racing to the farmer's market

and a dumpster quiche.

When spring rolls in there are two camps in the rush for fresh, locally farmed produce.

The hardcore CSA crew, dedicated to converting pounds of mystery produce into an array of delicious meals and unusual pickles in the name of local farming. For the uninitiated Common Good City Farm in DC wraps it up nicely:

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a system that directly connects farmers and consumers. People buy "shares" of a farm's harvest in advance and then receive a portion of the crops when they are harvested. 

Cost conscious, vegetable curious and potentially better informed about the source of their ingredients the CSA crowd are summer kitchen heroes. Judging by the kind of sponsored content you start receiving after a mere week of researching CSAs online, they may also be into ruffage in more ways than I expected.

Cooking around here is generally at the mercy of the pleasure principle, so I’ve never been able to fully submit to the CSA. Letting the farmer’s market influence what comes across my table for the week is more my speed. For me there is no greater food purchasing joy than strolling past stalls with the promise of finding an ingredient like champagne jelly, white string beans or dried apple bits that get my menu planning synapses firing faster than a Tesla.

No matter how you’re sourcing produce, spring is an easy time to get carried away with overstocking vegetables that come back to haunt you as they ripen in your fridge.

Enter the dumpster meal.

Dumpster meals come in many forms. The dumpster pasta salad is an old summertime favorite of mine because it can incorporate any vegetable including varieties best eaten raw like cucumbers and lettuce. Cases can also be made for the veggie pizza, the fashionably photographable galette or some malleable form of pasta primavera. Over the years quiche has proven to be my ride or die dumpster meal.

What’s great about the farmer’s market quiche is that it is self contained. All the ingredients can be acquired in one stop. It turns what for most of us is a supplemental food source into a primary one. Therein lies its beauty.

My quiche repertoire covers the full spectrum from premade to prima-donna:

Martha Stewart’s asparagus, leek and gruyere quiche was my starter quiche. The weeknight standby that I made with pre-made pie crust for years. Eventually Sister Pie taught me that making my own pie crust was easy and freezable, and so I moved in that direction.

When we had the luxury of hosting out of town guests in Chicago, I often made Thomas Keller’s over the top mushroom quiche. It is incredible, your guests will be wowed, but no matter how you efficient you become that thing is gonna take you FIVE hours to finish. It’s like the clotted cream of baked eggs: decadent and expensive with a narrow use case.

While in Ukraine, I started dabbling in buying digital cookbooks with mixed results. The now defunct experiment did lead me to Gina Homolka’s swiss chard crustless quiche. It’s my current utility quiche. Dumping the flour right into the batter gives you the filling factor of crust without the need for blind baking. Eschewing the crust also eliminates the soggy reheat factor. For an average Tuesday baking project, it’s unbeatable.

Since Gina’s low fat dairy substitutes don’t often make it to our kitchen, I cannot verify whether the original recipe is tasty. I use whole milk and whatever cheese found its way in to our fridge and managed not to get eaten during 4pm snack attacks. I include whatever greens and vegetables are thinking of withering on me. And then I head back to the farmer’s market and start the blissful cycle of summer produce all over again.

crustless greens quiche

Adapted from Gina Homolka’s Skinnytaste Cookbook

what you need

1 onion, 1 leek or 2 shallots sliced into half moons

1 pound of greens like chard, kale, spinach or collards OR 1/2 pound of greens + 1/2 pound chopped vegetables like carrots, peppers, green beans or asparagus

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2-3 teaspoons spices like chili flakes, curry powder or cajun seasoning

2/3 cup milk

4 large eggs

1/2 cup grated semi-hard cheese (cheddar, gruyere, fontina, havarti, etc)

what to do

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9-inch pie plate.

In a large skillet over medium-low heat, add oil or butter and sauté alliums (that’s the onion family), stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, until they are caramelized. Add the other vegetables and sauté 5-10 more minutes to sweat out the majority of their water.

Meanwhile add the flour, spices, salt, and baking powder to a large bowl. Whisk in the milk, eggs and cheese. Fold in the cooked vegetables. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie plate.

Bake until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center of the pie comes out clean, 27 to 30 minutes. Let stand at least 5 minutes before serving.

• Reading - American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

• Listening - songs by Adrianne Lenker

• Watching - Homicide: Life on the Streets