Leek, Asparagus, & Ramp Quiche

Hi friends, I know it is the end of ramp season and I have been gone for a good while, but hopefully this recipe makes it to you before these beautiful alliums leave us for another year. The past few weeks, besides going to school and stressing out about the days being far too short, I have been tinkering with a recipe for a delicious, sky high, and structurally sound quiche (three things which are surprisingly difficult to achieve in harmony).

Ramps are about as fleeting as the spring season here, coming and going in a matter of weeks. So this quiche is my attempt to stuff as much spring produce as humanly possible into one recipe before it's too late. The ramps are paired with some lightly cooked leeks, fresh asparagus, and gruyere, bound together by an egg custard, and nestled in a flaky pie crust.

What I ate for breakfast for two weeks straight, aka The Smoked Trout Bagel

The most important meal of the day, so they say. Unfortunately breakfast and I, we have always had a tenuous relationship. Back in my school years, it never really made its way into my repertoire even at the behest of my mother. Some people just aren't morning types, you know? Between turning off the alarm and sleeping for another 45 minutes, rolling out of bed, brushing teeth, and putting on real clothes, how does a girl find time for breakfast? It was always a wonder how mom and dad could get up in the morning and fry up some eggs and buns (in Chinese families we eat buns, no toast to be found here) AND have time to eat them before heading out for the day.

Now that I am well into my working years and certainly not as young and sprightly as I used to be, breakfast has begrudgingly made its way into my everyday life. The challenge these days is to find variety in a meal where it is so easy to get stuck in the egg sandwich or yogurt and granola cycle of monotony.

Bacon Cinnamon Rolls

Apparently I am on a wicked sweet and salty kick with baked goods. First an apple cheddar pie, now this. Let's rewind shall we? Where did this all get started? I blame it on Alton Brown and Netflix. After a week of binge watching Good Eats, my mind was swirling with ideas. Especially after an episode where Alton makes bacon praline. Bacon praline! For snacking! What?? He's a horrible genius, he is.

So I came up with (what I thought at the time was) a genius idea for a bacon praline and salted caramel cake that substituted half of the butter in the cake itself with bacon fat. I might have been a little...overenthusiastic. I made the cake. I didn't like it. It turned out to be too much. Butter + bacon grease in the cake, butter in the swiss meringue buttercream, butter in the caramel sauce, all topped with a crapton of bacon praline. Too. Much. To. Handle. I had Phillip take the cake with him to work the next day and after the initial shock of realizing there was bacon on a cake, it did receive a warm reception from his coworkers. I still didn't really like it though.

Homemade Croissants

I think this is as far as I go. What else is left to do, left to master, after making homemade croissants? Have I peaked? Is it all downhill from here?

I jest of course, but these croissants. These croissants! So flaky, so buttery, so good. Three-years-ago me (you know, the one who was making hockey puck biscuits because she couldn't read directions) would have never thought that current me would ever successfully make croissants. I won't sugarcoat it though, they are a labor of love. They take an entire day to make, and that's if you start early in the morning. I find it more manageable to split the process over two days. The technique is fairly straightforward, you just need lots of time, a rolling pin, a ruler, and a heck of a lot of elbow grease.