My signature recipe is yours for the asking

Every chef has a signature dish, and although I hardly consider myself a chef, I have mine. It's my famous (among friends and family only) Italian quiche. It's not a secret recipe that's been handed down through generations of my family. (I am not even Italian.) It hasn't won any lofty culinary awards. I haven't prepared it on TV, nor has the recipe appeared in any popular cookbook. And, all modesty aside, it's a recipe of my own design although I fashioned it after a similar quiche available from a take-out place in New York City.

After eating my Italian quiche, friends have urged me to patent it and put it on the market, but I have only fantasized about becoming a food star. I haven't tried to sell it in specialty food shops or hawked it on QVC because the cost to make it could be as high as that of a small used car. Not to mention that it's labor-intensive, requiring tedious chopping, sauteing, browning, shredding and pre-baking before the final concoction actually goes into the oven. Exhaustion is the usual outcome for me.

Word of mouth has made my Italian quiche a phenomenon. I frequently get requests to whip up a few quiches. "Please, Barbara. Do it for us." Certain relatives would pay me any price to make them a quiche. My man Donald has been known to beg for it to which I respond, "Not today, Honey. I'm tired."

I usually don't write about historic topics, but my Italian Quiche has a rich anecdotal past as lengthy as that of the development of the sandwich. Real men, who are said to snub their noses at the mention of any kind of quiche, secretly devour my Italian-style when it's anywhere nearby. On a buffet table it disappears quicker than the shrimp or caviar. My neighbor Donna and her partner, Sal, are two of my biggest quiche fans. One day I gave Donna another of my freshly baked pies, and she immediately called Sal, who got into his car and raced the seven miles to her condo just for a slice of it. True story.

At Christmas this year, I served it as an hors d'oeuvre to family members and gave one couple a whole pie to take home. They were on their way to a dinner party, and rather than leave the quiche in the car for hours, they took it inside where curious guests hovered around the unfamiliar looking vegetable and meat pie. Inquisitively, they studied its colorful, confetti look as if inspecting a rare scientific specimen and asked for a sample. After tasting it, they swooned over the quiche and gave it raves worthy of a dish from the Le Cordon Bleu. The next day requests for the recipe poured in as if I invented a new form of protein.

Word of mouth has made my Italian quiche a star. Not me. And my fantasy about opening a restaurant to serve only my homemade quiche, or seeing the quiche in the frozen food sections of grocery stores, or having it pictured in gift catalogs selling at a heady price is still just a fantasy and probably always will be.

And then there's my equally desirable (certainly not my phrase) meatloaf pate. I'd like to tell you more about it, but that's a recipe, and a column, for another day and another history lesson. For the Italian quiche recipe, email me at the address below and I will be happy to send it along. Bon appetit.

Barbara L. Smith is a nationally produced playwright and corporate speechwriter. She welcomes comments at blsmith283@aol.com.