Welcome back to Dinner & a Movie, our pairing of a home-cooked meal and a film worth settling in for. Along the Alabama Gulf Coast, few ingredients say spring quite like crawfish, and this week’s dish puts a pile of the little mudbugs to work in a rich, custardy quiche. The film takes us far from the bayou, to the mountains and cities of Japan.
In the kitchen: Crawfish Quiche
You will need about three-quarters of a pound of cooked, peeled crawfish tails, four eggs, two cups of heavy whipping cream, a pie crust, an onion, a bell pepper, garlic, a shake of Creole seasoning, Worcestershire and hot sauce, grated Parmesan and a cup of shredded white cheddar.
- Chop the onion and bell pepper and saute with the garlic in olive oil. Add the crawfish and cook another five minutes, then set aside to cool.
- Lay the crust into a lightly floured deep-dish pie plate.
- Whisk the eggs with the seasoning, Worcestershire and hot sauce, then whisk in the cream and cheddar.
- Spread the cooled crawfish across the crust, pour in the egg mixture and top with Parmesan.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden. Let it rest five minutes before serving.
The result is a savory, custardy slice that makes a fine supper or a Sunday brunch centerpiece, and it reheats beautifully the next day.
At the movies: ‘The Wolverine’
Director James Mangold’s “The Wolverine” finds Hugh Jackman’s clawed hero summoned to Japan by a messenger for a dying soldier he had befriended as a prisoner of war decades earlier. On his deathbed, the old man offers the Wolverine a tempting gift – mortality – and the adventure spins out from there. The cast includes Hiroyuki Sanada, Rila Fukushima, Tao Okamoto, Famke Janssen and Will Yun Lee.
The film is a familiar entry in the series, heavy on action and slightly slow in a few stretches, but satisfying for fans of the character. The Japanese setting gives it a fresher backdrop than most superhero fare, and Jackman remains as watchable as ever in the role.
Our verdict: a solid one and a half thumbs up. Pour a glass of something cold, set the quiche on the table and settle in. Dinner and a film remains a reliable recipe for a good evening on the bay.
Make it your own
Crawfish tails freeze well, so this quiche need not wait for the spring boils; frozen, thawed tails are a fine stand-in the rest of the year. Cooks who like more heat can add a diced jalapeno with the onion and bell pepper, while a handful of chopped green onion folded into the custard brightens the whole dish. If you are short on time, a good store-bought crust performs perfectly well, and blind-baking it for a few minutes first keeps the bottom from turning soggy. The finished quiche keeps for several days in the refrigerator and reheats gently in a low oven without weeping. Paired with a simple green salad and an extra squeeze of lemon, it turns a modest ingredient list into a table-worthy meal that carries the flavor of the Gulf in every forkful, whether served warm from the oven or at room temperature on a mild afternoon.