Quiche aux Poireaux et Champignons

4.15 PM
It is raining so hard it looks like it is snowing, so I guess fall has come to town.  Luckily I am inside, working on my very first Julia Child recipe: Leek and mushroom quiche. Actually, it is a combination of two quiches: leek quiche and mushroom quiche - obviously.

Leeks are cut, mushrooms are cut, pate brisee (tart dough) is in the oven. Now to the challenging part, the actual cooking.

A while later...
The mushrooms are crowded! Julia said to never crowd the mushroom. How will this end?
I don´t have any port either. Oh well, at least I got the real butter.

11.15 PM
The dinner guests have left and the dishes are done, and here is the rest of the story:
The leeks were simmering (on their way to "very tender") as I started on the crust. I knew it was going to be a tough one, but I followed the recipe strictly, hoping that would help. I actually filled my pie form quite nicely, covered it with foil and poured some black beans in there for weight while pre-cooking.

Nine minutes later, the alarm calls "Piiiee is reeeaadyy" and I get it out of the oven. Out comes the beans, except a couple of little suckers that are still stuck in the shell. Since this thing is toasting I get the brilliant idea of tipping it over to get those beans out. The problem is that the whole crust falls out! This is a disaster, or a Julie-moment, as Lyndee called it. I just stand there, looking at my upside-down crust on the cutting board, thinking: this had to happen, something had to go wrong... Lyndee comes in to try to help me flip the thing back into its form without deconstructing it entirely. "If only we could flip this cutting board/drawer" she says. "But we can!" I exclaim, and we do. Only a few crumbs are lost, and there are some minor tears and cracks, but hey, that was a pretty good rescue expedition.

From there on everything went smoothly. I finished cooking the not-so-crowded-afterall mushrooms, made the cream and egg mix and stirred in the vegetables. The pie shell could hardly contain all the liquid, so I asked it very kindly to not rise too much. In the oven it went, and now I could just wait. 26 more minutes and I could take out a golden, puffy, mouth watering quiche.

It was a pretty good dinner. A bit too salty, which was entirely my fault, since I used salted butter and didn´t cut anything on the added salt. So much for reading the recipe thoroughly.

The company was happy too, and Lyndee made a great apple and raspberry crisp for dessert, so we were ready to roll into bed by the end of the night. My first (adapted) Julia Child recipe is completed, and I feel good about it. I have no idea how Julie managed to do this for a whole year though. A simple pie took me 2,5 hours, then what about killing lobsters or cracking bones to get to the marrow? I am certainly not taking on that challenge, at least for now.

To read Julie´s experience with this pie, click here.
To get the recipe I used, click here

As for the other simple goals: 
At least I am up by 7am in the morning, and journaling is quite fun.

And yesterday I went on a sail boat with the YWAM Skien leadership team. I even got to steer the ship for a while, which was more than I expected waking up that morning.

Wearing: 

My favourite 2$ thrift store sweat pants

Grey hoodie from lost and found

Blue scarf from the 2nd hand store in Skien

Sunglasses from H&M

Life jacket (safety first)

Hat from Noa Noa (it is striped, but that´s hard to see, so I have to tell you, 

because I was going for a Steve Zissou reference here, 

and you wouldn´t have guessed if I didn´t tell you)

Ship o´hoy!