This last Wednesday my friend Dav called me up to say he was in town. I randomly suggested that we have an Iron Chef night. I've done this a couple of times before, but in my version I find something in my kitchen that has been there for a while with no hopes of being used in the near future. Rather than waste food, the challenge is to find something to do with it. Dav agreed to the experiment and we raided the cabinets for the "secret ingredient."
I decided to modify the challenge a bit to further expedite the goal to consume aging food. We had to take an item from each of my shelves and then find a dish that would use all of the ingredients. This is what we came up with: diced tomatoes and peppers, couscous, chicken from a can, craisins, artichoke hearts, and parmesean cheese (from the fridge).
Now, these are pretty normal ingredients. We're not trying to make something from, say, fish eyes or pig hearts. I have two cookbooks that I got for last Christmas (thanks Grandma and Holly), and we have an internet connection. I set Dav and Peter on the internet to find recipes, and Dave and I grabbed the cookbooks to start our search. I found a recipe for a stew and some stuffing. In the end, Peter won with Onion And Wild Garlic Quiche With Parmesan In A Couscous Crust I was intrigued by the innovative use of couscous.
I sent Peter and Dave out to get a few ingredients we didn't have (i.e. onions, garlic, cilantro) and also some salad to go along with our dish. I made the couscous, and then the crust. Dav mixed together the rest of the ingredients, and BAM! We had a dinner. Dav was quick to point out that some of our ingredients, such as the mustard, were a little bit out of date. Come on, who hasn't used mustard that expired over a year ago. Does anyone check the expiration date on condiments anyway? Serious. Of course he had to post about it on his blog as well.
Here are a few extra pictures of the process:
The couscous crust (I doubled the recipe since there were 6 GUYS eating this:
The final product just prior to putting it in the oven:
The final product after cooking:
Dav commented that we could have done without the craisins. Peter also suggested that we minimize the use of onions, which after eating this was a bad choice. Chicken, couscous, and eggs don't have much flavor... so the onions would have helped it not be so bland. I didn't add nearly enough seasonings to make this work. More salt, more onions, and perhaps a nice sauce would have made this superb. I liked using couscous as a crust though, but be careful not to make it so thick it becomes the main part of the dish. I also thought salad went very well with the quiche.
Here is a side-by-side of our final plating of the Iron Chef attempt with the picture from the recipe. Notice the picture from the recipe shows way more onions and also tomatoes on top. I think more veggies in the quiche would definitely make a nice touch.
