The primary ingredients were eggs (5 in this case), cream (50 milliliters), and grated cheese — in this case, grated hard goat cheese (Selles-sur-Cher and grated hard Mimolette Vieille, a cow's milk cheese. Optionally, stir 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour into the filling mixture. Don't forget the salt and pepper, as well as a pinch or grating of nutmeg.
Dice up some cooked chicken — or cook some diced up chicken. I cooked some diced chicken tenders with chopped shallot, which gave good flavor. Butter a baking dish generously and arrange the pieces of cooked chicken in the bottom.
Steam or blanch some broccoli florets so that they are tender but not over-cooked. Arrange them over the chicken in the baking dish. Scatter the cooked shallot and drizzle the butter or oil it cooked in over the chicken and broccoli.
Mix the cream, eggs, flour, and grated cheese together if you haven't already done so.
I blitzed the liquid mixture with a stick blender to make sure it didn't have any lumps of flour in it. Carefully pour the liquid into the baking dish so that the pieces of chicken and broccoli stay in place.
I decided to grate some more hard goat cheese over the top of the quiche/clafoutis before I put it in the oven. You can of course substitute Parmesan or Romano cheese for the cheeses I used... or whatever finely grated cheese you want.
Bake the quiche/clafoutis in the oven at 175ºC (350ºF) for 30 minutes or so until the filling has set upand the top is golden brown. Enjoy it hot, warm, or cold with good bread and good wine.
Annie T... gave me a recipe for “quiche sans pâte” and I made it often in Salton City. It was/is very good.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion the use of the word “clafouti” for this type of concoction is abusive since “clafouti” is sweet and made with cherries. But “quiche sans pâte” is what it is. Ne mélangeons pas les torchons avec les serviettes!
On pourrait dire que "quiche sans pâte" est abusif aussi. Une vraie quiche a une pâte. Un clafoutis n'en a pas. De plus, on met de la farine dans l'appareil de la quiche sans pâte et dans celui du clafoutis. On ne met pas de farine dans l'appareil de la quiche proprement dit. Disons que les milliers de recettes qu'on trouve pour des clafoutis salés sont des quiches "façon clafoutis". Comme qui disait, la langue évolue.
DeleteNon, ce n’est pas une évolution, c’est une confusion. Pourquoi ne pas appeler Quiche ou Clafouti tous les plats dans les quels il y a de la farine ou des œufs ou du lait ou du sucre ou du sel, etc.
DeleteJe maintiens que ton plat n’est pas un clafouti qui est un dessert avec des cerises et qui devrait avoir un AOP. Je pense qu’on peut faire un clafouti dans une pâte. Comme la quiche. Je ne pense pas que c’est la páte ou son absence qui définit la quiche ou le clafouti.
Here, as the American way, we were served a quiche Lorraine that had nothing to do with the French dish! Evolution du langage?
DeleteCHM, you do go on. I think you are chasing away the other people who used to comment on this blog. Did you know that you can't call a quiche lorraine by that name if it has cheese in it?
DeleteI meant to say that when I google clafoutis salé I get 1,600,000 pages or mentions ("hits"). I guess a lot of people must be complaining about that usage! LOL. I still maintain that you can't really call anything a quiche unless it has a crust. Do you know of any plats cuisinés that have an AOC or an AOP? I can't think of any.
DeleteRegional specialties, as clafouti limousin, choucroute alsacienne, quiche lorraine, ratatouille niçoise ou provençale should be protected, their name and their components, by AOC and AOP like wine and cheeses.
DeleteWhy would my comments chase people away from your blog? If they don’t like my comments, I’d say, don’t read them.
DeleteYou are really categorical about the things you believe in. There's no discussing it with you. You are right, and that's it!
DeleteYou’re certainly right, but that’s the way I am. But, so are you!
DeleteI guess I am. Thank you. Now how do we reconcile your rightness and my rightness?
DeleteI guess we keep on commenting, exposing our own point of view. Your readers will take whatever they want or they like.
DeleteAnd, to add to the mix: I've always wondered, Ken (and probably asked before) why we call some Quiche-like dishes une tarte? I'm thinking of Tarte aux poireaux. No cheese in Tarte aux poireaux, so I figured that was it. But, if a true Quiche Lorraine actually has no cheese, then I'm back at square one LOL!
ReplyDeleteGood point, Judy. I think the boundaries are very fuzzy. What's a tarte, what's a quiche, what's a clafoutis? It's all fairly arbitrary, shaped by habit and history. There are some things that just can't be decreed by the Académie Française or the dictionaries. You can't stop people from using the names and terms that they use. You can protest and rail about it, but language is consensus-driven. Nobody is really in charge. How people talked, what words and names they used 50 or 100 years ago might be interesting, but it's doesn't really matter.
DeleteI remember when I went to work with CHM in Washington DC 40 years ago, one of the first things he asked me (we were editing a French-language magazine) was where the English-language academy met and how often. I told him we didn't have one, as far as I knew (you and I know we don't and never had had such an institution). His answer was, well then how do you know what is correct and what is not correct? I told him that we just know. It's really that simple. In a way, we just negotiate on language questions. On se débrouille.
