There are lots of things I’ve never cooked, and in my head, I divide them into two categories:
- This Food Sounds Hard and/or Tedious: This includes soup dumplings (any dumplings, really), latkes, and from-scratch puff pastry.
- Everyone Says This Is So Easy But I Have Some Weird Mental Block So I Don’t Try It: This includes carbonara, homemade biscuits, and molten chocolate cake.
Until this past weekend, quiche was in the second category.
I love quiche. Who doesn’t love buttery pastry filled with puffy, cheesy, custardy goodness? If you are one of those people, I probably shouldn’t be your friend. (Exceptions will be made for my lactose-intolerant, egg-intolerant, or vegan friends. You can stay, though I will always feel a little sad that you can’t have quiche.)
But for some reason, the idea of actually making a quiche myself never seemed appealing. I make plenty of frittatas and other custardy dishes, so it’s not like a puffy casserole scares me, and I have no trouble making a perfectly tasty tart dough, so that’s not a problem, either. But in the past, I would have rather just waited for someone else to cook one for me.
Last week, though, I was having a powerful quiche craving while making up our menu plan for the week, and since The Pickle’s daycare expenses have eaten away (see what I did there?) almost all our discretionary dining out budget, the only way to solve this problem was to suck it up and make a quiche myself.
I turned to Nick Malgieri’s How To Bake for guidance—that book has been my baking Bible since it came out in 1995—and whipped up an easy, buttery tart dough in the food processor on Thursday night, then wrapped it in plastic wrap and stashed it in the fridge. I thought I might make the quiche for Friday night dinner, but I was exhausted from the week, so held the dough another day before rolling it out.
Saturday morning, as soon as The Pickle went down for his morning nap, I got to work. I rolled out the dough, smoothed it into my pie pan, and pre-baked it for about seven minutes so it had a head start on the custard. (Malgieri doesn’t call for this, but I’d seen other recipes that did, and it seemed like a good idea.)
For the filling, I sautéed some spinach in bacon grease (all the flavor, but none of the expense of making actual bacon), grated a hunk of Gruyere, and beat together a custard of milk, eggs, salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg.
Into the blind-baked crust went the spinach and the cheese, then I poured the custard over it all and popped it in the oven just as The Pickle woke up 32 minutes later.
The quiche spent 40 minutes in the oven, which gave me plenty of time to feed The Pickle while it baked. The boy seemed particularly distracted, perhaps because there was a redonkerous buttery, cheesy smell wafting up to his room from the kitchen. Soon, little buddy, you, too, will be allowed to eat quiche.
The quiche emerged from the oven browned and golden, then rested while The Unicorn and I dealt with a minor Pickle emergency post-feeding (we won’t go into what happened…we are talking about food, after all…but suffice it to say it required an unplanned trip to the bathtub), and then we headed to the kitchen for brunch.
The verdict? The spinach introduced a little more moisture than I might have liked, but otherwise, the quiche was everything I’d hoped for. The crust was crispy and buttery, the filling cheesy and creamy. And there were leftovers for us to snack on later in the weekend. It was dead simple, and I will not wait 41 more years to make another one.
Looking for quiche ideas? Here are a few I found while trying to decide what recipe to use:
- Here’s a quiche crust tutorial from The New York Times.
- Taste and Tell has a butternut squash, kale, and Gruyere version that’s perfect for winter.
- Simply Recipes’ Smoked Salmon, Dill, and Goat Cheese Quiche was Elise’s choice for a Mother’s Day brunch.
- This Over-The-Top Mushroom Quiche from Smitten Kitchen sounds just right for the advanced quiche maker.
