|
Hummus: Quick and Easy
38 comments
Corn Chowder in the Crockpot
36 comments |
       |
You May Also Like
 Is Organic Better?
Joanna McFarlane | 8th Nov 07  The Polymeal: Recipe for Your Heart
Meri Raffetto RD, LDN | 19th Feb  Start a Lunch Club at Your Office!
Busy Bee Susan | 7th Feb  A Few Ways to Make Grocery Shopping Easier
LisaN | 29th Feb What Foods Do You Crave?
LisaN | 20th Mar |
Have you ever noticed how quiche is always a staple at brunch? All it really is is scrambled eggs baked in a pie crust. And yet it seems so much more fancy schmancy, like you went through a lot of trouble for your guests.
But why does quiche have to be a breakfasty food? We are going to be eating ours tonight for dinner with a large green salad and a crusty baguette. I will also be at the baseball field (I KNOW, what a surprise! because I haven’t been there every other night this week!) until 7:00pm and this is perfect for staggered meal times. And will require nothing of me to get it on the table. Everything will be done in advance.
I used to love quiche. Back before I found out I was allergic to everything that is not cardboard. So technically I probably still do love quiche, I just love living more.
To make this culinary delight, you will need:
2 refrigerated pie crusts
8 strips bacon
1 large onion, chopped
12ish ounces spinach leaves
8 large eggs
2 cups half-and-half or whole milk
2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
4 cups grated swiss cheese
Step One: Take pie crust out of package and unroll. Wipe your brow, this is tough culinary work.
Step Two: Put each crust into its own pie plate. trim the edges and do that fancy fork thing.
Step Three: Put the crusts in the oven to bake for 10-12 minutes
Step Four: While that is baking, get the quiche innards ready.
Step Five: Crack the eggs into your mixing bowl
Step Six: Add the 2 cups of half n half.
Step Seven: Add two teaspoons of dijon mustard
Step Eight: Cook your bacon in a skillet. Remove bacon when it is crispy. Add onions to skillet and cook until the are translucent. The reason I have no photos of this is because I have children who are onion haters, so I left it out.
Add the spinach to the skillet. You will be amazed at how much the fluffy spinach leaves condense.
You can alternately use frozen spinach.
This is all 12 oz of spinach after it has been sauted in the skillet. I squeezed it with paper towels to get most of the bacon grease out of it.
Step Nine: Divide the spinach between the two cooked pie crusts.
Step Ten: Sprinkle roughly half a cup of the grated swiss cheese on top of the spinach. Crumble and sprinkle the bacon on top also.
Step Eleven: Gently (!) pour the egg mixture into the two pie crusts. Then top with the remaining half cup of cheese per quiche.
Step Twelve: Bake for 30 minutes in a 350 oven. Or until set. After 15 minutes check the quiche to see if the edges of the crust are burning. If so, cover them with tinfoil or tell your family to deal with brown crust. Like I do. Because I am mean.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Cooking, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: bacon, baking, breakfast, brunch, eggs, food, guest meal, quiche, spinach
April 26th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Well done! I love quiche! Glad to see it’s not just our family!! Try broccoli, too. With bacon and swiss. MMMMmm. And I just found a recipe (from Epicurious) for a carmelized onion & bacon one, with gruyere. It’s on the menu for next week. Yum!
April 26th, 2008 at 4:01 am
for the people can eat eggs I make onew with ham, cheese and broccoli
April 26th, 2008 at 4:34 am
My family loves quiche. I make it every other week. Normally serve it with baked beans and a salad. I also make it for Christmas breakfast with some sausages and fruit. The great thing is too, that if like it cold, you can take it for lunch.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Can you get away with onions if you totally puree them in the food processor?
Chris says: Mary, if they weren’t right there with me helping I would have chopped, sauted and thrown them in and they would have been none the wiser. But I wasn’t up for the whining yesterday so left it out. Everyone loved them last night.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:43 am
crazy! this is traditionally a brunch food?
i’ve only ever had it for dinner!! haha. i could live on quiche & salad all summer. of course i’d have to change my quiche fillings every so often.
i love using mushroom, cheese & egg. so yum!
April 26th, 2008 at 10:36 am
We do this too! Good to see all our men are manly enough to eat quiche and survive.
April 26th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Quiche is my kid’s most requested meal!
April 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Oh, thank you — my daughter has been asking for quiche since she tried it at a restaurant. Great timing!
April 26th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
This sounds delicious…what cheese would you recommend as a substitute? My husband/kids HATE swiss cheese, and I’m not so good at finding one that doesn’t dramatically change the taste of whatever I’m making when it calls for it in a recipe…
Chris says: Usually I use cheddar,the all purpose cheese, but this time I grabbed swiss at the store to see if the kids would like it. They did.
April 26th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I bet the dijon adds a kick, but not too much. That sounds great. I’ll have to try that next time.
