. Perhaps its nostalgia, but I’m pretty sure this is still the best quiche I’ve ever had.

My first homemade Quiche Lorraine shot on an iPhone 4 (circa 2013)

Since moving to France, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quiche offering. Most bakeries offer multiple varieties by the slice or single-portion mini quiches and I will often choose quiche over a sandwich (sue me).

Four paragraphs later I am still waxing poetic about quiche, so you shouldn’t be surprised that I was looking forward to the day we tackled Quiche Lorraine at cooking school.

We began by making our pâte brisée for the crust using the traditional method - all by hand, no KitchenAid mixers in these parts. We learned how to roll the dough into a near-perfect round and prick it with a handy tool called a pique-vite (literally “prick fast”) to prevent the dough from ballooning (I do this with a fork at home, but this is the big leagues). Next, we lightly pressed the dough into the pastry round to achieve a clean right angle on the inside before using a pastry pincher around the top edge to achieve a nice retro look. After filling it with lardons, swiss cheese, and our egg and cream custard with a dash of nutmeg and cayenne, the quiche was ready for the oven.

Behind the scenes of quiche lorraine

On to the second recipe of the day — a tourte, or a savory pie, which made me feel like I was in an episode of the Great British Bake-Off. After thinly slicing 1lb of leeks (which took much longer than you’d think), we sweat the leeks in chorizo and a bit of butter for good measure. We mixed in a bit of cream to loosen the leek mixture, prepared the pastry shell, filled it, and topped it with another layer of pastry before adding a few decorative elements. I soon realized that I’d forgotten to add the eggs and the rest of the cream to the leeks, but the final product was still delicious.

A tourte - before and after

An apple a day keeps the election anxiety at bay

I’ll admit I was less enthused when I saw that we’d be preparing not one but two apple tarts the following day: a tarte aux pommes and a tarte normande. This also happened to fall on Election Day, so needless to say I was not in the best of moods when I awoke to the alarming electoral college breakdown. While I would’ve preferred to stay under my comforter and ignore reality, I had no choice but to head into the kitchen determined to prove to myself I could do pastry. I was also hoping that slicing and arranging apples would provide a nice distraction.

We first prepared our pate sâblée, which basically translates to “sandy pastry” thanks to its buttery, crumbly quality. While the pastry rested, we peeled and sliced our apples, which I can now do quite quickly and honestly do not hate. For the first tart, we arranged the apples over a layer of apple sauce, then built a rose in the middle over chopped apple bits to prevent it from sinking in the middle. Our chef trainer complimented my neat apple arrangement, which was enough to unnecessarily boost my ego. For the second tart, we lightly caramelized apple quarters and flambéed them in cognac before placing them in the pastry crust and covering them with a vanilla egg custard.

While our tarts baked, we learned how to make a sabayon, an airy custard of egg yolks and sugar, served over the rest of our caramelized apples. As we sat down at the table to taste our apples with sabayon, I made the mistake of looking at my phone and I learned that a certain someone (who doesn’t deserve to be named here) had won the US presidential election. I had to excuse myself to go cry in the bathroom for a few minutes, coming back to cold sabayon which I could no longer stomach.

The humble apple

I’m not cut out for Top Chef

At the end of the week that felt like a month, I had my first 3-hour practical exam and it went a little bit like an episode of Top Chef. If this were reality television, I probably would have been sent home (but I paid for this, I’m not going anywhere!)

Upon arrival we learned that we’d be preparing seven cooked elements, which required working with 10 different vegetables. We were expected to “turn” 31 pieces of vegetables, which is an extremely time-consuming and outdated technique that consists of trimming a piece of carrot (or a potato or turnip) to have seven sides (see photo below, which is from the internet and not my work). We had to glaze tiny onions. We had to prepare a salad of carrots, turnips, peas and green beans with a mayonnaise dressing. There were other things to prepare but I won’t go on - you get the point.

Whether it was the post-election blues, lack of sleep or typical exam nerves, I quickly found myself floundering and wasting precious time doing who knows what. I was able to present my two plates in the end, but the cold plate could have used a pinch of salt and the hot plate came out cold. A few items were undercooked and a few items were missing. I was generally disappointed in my performance, but after some obligatory wallowing, I chalked it up to experience. After all, the French education system is not known for coddling — I’m fairly certain that the bar was set high as a means of humbling us and pushing us to do better next time. Heard, chef.

Turned vegetables (internet photo) and a plate featuring Salade Macédoine (my photo)

Before I go — it feels a bit like breaking the fourth wall to say this, but I am so grateful to have heard from some of you reading this thing. That people enjoy my writing is perhaps one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received. It honestly helps me push through difficult weeks. Thank you so much — I’ll report back soon.

Xoxo,

Monique