30 Foods Meme - Day 2 - Warm Salad of Thyme-Crusted Tuna

These posts are turning out to be rather widely spaced! We have been very busy this summer, and Ms Greenspan is not doing a prompt every day. For the second day, this was it:

What is one food that you absolutely, completely, totally, and utterly cannot stand?  Answer in haiku, please!

My response:

Delicate pink curls
With too many little legs -
Shrimp make me shudder.

Don't like how they look, don't like their texture, don't care for their taste even in highly processed form.

I do like fish, though, and our farmer's market now has a fishmonger! The prices are high, but it's good fish, and the $$ encourage us to practice portion control with our proteins. On one recent visit I got a piece of tuna for no particular reason. A couple weeks later, we set out to "eat down" the freezer in preparation for a week on vacation, and I had to figure out what to do with it. The internet to the rescue again. A moment of searching, a few minutes of paging through the results, and I had a candidate not only for the tuna but for the bag of arugula I had impulse-purchased that morning: Warm Salad of Thyme-Crusted Tuna.

I also had some corn. Corn season is a brief and glorious thing in New England. Who needs madeleines? The sight of corn in its husk, piled anyhow on counters or spilling from bags and bushels, conjures a lazy afternoon heat, cicada song, my grandparents' patio, the rattle of a pot lid as the water begins to boil, greasy fingers and the sweet crunch of that first bite. My favorite farm (okay, one of my favorites...) puts a sign on theirs:

That's the way to get it. I'm not a particularly devoted locavore, but corn on the cob is one thing I will not bother with from the grocery store.

But, back to the tuna. In practice, this was so easy it falls under the "do I even call it a recipe?" category. Arugula plus slivered basil plus good tomato plus balsamic vinaigrette. Tuna plus generous salt and pepper plus thyme. Cook the latter in a very hot pan until it's as done as you like it (ours not being the freshest, I cooked it through).

Put the latter in proximity to the former, and eat it. Much better than shrimp.

Swiss Chard, Leek, and Gruyere Quiche (via Nutmeg Nanny)

My recent addiction to Tastespotting is paying dividends in the form of a burgeoning bookmark file, and a whole other place to look when I am Out of Ideas. This particular recipe was the result of a huge bunch of farmer's market chard taking up almost my entire vegetable drawer, and no particular idea how to use it. Thank goodness for search boxes, which led me to this blog post and a blog I'd never seen before. The Internet just goes on forever.

Generally speaking, I don't do quiche. I like to cook, but I am lazy, and quiche involves that whole crust thing. When I wrote down my week's menu plan, I put this down as a frittata instead. Then I thought, It's a Sunday afternoon. You have time. You've been scrambling for weeks, it's time to slow down. When are you going to have another chance to do this? So I got together the ingredients for the dough.

At which point our three-year-old ambled over and said, "Wet," in that particularly forlorn tone he uses on these occasions. In this case, wet meant a diaper blowout of proportions that required immediate laundry and bathing. So this almost became a frittata after all, but I got it together, made the dough (with 6yo's assistance), etc., etc. Grumbling to myself the while.

And it was absolutely worth it. I am a quiche convert. This may become a weekend "thing" now. I am going to reprint the recipe here because I made so many changes, mainly due to my not having a deep-dish tart pan, and partly due to the aforementioned laziness.

Swiss Chard, Leek, and Gruyere Quiche

2 1/2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 recipe Flaky Tart Dough (it's Martha, you can't go wrong; cutting the recipe in half worked fine)
5 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme
2 heaping cups torn Swiss chard leaves
1/2 cup Gruyere cheese
1 leek, sliced thinly

1. Make and chill the tart dough. After chilling, on a lightly floured work surface, roll dough into a 16-inch round. With a dry pastry brush, sweep off any excess flour; fit dough into a tart pan with a removable bottom, gently pressing it into the sides. Using a sharp knife, trim the dough evenly with the edge of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap; chill tart shell until firm, about 20 minutes.

2. Preheat Oven to 375 degrees

3. Line the tart dough with a sheet of parchment paper and fill with pie weights (or dried beans, or whatever). Transfer to oven and bake until light brown, about 25 minutes. Remove weights and parchment paper and continue baking until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.

4. Whisk 1 egg and 2 1/2 Tbsp flour until smooth. Add the remaining eggs and continue mixing until well blended.
Add milk, salt, pepper, and thyme; mix until well combined.

5. Sauté leeks in olive oil until soft. Add the chard and cook until just wilted. Allow to cool, then add to the egg mixture. Pour it all into your cooled tart shell. (You may want to put the tart on a baking pan in case of leaks.)

6. Bake until filling is slightly firm and crust is a deep golden brown, 40 to 50 minutes.

7. Transfer quiche to a wire rack to cool until set, about 20 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

The two of us polished off almost the entire thing for dinner, with a side of soup; it would serve four for lunch or with a more substantial set of side dishes (or daintier appetites!).