Quiche

Growing up we always got to pick what we wanted for our birthday dinner. Since I spent the first twenty years of my life on a farm in Maine, and my birthday was in April, this meant that I requested asparagus quiche roughly ten years in a row. We were exceedingly lucky and there was a patch of asparagus that had been planted around the same time the house was built (nearly 200 years ago) which gave it plenty of time to get enormous and produce spears on spears on spears.

For years I never attempted to recreate quiche at home. It seemed too special. Too much of an indulgence and too much importance swirled around it for it to be merely an average dinner on, say, a Tuesday night. Oh no. It had to be a special night to eat quiche. A night of celebration. While I do delight in the simple things (I got a latte today! Spotted the first daffodil of the season! A bluebird was outside my window this morning!) to have quiche something needed to be really important or extraordinary.

Part of this is because of my dearest Mother Unit. As one tends to do, I didn't realize how incredibly lucky I was growing up until I was well into adulthood. Surely everyone grew up growing their own fruits and vegetables and storing them for the winter in a root cellar? The majority of children had a barn filled with hay bales to play on and a menagerie of farm animals to delight in, yes? And everyone had family dinner at a table where the majority of the food was grown and cooked by the family eating it, correct?


Finally, my love of quiche eclipsed the hang-ups I have regarding when to eat it. Quiche was wanted, and quiche we had. After much trial and error, this is the Quiche Recipe For the Ages. A few notes, I usually bake mine in a large ceramic tart pan that looks like this:

I like this pan a lot. I've used pie plates before, and square baking dishes in a pinch, but for me this is what works best. It cooks quickly and the pan is large enough that we can easily get two (sometimes three, if we're having a lot of sides) meals out of it, or serve a dinner of 3-6 people. Six people is a stretch, you'll need lots of sides to accompany the quiche. Trust me on this.

The pastry recipe is adapted from smittenkitchen.com. She. Is. AMAZING! Holy cow. I am obsessed with her and her blog and I am tempted to lick the screen her pictures are so gorgeous.

For the pastry: from www.smittenkitchen.com
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
16 tablespoons (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into
pieces
1/2 cup sour cream---------I always use greek yogurt and it works out perfectly
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice-----I rarely have fresh lemons on hand but the bottled juice works fine
1/2 cup ice water

1. To make the pastry, in a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Place the butter in another bowl. Place both bowls in the freezer for 1 hour. Remove the bowls from the freezer and make a well in the center of the flour. Add the butter to the well and, using a pastry blender, cut it in until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Make another well in the center. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream, lemon juice and water and add half of this mixture to the well. With your fingertips, mix in the liquid until large lumps form. Remove the large lumps and repeat with the remaining liquid and flour-butter mixture. Pat the lumps into a ball; do not overwork the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour. If preparing ahead of time, the dough can be stored at this point for up to one month in the freezer.

I'm not going to lie. This is a really intense sounding recipe with all the freezing and stuff. It's worth it. It is more worth it if you make a few batches at a time. I NEVER double the recipe, I'll just make one full recipe, divide the dough ball into two, wrap securely in saran wrap, and place them in the freezer. Then I'll use the now grody bowl to make the recipe again, and repeat until I'm out of butter and exhausted. I usually make this recipe three or four times in an evening, which works out to six or eight ready to go balls of pie crust in my freezer. I feel so very domestic when that happens. It's perfect for any occasion. We've served this quiche for dinner with friends many times, as a fancy breakfast, and as a "quick" meal when we can't think of anything and we are starving.

When you want to use the dough just take out of the freezer in the morning and let it defrost in the fridge. Voila! You'll have dough ready when you get home. When using this crust for a quiche I advise preheating the oven to 375, rolling out your dough and putting it in your pan (poke a few times with a fork), putting a layer of foil down, and putting dry beans on top of that. Put the pan in the oven for about 20-30 minutes. After 20-30 minutes, the crust should have puffed up a bit around the edges. At that point take the foil and dry beans out, and put the crust in for another 5-7 minutes. Please trust me on this. It'll make your quiche insanely flaky and buttery and wonderful. Additionally, it's a great time to pour yourself a glass of wine and sip on it, thus settling comfortably into your evening.

While the crust is baking and I'm sipping wine, this is what I throw together for the quiche filling:

Note: these measurements are guesses. I just sort of wait to see what we have and how much room there is in the quiche to judge how much filling to make.

whisk together:
-6 eggs
-1/3 cup milk OR if you're like me, a large glug of half and half and a large glug of water
-some sriracha (maybe a teaspoon?) or tabasco or Louisiana, to taste
-large pinch of salt (1/2 teaspoon or so?)
-many twists of the pepper grinder
-half cup or a few large tablespoons of greek yogurt---any fat you have on hand. Alternatively you could use sour cream too I'm sure
-teaspoon minced garlic

Once you've removed the prepped crust from the oven throw a million little blobs of cream cheese in the bottom. You can also use that babybel swiss cheese. (I'll take pictures one day). On top of that sprinkle your filling---we often use luncheon ham all chopped up (about a cup, cup and a half) or bacon, kale is ok to use but not as good as you want it to be, brussel sprouts that you've parboiled (do this by cutting them up and pouring boiling water over them and letting sit for five minutes, then drain water off), or cauliflower, or whatever you have, you want about a cup or cup and a half of it----and then a cup to a cup and a half of grated cheese. Finally, pour your egg mixture over that. To fully gild this totally delicious lily I strongly encourage grating or sprinkling another type of cheese on top of that. You don't need much, a few teaspoons is fine. We often use manchego or parm.

Please note: if you need MORE egg mixture and don't find this out until after pouring it on the crust and ingredients, just pour in some more milk on top and gently stir it around until it has mixed into the rest of the mixture. If you make too much, you can grease a small ramekin and pour the rest of the mixture into that to create a mini souffle type thing for you, or just throw it out.

Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes----until the top is goldeny brown and when you gently shake it there is no jiggle in the middle.

Another note: eggs continue cooking after you've taken them off of, or away from, heat. So, if you're quiche is close to being done and you have to leave or an emergency happens, just turn the oven off and it'll finish cooking up just fine.

Once your quiche is cooked, let it sit for 5-10 minutes. Finally, slice and enjoy!

This is the quiche just out of the oven. It is still bubbling around the edges and smells so good I almost punched my Love out of sheer excitement. Notice the goldeny brown top. amd the perfectly brown crispy flaky crust. Nom!

Additionally the dough is excellent when rolled out and spread with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and cut into pieces and baked. A great, fast, dessert.