Sarnies that Zing: Beetroot, Egg and Mixed Leaves

Image via Wikipedia

Always looking for new ways to eat the same old thing, I came up with this sandwich on the weekend:

• boil an egg
• grate 1/2 a small raw beetroot
• chop up a handful of mixed leaves.  The veggie box salad mix this week was especially zingy: a mix of rocket, watercress, what looked like a young broccoli shoot – complete with a tiny piece of young broccoli, romaine, young beet root…those are the ones I recognized. 
• mix all together in a bowl with some mayonnaise and pinch of dry mustard, salt and pepper, and a slice of onion (finely chopped)

Bread (Photo credit: ulterior epicure)

• slather the mix on a slice of wholewheat bread, stack another slice on top and slather the remaining mix on that, then add a third slice of bread.
• Cut in quarters and eat.  Yummy and filling.

You can of course use any kind of bread.  You could stuff it into a submarine bun, or pita bread, or roll it up in a wrap – of if you are on a total bread fast, you could have it with rice or pasta as a salad.

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Quiche Experiment (instead of Quinoa)

I experimented with a basic Quiche recipe and came up with this distinctively flavored blue cheese and broccoli pie.   Although both ingredients have strong characteristics, they balance one another and blend together to create a sumptuous dish.  It would be great for a light lunch with rocket or endive salad. The blend of ingredients would also do well in little, individual pies and served as hors d’oeuvres. 

Ingredients

Blue Cheese. Image via Wikipedia

• 1 package puff pastry (375 grams)
• 1 cup cooked broccoli cut into very small pieces
• 50 grams Danish blue cheese, crumbled
• 1 medium to large shallot, thinly sliced
• 1 clove garlic, diced
• 2 eggs
• 1/8 cup of milk
• fresh or dried sage, to taste (not too much! about 1/4-1/2 tsp)
• salt and pepper
• 1 medium-sized tomato, sliced
  

  Broccoli. Image by sk8geek via Flickr

Method

• Preheat oven to 200 C
• Line a 7 inch Pyrex pie plate with crust, prick the bottom and put in oven to start pre-cooking while you prepare the other ingredients.
• In a medium size bowl beat the eggs, milk and seasoning.
• Add the garlic, shallots, and blue cheese and beat some more.
• Add the broccoli.
• By now your pie crust should be starting to cook.  Remove from oven and pour in the broccoli-egg-cheese mixture.  (Remember to close the oven door while you do this so you don’t lose all the heat!)
• Lay the tomato slices on top.
• Cover with another layer of pastry.
• Bake for 40-50 minutes.  Check the pie after 30 minutes and turn if one side is browning more than the other.
• Allow to cool for about 20 minutes before serving.

Quiche doesn’t usually have a top crust.  I just really enjoy puff pastry – so any excuse to eat more of it!

Adjusting Quantities for Larger Pies

• The 375 gram package of pastry was more than enough for my 7 inch pie plate, in fact, I had enough pastry left over to make a fruit pouch. So if you’re working with a larger pie plate you’ll have enough pastry, but you’ll need to increase the quantities – of the other ingredients – proportionally.
• The quantity of milk and eggs could be increased, even for a 7-inch pie plate. I purposely limited the eggs to cut down on cholesterol because this dish is loaded with it! Eggs, pastry, cheese…

I wanted to write about Quinoa for the letter Q in my A-Z Food as it’s such a magnificent food, but I haven’t yet mastered cooking it.

Always rinse quinoa seeds before cooking. Image via Wikipedia

What makes it so great?  It’s a plant that provides a complete protein, and it’s right up there with oats for protein concentration.

If you want to give it a try, there’s lots of information on the web.  Clearly, I haven’t yet found a website that successfully communicates (to me) how to cook it.  When cooked properly, its texture is a bit like couscous, and mine’s more like a sticky blob!

Quinoa before flowering. Image via Wikipedia

Quinoa flowering. Image via Wikipedia

Quinoa plants near Cachora, Peru. Image via Wikipedia

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