Eggs in Wonderland

So I decided to make quiche yesterday.

Random? Yes.

I was wondering what new thing I could make for Sunday, but I don’t have a lot of money. What’s cheap? Pasta. But I’m really, really sick of pasta. As it turns out, eggs are pretty cheap too.

I did a lot of research about quiche. I’d never made quiche before, but I knew that sometimes quiches could be watery and I wanted to avoid that. Plus, after last week’s pie fail, I decided to be extra cautious about this pie.

I never did find a recipe that I really liked, so I adapted this recipe. I used a lot of the information I learned here.  This is the closest I’ve ever come to actually writing my own recipe, so bear with me if it’s weird. I’ll post the recipe in its entirety at the end of the post.

I started with a deep dish frozen pie crust. I didn’t want to get a deep dish crust, but all the regular pie crusts were all crumbled up. It turned out to be a really good thing that I did get the deeper crust.

Blank canvas

I decided I wanted spinach in my quiche. I got frozen spinach because I knew that fresh spinach would give off water when it cooked and that would make a watery quiche. Once the spinach was thawed, I wrapped it in two layers of paper towels (though if you’re one of those fancy types, you could use cheesecloth) and squeezed the everloving hell out of it. Thawed frozen spinach gives off A LOT of excess moisture. I definitely didn’t want that in the quiche.

The original recipe called for shredded Swiss cheese tossed with a little flour. The recipe doesn’t specify, but I think the flour is a little insurance against the moisture/oil from the cheese separating out.  I kept that step because I figured it couldn’t hurt. I used cheddar instead of Swiss for two reasons:

1. The local Mega Mart didn’t carry shredded Swiss and while I’m sure that I, technically, have a cheese grater somewhere I just couldn’t be bothered.

2. Cheddar and eggs are fantastic together.

Once the cheese and the spinach were ready, it was time to start assembling the solids.

Sliced mushrooms

Carefully dried spinach

Diced ham. Yes, I bought the ham already diced. I could never have made the pieces this uniform. I'm not proud of it, but there you are.

...and the floured cheese.

At this point, the crust was getting pretty full. I was beginning to worry that the crust wouldn’t have enough room for all the egg mixture that I was about to make. I pressed on, figuring that I could just not add all of the egg mixture if I had to.

Now I was ready to make the egg mixture. While doing research about quiche, I learned that people mix a bunch of different types of dairy with the eggs. Milk. Light cream. Heavy cream. Half and half. I’m pretty sure I’ve even found a couple recipes with buttermilk.

I don’t know why, but I don’t really like to cook with cream. I wanted to add some creaminess to the recipe, but I just didn’t want to use cream. Instead, I substituted half the milk in the original recipe for sour cream. After all, sour cream is how you make delicious things more delicious. I also thought that adding something thicker than milk would help avoid watery quiche.

After softening the sour cream in the microwave, I whisked it a little. I figured it’d blend more easily with the liquid ingredients if it was somewhat smooth. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I did manage to whisk everything together.

I poured the egg in the pie crust. It all fit.

Barely

I had forgotten one crucial thing that my mom had taught me when making pumpkin pies. When you’re making a pie and you know the crust will be very full, you put your cookie sheet with your empty pie crust on an oven rack and slide the oven rack out slightly. Then you can pour your liquid inside. There’s a lot less chance of it spilling that way. Whoops.

Thank God for cookie sheets

After the quiche came out of the oven, I sprinkled some leftover cheese on top and let it sit for a little while.

Yum!

The verdict: fantastic, if I do say so myself. It came out creamy and delicious with a little bit of a tang from the sour cream. It was pretty simple to make, once I’d decided on the recipe.

Ok, so it's not a photogenic quiche. It's very tasty, though.

I’m already planning on making this again. I think next time I’ll skip the mushrooms. I like mushrooms, but I’m not sure they really added anything to this dish and they took up a lot of room.

Also, I think I might do chicken instead of ham next time (like a mother and child reunion thing).

I had the quiche with shredded hash browns and orange juice, with fresh watermelon for dessert. It was a great meal.

As promised, here is the recipe in full for your cooking pleasure:

Ham and Mushroom Quiche

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

4 teaspoons flour

4 oz. diced ham

4 oz. sliced mushrooms

1 cup frozen spinach (thawed)

4 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground dry mustard

9 inch deep-dish unbaked pie crust

1. Preheat oven to 425
2. Wrap spinach in cheesecloth or paper towel and wring excess moisture from it. Place aside.
3. Toss cheese with flour.
4. Arrange cheese, mushrooms, ham, and spinach on the bottom of the pie crust.
5. Microwave sour cream in a medium bowl for 10-20 seconds until slightly melted.
6. Whisk slightly melted sour cream with the milk and eggs.
7. Whisk mustard and salt into egg mixture.
8. Place pie crust on cookie sheet, and place cookie sheet on oven rack that has been slid out.
9. Pour egg mixture into pie crust and carefully slide oven rack back into place.
10. Bake quiche at 425 for ten minutes, then lower oven temperature to 325 and bake for about 20 more minutes. Quiche is done when butter knife inserted into center comes out clean. If the center still looks wobbly, don’t worry. The quiche will finish cooking while it cools.