Tableau Vivante

I’ve been twittering away this morning about this thing or that recipe, mostly because of the proximity of the laptop, which is now playing back broadcasts of KCRW’s Good Food. But also because Sunday mornings are when I marathon cook for hours some preprepped food for the week. JJ and I sometimes don’t get home from our respective daytime pursuits in the mood to heat up the stove and stand in front of it for another 30 or so minutes to quiet the belly grumbles. This is what quiche is for. Or maybe some parboiled potatoes for a quick browning in a pan. Maybe with a glass of sun-brewed black tea. Or a bowl of rice with char sui chicken and cilantro on top.

I’ll even *gasp* precook rice for onigiri or musubi or the above mentioned bowls. You’re not really supposed to, I’ve heard. But I do. Even with my easy-peasy rice cooker. If I’m working late and am looking to avoid the line (and the calories) at In-N-Out, I have to have this stuff prepped and ready to go, or my home food resolve melts like so much American cheese on a juicy beef patty and grill-toasted bun. You see my dilemma.

So Sunday mornings, from the moment I wake up until around 10AM (usually around 4-5 hours worth of prime cooking time) I’m working through yesterday’s market haul and seeing what can be prepped, precooked, and packaged. I made the above fresh corn cakes with this in mind. The idea came from one of my vintage cookbooks – a 1971 edition of the Picayune Creole Cookbook. Simple enough adaptation – fresh corn from one ear, chopped chives, 2 eggs, 1 cup flour, ½ cup milk, some baking soda, salt, chipotle pepper, fried up on the griddle into small, savory cakes. I would have used cilantro instead except I had used it up yesterday in my salsa. So you use what’s handy. Long gone are the days when I chained myself to recipe dictates. Who has the money or time to chase everything down?

Hard-boiled some eggs for lunches. Not a difficult thing to do, but since it takes time and time is not something I have a lot of, they get prepped on Sunday, too.

I talk a lot of quiche because it’s one of the tastiest and easiest pre-prepped foods I can make. Works in lunch. Works in dinner. Works for a quick breakfast as we race out the door to catch our respective transits. This week’s is a spinach and red bell pepper quiche with fontina and swiss. I make the dough early because it has to set and relax a bit before I work it. While it sets, I work on other food bits. It’s a prep that plays nice with other preps. And the result is pretty spectacular. The core recipe is from a very old issue of Saveur, which is just about falling apart from all the use it gets.

And then as the day warms up, I turn off the oven and the stove and enjoy the perfectly sun-brewed tea pictured above. I might cook something later on for dinner. But I’ll usually slap together a really fresh salad with sugar snaps and spinach, crumble some goat cheese on top, and eat it with a sliver of quiche. Such is savory Sunday.