Tarte aux poireaux is a specialty of Picardy in Northern France and it is called Flamiche?
DeleteIs flamiche a French word or a Picard word?
Deletehttps://wp-fr.wikideck.com/Flamiche_aux_poireaux
DeleteI think what makes a dish a tart is the crust. The original clafouti is not a tart. But the quiche is. The crust is the support of the filing so the result is not messy, unless served in the baking pan like the clafouti. I’m sure a flan can be made in a baking pan without crust. So, let’s say that in some cases the crust can be optional. What makes the dish what it is is the filing, not the crust.
DeleteBefore the era of the sandwich, what we call pâté now was baked with a crust so that it could be transported easily. The term pâté always puzzled me, because pâte (pastry) has noting to do with meat. Une terrine is the same meat preparation but put into the dish called a terrine. It's more practical to transport but also much heavier and more expensive. So pâté came to mean a meat concoction and if you want to make sure people understand that it's a pâté with a crust you have use the term pâté en croûte. Obviously, the language changed and the definition of pâté evolved. A pastry crust gave it its name but now you buy it in a can (a tin in Br. Eng.) or shrink-wrapped in plastic. By the way, the French Wikepédia article says: "En cuisine, un pâté est une préparation à base de viande, de poisson ou de légumes, dont les ingrédients qui le composent ont été hachés et épicés. À ne pas confondre avec la terrine qui, elle, est cuite au four." I wonder how pâté is cooked if not in an oven.
DeleteI like it when you two have a debate because I learn a lot and am able to improve my meager French. Vocabulary and comprehension. To me, when I see the word "tarte" I think of something sweet. Unless it's in the UK then tart can be savory. Here in the states a tart is something else altogether!
ReplyDeleteThis has been going on for almost forty years!
DeleteWhen you hear the term "pie" do you automatically think of something sweet? I can think of plenty of savory pies. By the way, strictly speaking you can't call a tart a pie (pumpkin pie or chess pie, for example, because it doesn't have a top crust.
DeleteAs CHM says, we've been having these discussions for 40 years, which is when we met and started working together. He's very predictable, you know. I knew when I mentioned the clafoutis salé in my post that the term would set him off. Every time I mention it he scolds me and tells me the term is "abusive", which is Franglais for "used improperly". That's a very French concept, I think. As words gradually change meaning, there's always a period when people will say they are not being used the way they "should be" but then everybody forgets the old meaning and just knows the new meaning.
chm, oh yes! I think I remember your telling me that it was called Flamiche... must have been when we were discussing (on Walt's blog post) whether we should add nouns on to foods with singular or plural versions of the noun. Ma famille au pair l'appelait Tarte aux poireaux tout simplement.
ReplyDeleteKen, I think your thoughts are quite right, and, nonetheless, I think that in France, there is a real effort to keep the traditional names of foods...much, much more so than in the U.S., where everything is a free for all in cooking, creating variations, re-naming, substituting ingredients, and allllll of that! Ha!
Examples?
DeleteI would call that a crustless quiche because it's exactly how I would make a quiche but without the pastry! A quiche filling would not have flour in it (or ground almonds) whereas a clafoutis would. A tart might also have flour in the filling and I have a recipe for a really good smoked fish tart where the filling is a kind of white sauce instead of a custard.
ReplyDeleteYour crustless quiche is also very similar to the way I would make a frittata - just to put a spanner in the works! As time goes by I do more and more unconventional cooking - using up whatever I have in whatever way springs to mind whether it conforms to a particular recipe or method we're happy as long as it's edible!
Whatever you call your dish, it looks absolutely delicious! I'm sure it was very tasty!
I've never heard of putting flour in the eggs you make into a frittata. That would almost make the frittata into a crêpe. Speaking of that, one article I read about clafoutis says it's fruit over which you pour crêpe batter and then bake in the oven.
DeleteOops, that will teach me to read your posts more thoroughly.........I don't put flour in a frittata! It wouldn't be a frittata then but a clafoutis.......QED !!
DeleteNow I am more intrigued......
I enjoy discussions like this one. I sometimes make something called an "impossible pie" that makes it's own crust.
ReplyDeleteImpossible pie is a favourite in our house. How it makes its own crust is just magic!
DeleteThanks Evelyn, and you too Jean, for the "impossible pie" term. I'd never heard of that before. It's a clafoutis that speaks English!
DeleteI, too, enjoy the discussions and CHM's opinions, and learn from them. Except that I was eating mac & cheese comfort food, and now it seems so woefully inadequate. ::deep sigh::
ReplyDeleteMac & cheese is far from inadequate. Call it un gratin de macaronis au fromage and enjoy it. Here's a recipe for mac & cheese attributed to the late Lyonnais chef Paul Bocuse.
DeleteHere's a link to a recipe for making a Clafoutarte.
DeleteInteresting, la tarte aux cerises!
DeleteThat's an interesting mac & cheese, with crème fraîche and Gruyere. I have a David Lebovitz one that uses cheddar and Comté.
Delete