Tag Archives: crust

Quiche Perfection

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I love quiche.

I love the crust. I love the eggy, cheesy insides. I love filling it with veggies. I love the way quiche puffs up when baking and then slowly settles back down as it cools. I love quiche for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I love warm quiche straight from the oven with a big slice of homemade bread. I love cold quiche as a road trip snack. I love having a failproof recipe I can turn to when guests come to town. I love baking mini quiches in muffin tins. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

We love food and we cook/bake all the time. Mark suggested a while back that I devote an entire blog page to our food creations, especially showing photos that have veggies that we grew. Love that man and his ideas. But somehow I haven’t gotten around to even one post devoted entirely to food. That changes now.

Of course, the photos really don’t do it justice. In fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought it didn’t look all that appetizing after these photos. But believe me, my latest quiche creation is amazing.

I’ve now made this exact quiche twice, and I’m prepared to make it again with very little arm-twisting. My recipe is a variation on this one with this crust. I’ve included my full recipe below. Enjoy!

Please post comments to let me know how you like my food-centered post as well as this recipe if you do try it!

A blurry shot of some mini quiches I made back when I had my muffin pan ready at hand. Sadly, these days no muffin pan = no mini quiches.

Amazing Blue Cheese and Broccoli Quiche Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 3 big cloves chopped garlic (if you love garlic like we do, add more!)
  • 2 cups chopped fresh broccoli
  • 1 quiche crust (recipe below)
  • 4 oz crumbled blue cheese (about a cup)
  • 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
  • 4 eggs, well beaten
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. Over medium heat melt 1.5 tablespoons of the butter in a large saucepan. Add onions and broccoli. Cook briefly – four or five minutes at most. You don’t want them to get too soft or they will overcook in the quiche. Toss in the garlic at the end so it heats up but doesn’t turn brown.
  3. Spoon vegetables into crust and sprinkle with both cheeses.
  4. Combine well beaten eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper. Pour egg mixture over vegetables and cheese.
  5. Put the remaining butter in a dab on top
  6. Bake in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, or until center has set.

A few notes:
First of all, if you don’t think you like blue cheese (ahem Meghan), you may be wrong. I don’t really love blue cheese solo – a bit too pungent on its own – but it’s tempered by the eggs in this recipe and pairs so well with broccoli. It just works.

The funny thing is, the blue cheese was sort of accidental as we had a block of Grafton’s Duet (an 8oz block of cheddar + blue cheese) in the freezer from Cheese Traders – oh how I miss Cheese Traders – and I decided to crumble the entire thing into a quiche last week. Winner!

Since I didn’t have any more Grafton Duet on hand and wanted to make the same quiche this week – what better way to use up the rest of the broccoli in the fridge? – I bought a 4 oz container of blue cheese and combined it with the remainder of a block of cheddar that I had. It totaled about 1.5 cups of cheese in all, which was what the original inspiration recipe called for, only they said to use mozzarella. I’m sorry but this quiche would not be nearly as good with mozzarella.

If you don’t like blue cheese I’d recommend trying 1.5 cups of cheddar or swiss. Or mozzarella if you really insist.

It’s also worth a mention that I used very large eggs in this quiche, fresh from the hen house. We also still have a reserve of homegrown garlic, which made its way into the quiche. I can’t wait until this summer when the broccoli and onions will be homegrown as well!

Basic Quiche Crust Recipe

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ cup olive oil or safflower oil
  • ¼ cup ice water (just put a few ice cubes in a measuring cub and fill with cold water to just under 1/4 cup)

Directions:

  1. Beat oil and water with fork
  2. Add flour and salt and mix with fork
  3. Press into 9″ pie crust or cast iron pan

Notes:
I used to use a butter crust recipe and I like this one much better. Plus, it’s less work!

I’ve tried it with both olive oil and safflower oil and prefer the olive oil (though it makes it much more expensive for me since I only have pricey organic olive oil in the house). You could try canola oil if you have it in the house (for me, safflower takes the place of canola oil).

I used a mixture of half whole wheat and half white flour (1/2 cup of each), as I tend to do whenever a recipe calls for flour.

I haven’t tried rolling out the crust – I simply press it into the pan but you could try rolling it if consistency in thickness is important to you.