Crustless Quiche

Having never made quiche before, not even with a crust, I decided it was about time to give it a go. The reason I decided on a crustless one was to make it healthier, so there was less guilt when eating it. I chose to make this quiche one Monday evening, not because it seemed like a good time, but because Ian ate my lunch for the next day so it was either make the quiche or eat canteen food. I found a recipe on my weight loss site, www.weightlossresources.co.uk, and set to (I left out the onion and replaced the ham with bacon). I'd already invested in some foil quiche trays, so that I wouldn't have too much washing up to do, and if I turned out to be really bad at quiche making, I didn't have a useless dish cluttering up space in my cupboards. I fried off some bacon and then chopped it into small pieces, mixed up the remaining ingredients and then added it all to the dish. I think the quantity of mixture was too much for the quiche dish, and it was quite hard getting the dish into the oven without spilling it everywhere. I think next time I'll put the dish on the oven shelf first, and add the mixture straight into it so that it doesn't have to travel very far.

The quiche was to cook for 40minutes, so I checked on it after 30, and it had almost quadrupled in size. This worried me slightly, but then when I took it out of the oven, it deflated back down to just above the edge of the tray. The next morning, I cut it into portions, although it was quite hard to extract from the tray. I had the quiche cold with some salad and Ian had his piece warmed up in the microwave with some chips. I think it was better hot, but I was too lazy to walk back to the microwave, and with the cold salad it wasn't too bad.

So, the quiche was a success, mainly because Ian actually ate half of it, and he doesn't really like quiche!

ingredients

• 375ml Milk, Semi Skimmed, Asda
• 120g Cheese, Mature, Grated, Healthy Eating, Tesco
• 70g Flour, Wholemeal, Self Raising, Allinson
• 100g Onions, Chopped, Frozen, Sainsbury's
• 114g Ham, Oven Baked, Dry Cure, Sliced, Asda
• 4 Eggs/200g Eggs, Free Range, Medium, Co-Op

Method

1. Beat eggs, milk and pepper together.

2. In a separate bowl mix together cheese, onion, ham and flour.

3. Add egg and milk mixture to flour mixture, folding until well blended.

4. Pour into a lightly greased dish and bake in a 200ºC oven for 40 minutes or microwave on Medium for 12 minutes.

Zizzi's

This week it was my friends birthday, so we went over to Basingstoke to deliver her present and go out for a meal. The restaurant of choice was Zizzi's - a restaurant chain I've been to before but not this particular one.

I scanned the menu and found they did mussels as a starter so that was that choice sorted! I then took a look at the mains, and decided that I didn't like the look of any of the pizzas (I'm not a very big pizza fan). I've never had a risotto at a restaurant before, in fact, I've only ever had one risotto before which Ian's sister cooked. So I decided to give that a try - this particular one came with tiger prawns, calamari & salmon chunks.

The starters arrived - my mussels came without a bowl to put the shells in and with no finger bowl. This, in my opinion, is a major failure. The other problem with the mussels was that a lot of the shells were broken, which makes eating the sauce afterwards (which I have to point out was quite nice) a little risky as you're likely to swallow the shell. All of these things mean that some tasty mussels that would have received 7/10 actually got awarded 5/10. Another thing I should mention is that when I requested a finger bowl, the waitress brought me out a bowl of boiling water with lemons in, without pointing out to me that it was boiling - and when I put my fingers in and then went 'God that's bloody hot' she said she would return with some cold water - but never did!

Ian's starter was calamari - and this was nice, but the portion was exceedingly small. Because of this Ian is awarding it 3/10, and having seen the portion size - I have to agree! The other starter enjoyed by the group was something called 'Bruschetta al Pomodoro' - which my two friends were sharing. Now all four of us were expecting this to be hot - but it was literally just bread with some chopped tomatoes on top. I don't have scores from my friend but I'd have given it 5/10.

Next we come to the mains - my risotto was not good - the calamari was rubbery and the general rice flavour overpowered all the other flavours - I would have expected it to have been made with some sort of fish stock, but I couldn't taste any if it was - 6/10. Ian & the others all ordered their special 'rustica' pizzas - described as 'bigger, thinner & crispier'. Well, they were big, and thin, but I detected no crisp - in fact the piece of Ian's that I had was definitely soggy. The distribution of the tomato puree was a bit hit and miss, there was next to none in some places, and tonnes in others. Ian would have scored the pizza at 7/10, if it hadn't been for the fact that the restaurant was kind of a pizza restaurant! He expected much better and therefore gave it 5/10.

The best part of the meal (obviously apart from the company) was the Banana Con Cioccolata - Caramelised banana with toffee and chocolate sauce on a waffle served with ice cream. This was really good, the toffee sauce was very tastey - the dessert would have got a 8/10 if it hadn't been for the fact that this banana dessert only came with 4 small slices of banana - not even a whole banana! So, the marks had to be chopped to reflect this, giving it 6/10.

One other thing to note is that Ian ordered a 'lemonade' to drink, and in fact received a 'Sprite' which, as those of you who know Ian know, he quite likes, but he says it is wrong to serve someone a sprite when they have asked for a lemonade and I can't help but agree.