I love using eggs in savoury tarts, like Pumpkin Savoury Tart or Savoury Herb Tart, but this time I wanted to focus on the vegetables and include a little surprise for later.

I like making these open-faced so that you can fit as much as you want in them and they hold their shape while cooking.

Broccoli, Onion and Pine Nut No-Egg Quiche Recipe with a Surprise Stuffed Cheese Crust

I pre-toasted my pine nuts and some of them did get a bit too dark, so you could put them raw directly before putting it into the oven.

2 medium-sized onions, sliced
1/2 cup / 100g pine nuts
1 head broccoli
Tenero cheese, but you could use ricotta or goat cheese (even mixed with a few spices!) as a substitute.
Puff pastry

1. Cut the broccoli into medium-sized chunks and sauté in a pan with some olive oil. In another pan, sauté the sliced onions and olive oil over medium heat, slowly cooking until they caramelize.
2. While the broccoli is still firm, remove from heat. Chop up further with a knife if any pieces are too large.
3. On a baking tray or glass baking pan, center the puff pastry and start to layer the ingredients with the broccoli on bottom, then the onions, and top off with the pine nuts. Before closing the pastry, insert some chunks of cheese around the bottom edge of the broccoli. Fold pastry up over mixture, leaving a large space open in the middle.
4. Cook for 10-15 minutes at 220C/420F, watching it closely so it doesn’t burn.

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• (Soft) Food Porn
• Easter Lunch in Piedmont – Pranzo di Pasqua in Piemonte, Italy
• Pumpkin Savoury Tart and Seasoned Pumpkin Seeds

I walked around with only a light jacket and scarf and I couldn’t resist some spring pea pods when I saw them in the market. I felt like making something that was as green as it could be!

Spring Frittata with Peas, Leeks, and Zucchini

2 Leek “hearts”
1 small light zucchine
1 – 1 1/2 cups fresh-shelled peas
6 eggs
1/2c. Parmigiano Reggiano
Salt & Pepper

1. To prepare the vegetables: slice the leek hearts thinly. Slice / rough chop the zucchini into “pezzetti,” little pieces.
2. In a skillet or frying pan, cook the leeks until slightly translucent in some olive oil. Add the fresh peas, and cook until peas start to get soft / break apart. I wanted my zucchini to have a firmer/fresher feeling, so I cooked them for only 1-2 minutes before adding the eggs.
3. Crack the eggs into a small bowl, and mix thoroughly. Add some salt and pepper to taste. Grate parmigiano reggiano directly into the eggs, mix.
4. Pour eggs into frying pan, over the vegetable mixture and let cook until the bottom starts to brown. Once the frittata is cooked solidly on one side, flip it over. You can use an extra plate to slide the frittata off, then inverting it back into the frying pan.
5. Cook until the middle is well-cooked.

I am using leeks in my cooking almost as much as I use onions (and I love onions!) You may remember last year I made some homemade pappardelle pasta with leeks and gorgonzola sauce. Try the sauce, you might be surprised how well they go together.

Is it springtime where you are?

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Recipes
• How to Host An Italian Aperitivo at Home
• Fresh Lemon Pasta with Spring Peas and Mint

BUT…

I think I had a pretty good year and I wanted to share some highlights, tools and tricks that keep me going and hopefully can be useful to you in 2007.

Add your own helpful sites and links in the comments!

READING AND WRITING
I’m a big reader and I’ve been slowly converting as much as I can to ebooks as the English bookstores here are not always fully stocked and I get tired of paying �10+ a book, and Amazon’s shipping rates leave something to be desired.

Stats:

• Books read in 2006: 98 (52 of which were ebooks)
• Slowest month: October (3)
• Fiction Novels ideas entertained and elaborated: 7
• Fiction Novels finished: 0 (ah, win some, lose some!)

Links:

• Catalog your books online with Library Thing or Shelfari for a visual representation
• Dive into ebooks with eReader, Fictionwise, or Project Gutenberg for free ebooks.
• Write that novel this time around in November with Nanowrimo or find some Freelance Writing Jobs to keep you busy.
• Write better, blog better! Read Copyblogger’s Best Posts of 2006 for some good tips or read Strunk & White’s Elements of Style as a refresher.
• Go old-school and buy yourself an inkless pen that can write on any surface or check out SeeJaneWork which has some stylish buys.

