Thursday, March 1, 2012

Food Wars: The Battle of Quiche



I wish my son ate quiche. He won't even try it. I LOVE quiche. It is so easy. I say I can always eat pizza; but I could eat quiche almost as often, if I had someone to help me.

My son, just doesn't eat like I do. He is constantly on the look-out for meat and carbs, his evil treat: potato chips. He can leave sweets untouched in the cupboard or fridge (for example, the pan of fudge brownies lurking to ambush me on the top shelf of my fridge, holed up for 3 days now!)

He's an athlete, and everything I'm not. The long list of foods I just crave forms nearly a perfect overlap with the foods he won't even taste: tuna, eggs, olives, melons, peppers, cheeses other than Monterrey Jack, vegetables, tomatoes, spinach, pickled and fermented food... the list is long and includes quiche.

This sweet potato and spinach quiche was pretty good and very easy. There are quiche out there that have a "self-crust, but I made this particular quiche in a pastry crust with a recipe out of the Moosewood Cookbook.

That crust:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
scant 1/3 cup water

Stir up the ingredients, and roll it out. Put it in a preheated 425 degree (F) oven for about 15 minutes. Pierce the crust with a series of fork holes. I always like to cover the crust edges with tin foil. After you pre-bake the shell, you can fill it however you like.

I like quiche because it is a perfect decadent-tasting meal, and it reheats easily.

The ingredients you use in the filling can be chosen pretty much free-style as long as you include 4 large eggs and minimally 1/2 cup of shredded cheese, and 1/2 cup milk.

The quiche pictured here has probably a cup of chopped spinach, and a cup of 3/8" cubed uncooked sweet potato. Not cooking it allowed the texture to remain a bit firm to crunchy but brought out a slightly nutty flavor.

I also included in this particular quiche, chopped black olives, chopped sun-dried Roma tomatoes in olive oil, a tsp. of basil, some black pepper, crushed red pepper, celery salt, and garlic salt.

When I cook it, I leave on the tin foil and turn the heat down just a bit to 375 or 400 and cook it for about 20 minutes, or until everything has firmed up and has gone a sort of golden brown. A dry toothpick stuck in the middle it a good test.

Quiche is a dish a beginning cook can make their own.

1 comment:

  1. Oh, I'm with you - I LOVE quiche. It's one of my favorite foods. I have finally managed to put enough bacon and veggies in it that my husband will eat it (he's not a big egg person). Neither of my kids will really eat it, sadly. At least there's hope for them, though - at ages 2 and 4 their food repertoire is pretty small.

    Sometimes, we just got to make it for ourselves. I love to eat it for dinner and then eat the leftovers for breakfast. And then possibly lunch..

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