Worldly Wednesday: Americanized Quiche Lorraine

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. This year the theme is Weekly Menu Planning. What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

This French-inspired dish has been a family favorite for years, and fresh from the oven, all puffed up, it has impressed brunch and dinner guests alike.

Quiche is a standby in our family’s panoply of foods. I’ll bet I make it at least once a month, sometimes meatless, sometimes with chicken or salmon, and sometimes in the more classic Quiche Lorraine recipe of today.

DH loves it for dinner, brunch, or lunch. And because he is abstemious in his eating habits, one quiche provides us with three meals each.

My quiche is a simple matter--I don’t do hard, remember--so you can whip this up in nothing flat and then forget it in the oven for an hour to an hour and a half depending on the altitude and how your oven cooks.

Americanized Quiche Lorraine (serves 6-8)

1 pie crust

1½ cup Asiago cheese, divided

2 cup packed spinach

½ cup mushroom pieces

8 large eggs, slightly cooler than room temp

2 cups heavy whipping cream

sprinkle of salt and pepper

2 teaspoons nutmeg

3 green onions, sliced

6 slices of crispy-cooked bacon, torn to bits

Preheat oven to 375º. Put pie crust in pie pan. Spread ¾ cup of cheese on the pie crust bottom, going up the sides a bit.

Layer spinach and mushrooms. Press into pan, but it will be full.

Cut onions and bacon into small pieces and set aside.

Whisk eggs until a light, lemony color. Add cream and blend thoroughly. Add spices and whisk again. Fold in onions and bacon.

Pour the eggs slowly over the spinach mixture, making sure the eggs coat all the spinach mixture. Press down on spinach, if necessary, to coat with eggs. Sprinkle remaining cheese over the top.

Bake at 375º for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350º. Bake for at least another 45 minutes and check for doneness.

Quiche can take up to 1-1½ hours of baking time depending on the oven. A done quiche has three characteristics: rises to a lovely brown dome, no jiggle in the middle, and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up  

It doesn’t matter what quiche I make, DH loves it. It’s so reassuring to know you have an easy, go-to, never-fail dinner on tap!

A Month-of-Eggs: Quiche and Tell

Not to be immodest, but I’ve been told I make the best quiche. Well, we like it!

Quiche is a standby in our family’s panoply of foods. I’ll bet I make it at least once a month. DH loves it for dinner, brunch, or lunch. And because he is abstemious in his eating habits, one quiche provides us with three meals.

I make a wide range of quiches: sometimes vegetarian, sometimes with bacon, sometimes chicken or salmon chunks. Quiche is a wonderful place to toss leftover bits of protein.

My quiche is a simple matter--I don’t do hard, remember--so you can whip this up in nothing flat and then forget it in the oven for an hour to an hour and a half depending on the altitude and how your oven heats.

Quiche and Tell

1 pie crust

¾ cup cheddar cheese, divided

8 large eggs, slightly cooler than room temp

2 c heavy whipping cream

sprinkle of salt and pepper

1½ teaspoons nutmeg

4 green onions, sliced

½ cup bell peppers, chopped

½ cup mushroom pieces

1½ cups packed spinach

1 cup packed kale

¾ cup Asiago cheese

Preheat oven to 375º. Put pie crust in pie pan. Spread ¼ cup cheddar cheese on the pie crust bottom, going up the sides a bit. Put in oven for 10 minutes.

While pre-baking the crust, whisk eggs until a light, lemony color. Add cream and blend thoroughly. Add spices and whisk again until the mixture is fully mixed.

Remove pie pan from oven. On top of the cheesy pie crust, layer green onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms. Top with remaining cheddar cheese.

Toss spinach and kale together.

Top the onions, pepper and mushrooms with spinach-kale mixture, pressing down lightly. It will be mounded.

Pour the eggs slowly over the spinach mixture, making sure the eggs coat all the spinach mixture. Press down on spinach, if necessary, to coat with eggs. Sprinkle Asiago cheese over the top.

Bake at 375º for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350º. Bake for about another 45 minutes and check for doneness.

NOTE: Quiche can take up to 1-1½ hours of baking time depending on the oven. A done quiche has three characteristics: rises to a lovely brown dome, no jiggle in the middle, and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up   It doesn’t matter what quiche I make, DH loves it. That’s so reassuring to know you have an easy, go-to, never-fail dinner on tap!

A Month-of-Appetizers: Mini-Quiches

One of the options for the Month-of-Recipes focus was eggs. One person thought that would be a good topic. One. Someday, I’ll share multiple egg recipes just to show people the range.

In our household, quiche is on the menu about once a month. And when there’s a party going on…all I can say is, why would you buy those little frozen quiches that taste like they were frozen at the same time as wooly mammoths?

Are these a bit more work? Surely. But the compliments will flow like beaten egg yolks!

Sharon’s Quiche (makes more than 12 mini quiches)

1 piecrust

¾ cup Asiago cheese, shredded, divided

4 strips crisp bacon, crumbled

1 cup fresh spinach, finely shredded

½ cup mushrooms, diced

4 eggs

1 cup heavy cream

1 large green onion, diced

1 teaspoon nutmeg

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375°. Cut rounds from piecrust to fit in the bottom of the muffin pan.

Put piecrust in pan gently. If you press it in too hard it will be difficult to get it to release.

