Hubris Pie

I told Teresa, "This is going to be my best quiche yet."

I'm eating a piece right now, and it's awful. I think there are Greek myths about this, and they don't end well. The gods don't like it when you fly too close to the sun. And then there's the one about rolling the stone up the hill, and it always fucking rolls back down. And let's not forget the one about the guy who was totally hungry and thirsty--with ambrosia just out of reach.

I think those Greeks were on to something. Maybe they were trying to make butter pie crusts.

I tried to stop. I really did. But my I didn't call my lard guy in time for him to render the lard for the Sunday Farmer's Market. And then I had an idea, which I still think is a good one. The idea is: used chilled browned butter. The high water content in butter makes the crust tough. But in browned butter all the water is cooked off, and the milk solids that make butter so tasty are left and even enhanced by the browning. It's a seriously good idea.

The execution, however, was flawed. I didn't have any sweet butter, so I used salted butter but forgot to reduce the salt to compensate, so the crust came out over-salted. And it takes a lot of salt to make me say that. Also there was too much butter. And it takes a lot of butter to make me say that. Butter crusts usually call for a higher proportion of fat than lard or shortening crusts in order to compensate for the fact that butter is part water. But I cooked off all the water, so I should have reduced the fat as well. There are a lot of greasy, salty foods that I totally adore, but pie crust isn't one of them.

For those who want to try this at home--though why would you?--I followed the recipe in the most recent Fine Cooking (volume 101), substituting browned butter for regular butter.

The filling of the quiche was pretty bad too, but I don't care much about that. I warmed the egg/milk mixture in the microwave so it would cook faster. And it set up so fast that the cheese didn't have time to melt, so there are hard cheese chunks in the filling. And I decided to use almost burned onions that are so good in Middle Eastern cooking, but not so good in quiche Lorraine it turns out.

Look, it's edible. And let's face it, I'm just trying to survive.

Maybe I should make it a burnt offering. And then maybe, just maybe, next weekend when I try it all again with sweet butter and less fat I'll ascend into paradise.