Egg-based Horror Tales

I'm making a quiche from scratch for this Easter lunch I got invited to. It's baking right now. I think it's going to be a total disaster. The dough was a little dry, but worse, the crust is in a bottomless tart pan and I poured too much of the egg mixture in and the eggyness overflowed and went between the crust and the edge of the metal pan. Which wouldn't be that big a deal except that it's a bottomless tart pan, comprised of a ring that makes the outside edge and then a flat circle that sits inside to make the bottom. So when I poured the egg in, it started haloing out around the pan onto the counter like it was a gangster that had just been shot.

Okay, and just now, I looked in the oven and the eggyness is completely flowing out of the quiche and all over the baking sheet I put underneath it. This means the shell is leaking. I just poured in the leftover egg mixture to top it up.

Things I did different from the recipe:

1) Whole wheat flour instead of all purpose
2) Salted butter instead unsalted
3) I think slightly less butter than was called for
4) Frozen butter grated instead of "very cold" butter in a mixmaster because screw you Martha Stewart, not everyone has a mixmaster
5) Didn't chop the thyme all that finely
6) Skipped the "strain thorugh seive" step
7) Have a crazed variable temperature gas oven, that gets hot fast but can't keep a consistent temperature to save its life or the lives of the food it cooks.

Man, baking is a cruel mistress. In other kinds of cooking, you can usually get away with little changes and shortcuts.

Okay, holy shit, just looked in the oven. The situation is insane. There's super-fluffy egg craziness exploding from all over the baking sheet. In the center, sits the quiche, happy in its pan, all innocent like it had nothing to do with it.

It needs to cook for 45 more minutes. It will need to be eaten with pickaxes.

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6:43pm postscript: The quiche was magnificent. I was 1.5 hours late. This guy I once dated was at the lunch and we awkwardly avoided each other. I met my friend's fiancee and liked her very much.