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.

Chocolate Hazelnut Long Johns: The Great Donut Experiment of 2015 & why I will not be eating donuts for the next 365 days

This. This was one of those recipes. You know, the kind that takes weeks and weeks of testing, where there's always something just a little off. Where the thought of giving up seems so enticing, but you've put so much effort into it already that defeat is not an option.

Let's dive right in, shall we? First was the filling. How do you make a chocolate hazelnut filling? In my first two tries, the custard was cooked with finely ground hazelnuts then strained over and over and over again. It was impossible to strain out the super fine hazelnut meal through a mesh sieve, and the custard was far too thick to strain through a cheesecloth. Third time around, I thought up a brilliant idea of using hazelnut milk instead of whole milk. Unfortunately, nut milk does not have the same properties and chemical composition of real milk. The custard never set with the same amount of egg yolks and cornstarch. The fourth time I added an extra egg yolk and doubled the cornstarch, and while thicker, it still never set. I gathered it had something to do with either the absence of milk proteins or milk fat, but there is a surprising lack of information about the chemistry behind cooking on the internet (if you have a scientific explanation, please message me I'd love to know). Hesitant to add even more thickening agents to the mixture, I then made another version of hazelnut milk, using real milk instead of water, simmering it with ground hazelnuts, and letting the mixture steep before straining. So I guess you could call it a hazelnut milk milk. Ta-da! Success.

Ahem, then there was the whole after-30-minutes-the-donuts-were-greasy problem. Fortunately the internet did have a solution for that: frying in vegetable shortening instead of oil. The short explanation is because vegetable shortening is solid at room temperature, the grease doesn't seep out after frying as it does with liquid oil. One more kink to work through, the dough wasn't quite as soft as I would have liked. The solution: more sugar, more egg, and we finally have a donut I'm proud to share. Cue the sigh of relief, here.

Hazelnut Milk

Here is how the sunday after Valentine's day went. Wake up, make an enriched yeasted dough, let it rise, cut into long strips, and let it rise some more. Grind hazelnuts, melt chocolate, and make a chocolate hazelnut custard (do you see where I'm going with this?). Strain said custard five times over, realize it is nearly impossible to strain the hazelnut meal out of the custard for a smooth texture and yell because chocolate hazelnut donuts will no longer be happening today. After moping around for a few minutes, come to the conclusion that hazelnut milk is the missing key, think long and hard about where to buy hazelnut milk. Realize: nowhere. With a sigh of defeat for the day, get lovely boyfriend to make a second trip to the store in single digit temperature for more hazelnuts and lots of cheesecloth. Start the process to make hazelnut milk. Pour and drink bourbon. Daydream about the day recipes come out right the first time around.