So the idea is quiches, completely envleoped in crust and packaged and shaped to fit into toaster. May need to be frozen like Pilsbury's "Toaster Streudel" brand. It's fancy food, made quick and easy for the gourmet!
I don't expect it to be very marketable. It's just an idea I thought of that made me laugh.-- EdwinBakery, Jan 06 2011 A philosophical discourse on blandness http://www.youtube....watch?v=vpStoROu0XE [MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 06 2011] don't say I didn't warn you http://www.telegrap...sed-toxic-eggs.html [po, Jan 07 2011] 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin http://en.wikipedia...chlorodibenzodioxin"Just the facts, Ma'am. " [8th of 7, Jan 07 2011] Real men eat Stilton http://www.ncbi.nlm...articles/PMC161494/ [mouseposture, Jan 12 2011] [+] I'd like it!-- xandram, Jan 06 2011 Spinach Pies up next?-- RayfordSteele, Jan 06 2011 Real men don't eat quiche.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 06 2011 Microwaveable mini-quiches exist, but the crust is always a bit lacking. This would be fun and easy.-- gisho, Jan 06 2011 real women don't eat quiche - god its bland.-- po, Jan 06 2011 Not as bland as...<link>-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 06 2011 [po], I assure you, if it was bland, it was not real quiche.-- gisho, Jan 07 2011 Needs more bacon.-- baconbrain, Jan 07 2011 and less quiche.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 07 2011 I'd buy it with bacon [+]-- FlyingToaster, Jan 07 2011 what the heck is a //sloppy quiche//? The ones I make or buy are all neatly formed in pie crusts. (true the ones w/ bacon are more flavorful!)-- xandram, Jan 07 2011 I'm skeptical of the dioxin claims...
Couple years ago there was a pork scare in Ireland with regards to dioxins. But at the legal limit of 1 part per TRILLION, freggin ANY pork is going to have dioxins in it. Even if fed only organically grown food. For such tiny levels, you priobably accumulate it from it being in the air in tiny amounts from people's hearth fires. They never even suggested how dioxins could have gotten into the pork feed - only a mention of the oil in the machinery. No claims of an actual spill from the machinery found, plus I know that at least for human foods they use good old edible mineral oil in the machinery.
If you're worried about dioxins eat some olestra chips. It'll clear you right up of the stuff-- EdwinBakery, Jan 07 2011 <deep breath>
<points at whiteboard>
Dioxin is a name for a large family of cyclic aryl ethers. Almost all of them are harmless, or indeed nevessary for existance of organic life.
The "dioxin" your media whine on about is one specific isomer (among hundreds) of tetra-chloro-dibenzyl-dioxin.
<link>
Do not be afraid. When the Revolution comes, the journalists will go up against the wall to be shot, along with the politicians, lawyers, accountants and mime artists.
In the interim, check your facts.-- 8th of 7, Jan 07 2011 After I eat quiche I don't repose, I kneel in front of the toilet.-- baconbrain, Jan 07 2011 I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't love a good quiche. Bland? Bacon, eggs, spinach, and cream? With the tiniest pinch of nutmeg and cayenne? Onions, Swiss. What's not to love?
A sloppy quiche is one that is undercooked. A Perfect quiche is somewhere between a frittata and a souffle. Somewhere perfect. The middle should have just the slightest bit of jiggle when you take it out, and it should continue to cook with residual heat until it is uniform from edge to edge, and the layers are distinct.
Perfect tender-flakey crust, delicate Vidalia onion, bacon souffle, cheese, and the tiniest thin crust of almost-but-not-quite dry spinach, from bottom up.
I have fathered two children with a beautiful woman. I can split cord wood with a hammer and wedge. I took a leak next to Ron Jeremy and he started crying. I love quiche.-- nomocrow, Jan 10 2011 I was watching a kid eat a raspberry Toaster Struedel this morning, and wishing that I had a savoury version. (And a cleaner kid). [+]-- baconbrain, Jan 11 2011 Those are damned good with the little frosting packets.-- rcarty, Jan 11 2011 Nice.-- rcarty, Jan 11 2011 // nutmeg and cayenne? Onions, Swiss. What's not to love? //
The Swiss. As far as I have been able to discover, it bears no relation to Switzerland, and is merely the brand-name for another innovative American polymer.
In fact, if you are going to name a plastic after a foreign cheese-producing country, why on earth pick Switzerland? Their reputation as a cheese-producing nation is surpassed only by the reputation of their navy.
What is it about Americans that they really do not understand the basic concept of cheese? Or chocolate? Or bacon? Or coffee? Or, indeed, taste?
Anyway, thank goodness I have managed to stop myself before I launched into a rant.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 12 2011 // What is it about Americans that they really do not understand the basic concept of cheese? Or, indeed, taste? //
It's called "stupidity". And it's more commonplace than you might think.