BLOGGING, COMPUTING & ORGANIZATION
I’m also going as digital as possible – moving around countries and cities means I need to keep physical items to a minimum. I upgraded to Flickr Pro so that I can upload all my digital photos and have them backed up somewhere, and stop juggling multiple CDs or DVDs. I’m also starting to use Google Documents to keep documents and spreadsheets online and centralized, I’m even collaborating with my mom on our recipe book which is a shared document on Google – we can both insert and keep it updated!

Stats:

• Blog posts this year: 113
• Bloglines feeds following: 217 in 15 categories
• Pictures taken / on Flickr: 1176 / 115 (+ some private)
• Bloggers met in 2006: 13 (Gia, Sara, Cynthia, Nicki, Avery, Shelley, Melinda, Yael, Judith, Carole, Annika, Kellee, Tania) and some other non-blogging Expats in Italy!

Links:

• Out with the old, in with the new – donate your old PC to Computers for Schools
• Do you NOT have a blog yet? Or want to change platforms? I use WordPress, but Blogger, LiveJournal or Vox will all do nicely.
• Stop bookmarking or using Favorites – use an RSS feeder (non-technical explanation of RSS here) such as Bloglines, Google Reader, Sage for Firefox or My Yahoo, to name a few.
• Create a wiki on your computer or online, get organized with Backpackit where you can brainstorm and info dump as you please.
• Set up reminders for important dates in Yahoo or Google calendars or send yourself a mail for a future date with FutureMail
• Protect yourself – I use ZoneLabs as a free firewall, keep Windows updated, defrag your hard drive or clean up the crap with CCleaner to get back free disk space
• Download free open-source software programs at Open Office or use Google’s free online software or switch to a Mac from Windows
• Become an advanced Flickr user to use your account to its fullest.
• The next time someone you’re looking for searches for themselves on Google, they’ll see you’re looking for them with Long Time Lost

EATING

Not much to say here. I hope to eat in 2007. Hopefully healthier and food of better quality, and more that I make myself.

Stats:

• Stops documented on the Tour del Gelato: 8 – Add yours!
• Dominating tastes of 2006: Pepperoncino – Hot Pepper, Cioccolato Fondente – Dark Chocolate, Gorgonzola
• Tastes I’m leaving behind: Milk Chocolate, Kinder chocolate, Mayonnaise, Panettone
• A re-discovery: Beets. After 20+ years of hating…I kind of like them now. I’ll have to try a few beet recipes I saw.
• Favorite kitchen helper: My silicone pot holders

Links:

• Find a new food blog to follow for inspiration – Well Fed Network has just posted the nominations for the 2006 Food Blog awards
• Find blogs that talk about Cupcakes, Candy and Candy, even Chocolate & Zucchini – BlogHer has a big list of food and drink blogs, so does Elise at Simply Recipes and so does Kiplog.
• Participate in group blogging events listed at Is My Blog Burning and post your beautiful food porn pics on Flickr.
• Find some new recipes at the Food Network or cool kitchen tools at Kitchen Contraptions

As for me, I’m following Ilva from Lucullian Delight’s example and making my list of “I Dare” cooking challenges for 2007:

1. Eggplant Parmigiana – I always enjoy my mother-in-law’s and I know if I perfect this, my husband will marry me again. Don’t worry Mom, we’ll elope to Vegas.
2. Troccoli- I’ve done homemade gnocchi a few times without a potato masher (lots of work) but I thought I’d try my hand at Troccoli, a handcut spaghetti-like egg noodle, this year
3. Gelato- I talk about it enough, I should just make some! That way the best stop on the Tour del Gelato will be at my house.
4. Roast- I have never made a roast. Can you believe it? I’m not sure if I’ll go with the English variety or the Italian one more like my MIL’s.
5. Bread – I don’t know much about breadmaking, so I’d like to experiment a bit. The no-yeast bread sounds intriguing.

