So, you are at home and out of harm’s way, good.
Now what’s for dinner? We came up with a new take on an old classic … Deep Dish Quiche.
By cooking it in an eight inch spring form pan, there is more room for the vegetables, cheese, and other fillings. Same amount of egg custard, just more of everything else. JQ never really liked the egg part anyway.
We’ve always used the Quiche Lorraine recipe out of Beard on Food (see attached). But we totally change out the fillings to suit whatever is in the fridge. This makes a perfect quarantine meal.
So the basic custard or crust ingredients are the same. However, it took about twice as long to bake … hey, it’s twice as thick! The results are a nice slice of dinner (or lunch) goodness.
Quiche (Lorraine)
Classic quiche uses bread dough, but this is a pastry shell and then fridge raid to fill.
Ingredients
Pastry Shell
- 2 cups AP flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 lb unsalted butter cut in small pieces at room temperature
- 1 egg
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
Filling
- 3 egg yolks
- 2 eggs
- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 tsp salt
- pinch pepper or more, if you like
- 1 cup shredded cheese some or all Parmesan, we like a mix of cheeses
- 1 to 2 cups lightly steamed vegtables and / or cooked meat
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425º. LIghtly butter the bottom of an 8 inch spring form pan (Beard uses an 8 to 9 inch tart tin) and cover bottom with a round piece of parchment.
Pastry Shell
- Place flour in a food processor and add butter, then pulse until butter is cut into flour. Whisk egg with lemon juice and add to processor. Run processor until a ball forms. You can add additional cold water if dough is too dry. Turn out onto lightly floured surface, form into a ball. Chill for 30 minutes.
- Roll dough out between parchment sheets to about 1/8 inch thick and transfer to the spring form pan. Be careful not to stretch the dough as you form it to the sides of the pan. Crimp the top edge. Fit parchment to the inside of the pan and weigh it down with a couple cups of uncooked beans. This will keep the pie crust from puffing up. I also add a foil shield around the top of the shell crust to prevent it from browning too quickly.Bake at 425º for 18 minutes. Remove the beans and brush the inside of the shell with a thin coat of mustard. Return to oven and bake an additional 3 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before filling.
Egg Custard and Filling
- Beat yolks and eggs along with cream, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
- Chop and saute onion in skillet until soft. Add chopped vegetables and cook no more than two minutes. Place this mixture on the bottom of the shell.
- If you are using cooked meat, add that to the shell.
- Cover with grated cheese, then pour egg mixture to cover all of the ingredients. I like to top with a sprinkle of pepper.
- Bake in a 375º oven for about 60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Near the end of bakiing (last 10 minutes), remove the foil shield to allow crust to brown. (If you are using a shallow tart/pie pan, cooking time is about 25 minutes.)
Staying distant as possible, we took a road trip to the Prineville Reservoir. Mostly we just wanted to see what was and what was not open.
Surprisingly, there are few people at the Sunriver Nature Center during the week, so it has become a great morning destination when the neighborhood walk starts to get a bit stale.