// I have managed to stop myself before I launched into a rant //
You say that like it's a good thing.-- 8th of 7, Jan 12 2011 We Americans want uniformity in our food, not quality. We want every McDonald's to serve the exact same Big Mac, we want every fast food restaurant to have the same menu as McDonald's, we want every restaurant to serve fast food, and dammit, we want every cheese we eat to taste the damn same. Keep your variety and your flavor in your own cheeses. We want pasteurized process cheese food, and we want every individually wrapped slice to be uniform and identical.
We can barely bring ourselves to even eat cheese with holes in it, and we sure aren't going to name it for any place near us. You should be grateful we name it after a country anywhere near you. Grateful, you hear me?
(Dang it, [MaxB], next time you go ahead with your rant and save me the trouble.)-- baconbrain, Jan 12 2011 And god damn it we want it super-sized, with a smile, and you better believe we want fries with that.-- rcarty, Jan 12 2011 Cheese is frightening stuff <link>.-- mouseposture, Jan 12 2011 Yes, cheese is teeming with microbes, but I'm not sure most other foods aren't also teeming with microbes as well. Anyway, microbes might be good for you.-- hippo, Jan 12 2011 [wipes Stilton crumbs from beard] Pre-made & pre-packaged anything is OK, if you don't actually want any food, but it's no substitute for the real thing. --- DrBob, Jan 12 2011 I stopped eating this rubbish when they stopped calling it a flan. I recommend you all do the same until they change the name back.-- Scotty, Jan 12 2011 I love the idea, [EdwinBakery], but I f'in *hate* quiche. Every time I see a quiche Lorraine, I feel a tear swell up for the lost crispy bacon & scrambled eggs that could have been...
On saying, that I will concede that I have seen some 'proper' quiches in French patisseries/boulangeries that looked like they'd been made with excellence. They looked like real food. I cried even more inside...-- Jinbish, Jan 12 2011 //microbes might be good for you// or you might be good for the microbes. It's all the same in the end.-- mouseposture, Jan 13 2011 // he'd be having a quickie //
That was Bill Clinton, shirley ?-- 8th of 7, Jan 13 2011 This idea digressed. +-- blissmiss, Jan 13 2011 // What is it about Americans that they really do not understand the basic concept of cheese? Or chocolate? Or bacon? Or coffee? Or, indeed, taste? //
"Swiss" is used here to indicate a general range of cheeses. I am sorry if our particular idiosyncrasies of nomenclature offend you.
We use Emmentaler. It's not just called that, it is made in Switzerland. If I can't get the specific cheese that I want, I usually settle for handcrafted cheeses from the farmer's market.
I make bacon from organic bellies, Louisiana dome salt, and Louisiana cane sugar. I also smoke them myself (Pecan).
I drink Community coffee or buy arabica directly from a dealer (also at my farmer's market) who roasts it in small batches.
Having worked in restaurants in New Orleans most of my young life, I know just a hell of a lot about food.
One of the most important things I've learned is that most food snobs and culinary elitists couldn't *really* tell the difference between caviar and bath beads, it's just something smaller people from smaller countries do to feel superior without even attempting to find good food in the U.S.
Food is not magic. There is good food in practically every culture, if you know where to find it. You obviously don't, which pretty much means that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.-- nomocrow, Jan 13 2011 BTW, if you don't know why good Emmental is good, you don't have sufficient discrimination to say anything about taste.-- nomocrow, Jan 13 2011 Oh, yeah! I forgot to make sweeping generalizations about British food - don't you guys just boil everything without salt, throw it to the dogs, and go out for a mayo sandwich and Indian food? Are your cookbooks really pamphlets? Did the British really colonize the world in search of a good meal?
Or, as Jacques Chirac said, "You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland.”
Why *do* you people hate food?
Bunch of shrimp-potting, marmite-licking, eel- jellying, mash-banging dick-spotters, you would all be eating schnitzel if it were not for US.
Americans, my ass.-- nomocrow, Jan 13 2011 I 'eard dat youse guys doesn't like to taste fings.-- rcarty, Jan 13 2011 Yay! A robust defense, and I laud you all. Now, if you can persuade restaurants to go along with you...-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 13 2011 I laud everyone as well - I've found myself thinking on the twin accusations laid against American and British food recently - having made them myself on occasion - and I think it boils down to the same thing. Roadside dining.
Different countries provide different tourist experiences - so if you are on a city-break, or are at a resort, you are likely to get a very different experience than if you are on a big cross-country jaunt. Now I don't know, but I think there is a tradition in the USA of doing a road-trip, and crossing vast tracts of land to see distantly placed landmarks, so the Grand Canyon is so many thousands of miles from Mount Rushmore, which is so many thousands of miles from The Golden Gate Bridge, which is a long way from Yellowstone Park, etc etc - so there is a high likelyhood of the traveller having to stop and eat at places like Denny's, or Arby's or Sonic, or IHeap or some other place that serves high-carb, fast, cheap, factory prepared food to people who don't know that 5 minutes off the highway, there's probably somewhere 'local' that puts a bit of pride in their food.