(I actually don’t cook my spinach. I just layer it in the bottom of the pan, with bacon of course. It has always cooked up just fine without being “pre-sauteed”.)
April 26th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I’m afraid of quiche! I thought it was difficult. Maybe not?
at “quiche innards”
April 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I love quiche too.
I also mix up the ingredients sometimes. Feta cheese or goat cheese make a nice (more adult, maybe) substitute.
Also, when my kids were little I would make them one with spinach, ham and cheese and call it “green eggs and ham” and then they never questioned the spinach part. (My oldest was really picky, so I’m surprised it worked so well.)
April 26th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Mmmm, I love quiche. We do artichoke hearts instead of spinach sometimes, too.
But Chris, I can’t believe you, the veritable QUEEN of making things from scratch, author of the quote, “I pretty much have a problem with anything jarred,” YOU are using store-bought pie crust!
The world, she is turned upside down.
Chris says: I know. But pie crust for something like this is a pain in the ass to make. Especially since my kids don’t really care and I can’t eat it. For real pie, I would still prefer to make a crust from scratch. It’s a slippery slope, next thing you know I will be buying LUNCHABLES.
April 27th, 2008 at 5:29 am
I am going to feel stupid as soon as I type this question, but for those of us with small families, can one of these be frozen?
If not (as I suspect because freezing quiche sounds so stupid to me now), how long do you think it’ll keep in the fridge?
Chris says: Not a stupid question at all. I honestly have no idea. I would half the recipe and just make one. The refrigerated pie crust keeps in the fridge in its original packaging for a long time. So next month you could make another.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Chris,
I’m another who uses Pillsbury. There is a real trick to pie crusts and it usually has to deal with the maker’s body temp. My hands are too warm and the shortening (or butter, or lard) melts into the flour before I can get it rolled out the way I want it, making the pie crust tough. So I stick with All-ready (but LOVING them more now that they’re rolled up instead of folded into quarters).
But another option for a pie crust is to use shredded potatoes (Simply Potatoes…yes, I DO use them too) about 3 cups, mixed with a little onion and an egg, press into the pie pan and bake shell at 425 for about 20 min until it begins to brown. Lower temp and fill like you would any other quiche and proceed. You can also leave out the egg and use butter to help the potatoes stick together and brown.
Makes for a yummy variation.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m a huge quiche fan and even put in the spinach without cooking it. You can’t fit as much in, because it isn’t as condensed pre-cooking, but it saves a step, and I’m always in favor of that. Regarding cheese, I’ve used cheddar, gruyere, and I think even manchego, with success.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Quiches freeze wonderfully!
April 28th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Ooh, ooh, ooh (raises hand)…Refrigerated pie crusts make me think of a cherished Chicken Pot Pie recipe, okay you can have it. Cream of chicken soup, frozen veggies (mixed), hell, add extra corn if you like…and don’t forget the salt and pepper (seasoned), um, did I say GRILLED CHICKEN.
April 28th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Wendy: We make 6-8 of these at a time and freeze them. Bake it as usual, wrap it in foil and pop in the freezer. You can then pull it out the day before and warm it for 30 minutes on 250. By the time the table is set and the salad is made, dinner is served and it’s easy-peasy. Perfect for softball nights Chris!
April 28th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I’m making the quiche now. Thanks for jogging my memory with this recipe. I only have a family of 4, so I too wondered about freezing. From what I found online, it looks worth a try. Up to 2 months.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
For our smaller family, do you think I can freeze one of these? Would you think it best to freeze it before or after baking it?
April 29th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Never mind - I see the comments about freezing. Now I am going to drool over quiche for dinner!
April 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Just wanted you to know that it also works well without any crust at all. And, either way, leftovers are wonderful!
April 30th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
It is just my hubby and I right now. I often will bake up two quiches on a Sunday. We’ll eat the first that day for breakfast, and then cut the remaining for lunches and breakfast through the rest of the week. We actually make two different variations of quiche so we don’t get bored.
Oh, and can I tell you how impressed your co-workers get when you cook a quiche. I have no idea why but everyone thinks they are hard to make. But in reality, they are easy and so simple to take for pot luck because there is no mess. You can even cool them in the fridge the night before and slide them out of the pie tin to foil. Then you don’t even have to pick up a dish at the end of the day!
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Just popped it in the oven, in 30 minutes, I’ll be eating yummy fresh quiche for breakie, yipee!
May 6th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Quiche is a breakfast food? We have spinach quiche for dinner all the time. It’s my son’s favourite meal. In our spinach quiche, we use mostly spinach with some cheese and egg and when it is nearly cooked, slice tomato on top and cover it with fresh grated parmesan then pop it back in the oven to melt the parmesan. Oh, and in the pie crust, we mix in flax seeds, whole or ground. It gives the crust a lovely texture, not to mention it’s healthy!
Wendy, yes, you can freeze a quiche. At least, you can a spinach quiche.