Training Wheels Quiche

Quiche can be tricky. I had a few epic disasters when I was a housewife in training wheels. *shudder* I tried several recipes before I found one that I liked and wasn't a chore to make. (I have zero patience when it comes to opening the oven and jiggling something for two hours to see if it has set. None. Nada.)

This may not be quiche by the standards of Julia or Martha, but by golly I can cook it and it taste good! Once you figure the base quiche recipe you can start customizing it with different flavors.

I'll try to break it down and make it easy. I'll explain what I use to get the base recipe and then how I customize it. 

(BTW...I'm a lousy photographer so pardon the weird shadows. I looks and taste good even if my camera phone doesn't help my cause.)

Here's the recipe as I made it for this post:


Training Wheels Quiche



1 cup of Shredded Cheese
    plus 1/4 cup to spread on top and a small handful for the bottom of the pie crust
3 Beaten Eggs (or 3/4 cup of Egg Beaters)
2 Heaping Tablespoons of Mayonnaise
3/4 cup of Milk


1/4 cup of Diced Onion
2-3 tbsp Diced Parsley
1/2 cup of Chopped Frozen Spinach, thawed and drained (Yep, the square box from the freezer section)
1/2 cup of Grape Tomatoes, quartered or diced tomatoes
1/2 cup of Portobella Mushrooms, chopped

1/4 tsp of Salt
1/2 tsp Finely Ground Black Pepper
A pinch of Paprika
A pinch of Cayenne Pepper
1/2 tsp Chopped Garlic or 1 Garlic Clove, chopped



Stir to combine. Pour into a frozen pie crust with some cheese in the bottom and sprinkle some on top. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the temp reads 155 on a meat thermometer.




Here's how I did it:




Start with a frozen pie crust. Just pop that sucker out of the freezer and toss it on a baking sheet. No need to cook it first. And sprinkle a few tablespoons of cheese in the bottom. I don't remember why I started doing this, but I still do it. If it ain't broke...

See that aluminum foil? Very important. If anything boils over it won't be a lot, just enough to really burn and stick to your baking sheet. Do what you want but don't say I didn't tell you so. :)


Now for the filling....


Here's the dairy portion:


1 cup of shredded cheese
3 beaten eggs (or 3/4 cup of Egg Beaters)
2 heaping tablespoons of mayonnaise
3/4 cup of milk

This is a pint glass. (Shout out to Sweetwater Brewery!)  This glass is 16oz and contains the cheese, eggs, mayo and milk. Crazy, I know...just wait...you'll get it in a second.

Note: The eggs, milk and mayo will stay consistent. What type of cheese will depend on what flavors you want to go with. I'm using a combination of Colby Jack and Cheddar since this one just has vegetables. If you wanted to go with a Greek themed quiche you could use a mix of Feta and Swiss. Seafood quiches also do better with lighter cheeses. Ham or bacon could go either way. 


Now for the goods:

1/4 cup of diced onion
2-3 tbsp diced parsley
1/2 cup of chopped frozen spinach, thawed and drained (Yep, the square box from the freezer section)
1/2 cup of grape tomatoes, quartered or diced tomatoes
1/2 cup of chopped portobella mushrooms




Is what I have here...

Yep, another pint glass. Whatever you put in the pint glass...


1/2 spinach, 1/2 chicken


1/3 mushrooms, 1/3 cooked bacon, 1/3 diced broccoli


1/3 shrimp, 1/3 spinach, 1/3 mushrooms


Just go with what flavor combinations you like and fill that sucker up!






Here's the hat trick:

 Take your two pints of visual reference and toss it into a big bowl.

 Not pretty...but stir until all the ingredients are combined.

Add seasoning:


1/4 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp Finely Ground Black Pepper
A pinch of Paprika
A pinch of Cayenne Pepper
1/2 tsp Chopped Garlic or 1 Garlic Clove, chopped




Stir some more...

Pour it into your frozen pie crust and top with another handful of shredded cheese. Note that 2 pints of goods fits perfectly into the standard pie crust.

Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. 


(Feel free to stick a meat thermometer in the middle and make sure it reaches 155. I'm too old to play guessing games with food. Meat thermometers RULE!)

Let sit for about 15 minutes to let everything set and so the cheese doesn't seem soupy when you cut it.

 Enjoy! Serve with a nice salad for lunch or dinner. It also goes great with coffee for breakfast.


Tips:


If you're cooking seafood, replace the salt with 1/2 teaspoon of Old Bay.


If you're going a Greek quiche you can at 1/4 tsp of oregano, use Feta and Swiss, add black olives and maybe some diced pepperoncini peppers on top. Mmmm. Just go easy if you happen to use kalamata olives. If you over-do it the entire quiche will taste like olives. Not so good.


Make two at a time and freeze one. Let it cool completely and seal it in a large zipper freezer bag or use a vacuum sealing system.


If you're going on vacation you can chop and measure everything at home. Just pour into two 16 oz wide mouth mason jars and refrigerate. Pack your crust and jars in a cooler and throw it together when you get there. 


I cooked and vacuum sealed six different quiches before our family vacation. Just freeze them and transport in a cooler. It saved us hours of cooking in a strange kitchen and gave us more time for fun. 


Tomato makes it pretty and I always seem to miss it when I leave out the onion or parsley. Even if you only use a tad, it's better than nothing. Unless you hate onion or parsley...then may the force be with you.




Let me know how you like it and what flavor combinations you might try!

Soup Nazi Time

There are a few things I cook really well. Considering a few years ago I used my oven to store gift wrap and bows, saying that is a huge accomplishment. Soup has become one of my specialty items and I have so much fun creating new ones. This summer I was on a bit of a squash kick. I made about five different kinds of squash soups and even tried a gazpacho. Now that summer is winding down I'm making some vegetable soup with some finds from the farmer's market. Today I used some silver queen corn, tomatoes, green beans and some shelled beans the market was offering. I tossed in a few things from the fridge and voila...SOUP!

   
It's still in the upper 80's during the day, but the evenings are cooling off nicely. The cooler it gets the more soup I make.

What do I do with it all?

My husband is an anti-vegetable kind of guy. He'll eat potatoes...maybe a green bean or two every few months and he'll have a standard side salad. My friends seem to benefit the most from my soup making. I love sharing it.

I would love to learn how to can and preserve the soup for the pantry so I can save more of it from myself. I'd love to try my hand and making pickles and pickling various vegetables that are suddenly more popular when pickled (okra and asparagus come to mind). It would be great to eat those summer farmer's market vegetables year round. It would also make it easier to justify buying a bigger haul from the local stands.

Sadly, I'm discovering that canning is a dying art form. When society started eating crap and stopped growing food, no one bothered to learn how to can. I remember my neighbors and some of my older aunts canning a few times a year. These canned goods practically turned into currency later on. I remember my father doing favors for the elderly neighbor to score some of her canned cherry peppers.

There is a ton of information on canning online. It just isn't the same. I wish I lived closer to my aunts and some of my older cousins who still can from time to time. I want to be able to learn a skill from an older person and then teach it to someone else.

There's so much more to canning than what can be pulled from YouTube or local farmer co-op websites. There's a lot of skill involved. Canning isn't just something you can try doing. It really takes an investment of time and money in addition to the fact you can actually kill people (or make them VERY sick) if you don't do it right. The goods aren't very expensive but there are some specialty items that are essential that probably can't be used for much else. The technique is the tricky part. You have to follow very specific instructions based on the acid content of what your preserving. Some things require being boiled in a water bath and other items require a pressure cooker. I know what you're thinking! Who the heck uses a pressure cooker in midtown Atlanta? I've been around few pressure cookers in my life. My mother would chase me out of the kitchen when she was using it in case it exploded. So now I am pondering buying one (who the heck knows where to find one around here) and jumping into this canning project. I'll keep you posted.