May 12: Supermarket Sushi; Smokey Cheese, Bacon and Pumpkin Slice (a.k.a. Hebrew Temptation)

Lunch

As Foodie Greg was shopping at Wholefoods, he picked up some sushi there. Lunch cost $9.69 per serve.

Dinner

For dinner we revisited a favorite recipe, that oddly we haven’t cooked since The semiSerious Foodies started. This is a very unusual recipe, originally from a recipe for Zuccini Slice that Greg’s mother shared with him. We modified the recipe to pumpkin and the cheese to smokey and added bacon. Because the bacon is fried off first, the fat for the recipe comes from the bacon, and therefore the flavor permeates the recipe.

It took us a very long time to work out just what type of dish this was. It’s not a quiche, or custard of any kind as there’s no dairy. Ultimately we worked out it is a cake. A savory cake.

It is delicious. We took it to the Hollywood Bowl one night, to share with a group of friends. It was a Jewish holiday and as we passed it around one member of our party asked if it had bacon in it. We confessed and, not surprisingly, he declined because of his faith.

Until about 15 minutes later when he quietly leaned over and asked for a piece as “My wife told me it was so good, that I had to have a piece”. Hence, the alternate name.

The recipe makes four quite generous serves.

• The bacon was $6.99 for 12 slices, and we used five, or 73c per serve
• Five pastured eggs at 50c each is $2.50 or 63c per serve
• A small bag of organic flour is $2.69 and we used about 1/3 or 23c per serve
• Buying the butternut squash diced saves a lot of angst trying to peel and deseed the squash. The whole $5.99 pack went into the dish, or $1.50 per serve
• Normally we’d used smoked gouda but today we used a smoked mozzarella that was $5.99 or $1.50 per serve.
• An onion adds 8c per serve
• The salad kit came from Ralph’s (Kroger) was $2.99 and we will get four serves from it, or 75c per serve.

Dinner tonight is one of our favorites. It’s good enough to temp a Jew on a religious holiday, and costs just $4.92 per serve with the salad.

And, since it’s not published anywhere, here’s the recipe in full:

5 rashers Bacon
5 Eggs
1 cup Plain Flour
13 oz Butternut Squash, peeled and grated
1 large Onion, grated
1 cup grated Smoked Gouda or Cheddar Cheese

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Grate the butternut squash and cheese. Using a food processor you can also grate the onion instead of finely chopping it.

Fry the bacon until the fat mostly renders out. Allow to cool a little and chop finely.

Retrieve ¼ cup of the bacon grease (top up with oil if necessary).

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and beat until smooth. Add the flour and beat until combined. Add the bacon grease, bacon, butternut squash, onion and cheese, and mix to combine.

Grease a casserole dish and spread the mixture into it. Bake for 30 – 60 minutes until set.