TRAVEL & MOVING AROUND

• Cities lived in: 2 – Pavia and Milan, Italy
• Countries visited: 2 – U.S. (once) and England (3 times!)
• Miles run this year: 65 (this was a very slow year starting with the gym membership in September – I’m hoping to change that in 2007)
• Amount spent on public / private transportation: �600 / �100
• Methods of transportation used: 8 – Train, plane, automobile, metropolitan, bus, tram, bicycle, feet

Links:

• Learn more before you go – check out WikiTravel or Slow Travel, use an online map tool to check out your destination or Google Earth with satellite images – some destinations will even show you buildings!
• Now iTunes has a language podcast section to learn languages!

MISCELLANY

• Money helped to raise for charity: $60,000 + �120 euro (work-related fundraiser)
• Pregnant bellies touched (no strangers): 3
• People I asked “Do you mind if I take a picture of ___?”:7
• Cameras broken: 1. Boo.
• Average hours spent on computer/day: 14 (not good)

Still have spare time? Links:

• Volunteer your time with Volunteer Match (US only) or your blood with the Red Cross
• Donate your computer’s processor time at night to BOINC as part of a desktop-grid network that might someday discover life on other planets
• Check out this great list of addictive online games or play some flash games at MiniClip.
• Or listen to dogs that really talk. Really.

Happy 2007!!

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• World Cup Fever: Pre-game madness
• How to Make Pappardelle Pasta
• Sage, Honey & Pecorino Heart Bread

• Here’s a post listing all the internationally-shippable prizes. Notice mine’s on the list (EU15) but make sure you check with your country’s restrictions before bidding. A recap of the European offerings is here
• Sam from BecksPoshNosh calculated the odds of winning a West Coast prize here

The positions I get myself into….

The holidays to me are all about over-extending yourself, dreaming too much, doing too much, fitting too much in and that’s part of the fun! It’s also a familiar sensation to me – when I don’t have enough commitments, I get exceedingly lazy in the other direction and become a hermit in my house. So it’s good to give myself a push.

This week I took all the goodies I baked this weekend (except for the banana nut bread which didn’t make it past my front door).

At work, I have been bombarding them with holiday-inspired things because TIS the Season to be Jolly, darnit! I feel a bit withdrawn after not doing a single thing for Thanksgiving. I’ve been playing my Pandora Holiday radio station at a low volume and switching to my Lounge station when it gets too much.

Tomorrow, I will bring back the Babbo Furfante Gift Swap that I love so much, a game I grew up playing many years in Michigan with my stepfather’s huge family. With so many people, the only way to exchange gifts was to do a creative exchange that didn’t empty your pockets and kept the children entertained. Of course, it wasn’t called the same name, but the stealing method has remained true across the ocean. Last year we played and it was a big hit in the office. Everyone was talking about the gift they bought in anticipation for tomorrow.

In addition to participating in the Menu for Hope, I also organized a last-minute raffle for some products sent to us by a client, and we will then donate the money to one of our non-profit clients. It’s not much, but it was better than trying to figure out how to share things in the office without a full-size meat slicer. Aren’t we sweet?

Speaking of sweet, here’s the classic fudge I like to make. This holiday favorite comes second only to the chocolate-covered peanut butter balls that I used to make and I’ll have to see if I can bring the recipe out of retirement here in Italy. I had to get the Marshmallow Creme smuggled in special.

Between getting a new computer tomorrow morning at work (good timing, don’t you think?), going-away lunches, our gift swap and then the informal “Pane e Salame” (and Spumante) get-together, tomorrow looks like a low productivity day.

But it will be the last day of the Menu for Hope and therefore I will be blogging! Won’t you help me give a last push for the fundraiser? Put a link in your post, pretty please!

These cookies were a new try this year but they were the first to go – coconut and cranberries and shortbread, oh my!

The Holiday Baking Kama Sutra isn’t over…I just took a cake out of the oven at 10.30pm tonight. Yes!

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Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Sightseeing in Milan during the Holidays
• The Best Holiday Cookie Swap Ever
• Zucchini-Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Crunch Glaze