Sprinkle bottom of each round with ¼ cup of the Asiago cheese. Put bacon crumbles over cheese.

In a small skillet, sauté the spinach and mushrooms. Drain. Put spinach/mushroom mixture on top of bacon.

Whisk together eggs and cream. Add onions, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Mix in ¼ cup cheese.

Pour over veggies. Sprinkle last ¼ cup of cheese over the top.

Bake for 45 minutes-one hour until risen, brown, and done in middle (insert knife to check when middle doesn’t jiggle when you move pan).

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up  DH loves my quiche as a whole pie or in mini form. I think it’s because of my secret ingredient--nutmeg!

Month-of-Chicken: Mother and Child Reunion

“No I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away.”

Did I get the song playing in your head, too? Apologies to Paul Simon, but do you think he cooks? If so, he’d love for this chicken recipe to be his signature dish when he sings this song. Maybe slices could be passed around at the concert. The “motion”, of course, is whisking!

Intrigued? I hope so, but how could a Chicken Quiche be described as anything other than a mother-child reunion?

Quiche is a standby in our family’s panoply of foods. I’ll bet I make it at least once a month. DH loves it for dinner, brunch, or lunch. And because he is abstemious in his eating habits, one quiche provides us with three meals each.

I make a wide range of quiches: sometimes vegetarian, sometimes with bacon, or, in this case, chicken chunks.

My quiche is a simple matter--I don’t do hard, remember--so you can whip this up in nothing flat and then forget it in the oven for an hour to an hour and a half depending on the altitude.

Mother and Child Reunion Quiche

1 pie crust

1½ c Asiago cheese, divided

2 c packed spinach

½ c mushroom pieces

1 c diced chicken, leftover

8 large eggs, slightly cooler than room temp

2 c heavy whipping cream

sprinkle of salt and pepper

1 t nutmeg

3 green onions, sliced

Preheat oven to 375º. Put pie crust in pie pan. Spread ¾ cup of cheese on the pie crust bottom, going up the sides a bit.

Layer spinach, mushrooms, and chicken. Press into pan, but it will be full.

Cut onions into small pieces and set aside.

Whisk eggs until a light, lemony color. Add cream and blend thoroughly. Add spices and whisk again. Add onions and stir them in.

Pour the eggs slowly over the spinach mixture, making sure the eggs coat all the spinach mixture. Press down on spinach, if necessary, to coat with eggs. Sprinkle remaining cheese over the top.

Bake at 375º for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350º. Bake for about another 45 minutes and check for doneness.

Quiche can take up to 1-1½ hours of baking time depending on the oven. A done quiche has three characteristics: rises to a lovely brown dome, no jiggle in the middle, and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up   It doesn’t matter what quiche I make, DH loves it. That’s so reassuring to know you have an easy, go-to, never-fail dinner on tap!

Good Eats or Good PR???

So many of my writing friends have confided, that, like moi, they sometimes feel like frauds. They claim to be authors, but this niggling doubt, this negative editor-in-the-head hoots in laughter which they try to quiet before the whole world hears. That same guy lives in the side of my brain where cooking happens.

I claim the identity “author” loudly and often. Mostly that is to reassure myself, not necessarily to inform anyone else. But I have recently come to consider the same fraudness might be taking over my cooker identity as well. Yikes! I need these guys to move out of my head so I can do what I do.

Now, to be fair, I have never claimed “chef”, Heaven forbid. I don’t even claim “cook”. I call myself a “cooker”. A good cooker, or so I tell everyone.

I always offer to have the party at my house. I love hosting meetings. It is a chance to shine, to bask in the warmth of their admiration, that I, a busy writer, takes the time to whip up delectables simply because they showed up at my house.

I take cookies to play rehearsals. Partly it is to clean out the stuff from my house so I don’t get even fatter, but, truth be known, I like that they like my food.

And who would argue that I cook well? Surely not the people I’ve worked my PR magic on, telling them how much I love to cook, telling them how I develop recipes, showing off my cookbook collection, asking them to sample potential Pillsbury Bake-Off entries!

So, am I as good a cooker as I claim, or is it smoke and mirrors, the kind of PR Madison Avenue has trained me in so well? Say something often enough, and people will come to believe it is true.

I just had one such meeting at my house. People said they loved my quiche, but was it the golden mound they saw emerge from the oven sitting beside two kinds of muffins that convinced them it was wonderful? Or was it, really, the food?

Here is my basic recipe for quiche. Try it and tell me what you think. Am I a fraud good cooker?

Sharon’s Quiche

1 piecrust

1 ½ c Asiago cheese, shredded, divided

8 strips crisp bacon, chunked

3 c fresh spinach (or 1 c cup asparagus, broccoli, etc.)

3 green onions

1 c chopped mushrooms

8 eggs

2 c heavy cream

1 t nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400°. Put piecrust in pan and sprinkle bottom with ½ c Asiago cheese. Put bacon pieces over cheese. Put veggies on top of bacon.

Whisk together eggs and cream. Add nutmeg. Mix in ½ c cheese. Pour over veggies. Sprinkle last ½ c of cheese over the top. Bake for 1-1 ½ hours until risen, brown, and done in middle (insert knife to check when middle doesn’t jiggle when you move pan).