Similarly, the average traveller taking in Stonehenge, and whatever else people travel around to look at in the UK, is going to be lucky enough to visit a Little Chef, or if they're really lucky, one of our beautiful road-side services, wherin they can delight in a microwaved Ginsters pasty, or satisfy their cullinary urges on a fetid and limp Cod and Chips drowned in its own oil.
It's this commercialisation/ industrialisation/ homogenisation of food-for-travellers that's responsible for much of the "no-taste" accusations that abound. I'm not sure what the French, Germans, Belgians, Dutch, Italians etc have in terms of service-stations these days, but I very much doubt it is pasty-based.-- zen_tom, Jan 13 2011 //Now, if you can persuade restaurants//
Ha! And cut into their badly-conceived and executed profit system? The problem with almost all bad restaurants (everywhere) is that third-party processed food is seen as a way to increase profits by eliminating the labor cost of creating new things from real food. With apologies to [21], this idea is like a cancer wherever you go in the States, and is the root of all of the legitimate criticism of our food.
The sad part is that it's not true (and that that sort of food is not actually American; I would argue that soul food is the only uniquely American cuisine). Restaurants end up paying more for canned crap than they do for labor costs, almost every time.
You know it's time to jump ship on a restaurant when you see the products from a particular company coming in. It means that the profits are low (or that they've gone up someone's nose) and that the owner is grasping around for ways to save money. It never works. The quality goes down, you lose customers, you lose staff, you lose service, and that's it.
"Restaurants" like McDonald's make it work by owning and controlling the whole thing vertically and advertising, advertising. Some shrewd private restaurant owners make it work by never pretending that they're doing anything but slopping hogs, and basically emulating McD's with a lower profit margin.
But there are good restaurants pretty much everywhere. Lola's, Porto, The Crescent, Vasquez, Rickey, Mike's, and C&D are within 25 miles of my home in BFE Louisiana. Portuguese, Panamanian, Soul, Cuban, Barbecue (Louisiana) and Soul, all from absolute scratch.-- nomocrow, Jan 13 2011 //But there are good restaurants pretty much everywhere.//
Not in half of the Midwest. We invented bland.-- RayfordSteele, Jan 13 2011 It's that work ethic that's brought us McDonalds ultimately.-- rcarty, Jan 13 2011 The thing is, [nomo], that anyone coming to the States (even pseudo-Merican like myself) will judge food based on restaurants, street food and food shops. I have had very few good experiences of any of those three, except in Mexico, which probably doesn't count, although I haven't visited all states. As far as I can tell, cheap restaurants serve pretty predictable but acceptable cheap food. Mid- range restaurants serve generic corporate food. Upper- end restaurants (or at least those over $100 a head) in my experience serve stuff which is oversized, over-presented, tender as tofu and just as tasteless - it's all about presentation and "status".
Street food - I haven't experienced that much, apart from the obvious. It's pretty much what I'd expected.
Shops - yes, I'm sure there are some delis (in the true sense) tucked away all over the place. But in europe, even the mega-marts sell a spectrum from generic crap to decent honest food, and there are still enough real butchers, greengrocers, choclatiers, sweetshops, bakeries, fishmongers, cheese shops and others that buying good food is not like the search for Ark of the Covenant. Even the farmer's markets in the parts of the states I've been to seem to be selling more "supermarket style" produce - fist-sized synthetic strawberries and perfect, perfectly tasteless apples.
In the UK, first of all, we have no decent street food or street culture - that's a given. We also have a fair share of generic and just-plain-lousy restaurants, and those in the middle range tend to be overpriced for what they are. However, we also have a huge number of world class restaurants (by whatever criterion you want to judge them - awards or reputations). This is in addition to the wide availability of good ingredients.
So, [nomo], I'm happy for the UK to be judged, culinarily, on the basis of the food available to everyone in its restaurants and shops, since that is probably all you are likely to experience here as a visitor, and all that most people will eat while living here. I'm sure that an enthusiast can track down decent ingredients and prepare decent food in the US (or in Guatemala, Bratislava or Basingstoke), but that does not, to be honest, count for much when I am trying to make a sweeping generalization.
How did you find food in England, out of curiosity? (And no points will be awarded for the reply "I just looked until I saw a restaurant.")-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 13 2011 //I took a leak next to Ron Jeremy and he started crying// That's 'cause you pissed on his shoes! //Bunch of shrimp-potting, marmite-licking, eel- jellying, mash-banging dick-spotters// Guilty as charged (well, mostly). //In the UK...we have no decent street food// Oh yes we do. Bakers shops.-- DrBob, Jan 21 2011 random, halfbakery