Every other Friday, quiche is on the menu. It’s quick, easy and the kids eat it up. No fights or haggling about eating spinach and onions. They.eat.it.up. and ask for more. It’s also a great dish to share with friends—busy friends, grieving friends, just-dropped-by unexpectedly friends. It’s comfort food.
It’s easy to make 4 pies at a time —enough for lunch, sharing and breakfast the next day. It’s an any meal dish. For breakfast, lunch or dinner, quiche works.
A friend asked me for my recipe and I decided to make it a blog post…because my blog lays dormant for months at a time and I’ve never done a recipe post before, so why not? Unfortunately, all the pics are from my phone ’cause I’m usually in a hurry while cooking. No time to experiment with food photography. But this is not a food blog, so just go with it.
Like I said, it’s easy. Easy to customize to your tastes. You can make it vegetarian (like I do for my parents) or vegetable-less (like I make for my nephew and brother-in-law).
You can vary the ingredients, but 3 staples that are in all of mine:
- Fresh eggs from my chickens
- Wholly Wholesome pie crust (regular or gluten-free that we buy at Kroger)
- Coconut milk
Your ingredients will vary, but here are the basics:
Eggs (about 4 large eggs per pie)
Pie crust
Cheese (your favorite cheese or blend + feta)
1/2 can of coconut milk (full fat)
Oil
Optional ingredients for a “loaded” quiche:
Cherry tomatoes
Potatoes
Mushrooms
Black olives
A bag frozen spinach
1 large onion
Minced garlic
Sausage, bacon, or bacon bits
Tomato/Pasta sauce
Your favorite seasoning
Rosemary
Here’s the process:
As soon as you think of it, thaw pie crust and frozen spinach.
STEP 1: Wash your fresh eggs (4 per pie). Crack eggs into a large mixing bowl. Add coconut milk (1/2 can per pie). Whisk eggs and coconut milk together and add seasoning. Season well, with salt and garlic powder. If you’re just making a cheese and egg quiche (no vegetables) add shredded cheese to this mixture.
STEP 2: Line the thawed pie crust with shredded cheese. It might sound silly to thaw the pie crust that is going straight into the oven. But I’ve found that if I forget to thaw, the crust (at the bottom) is mushy. I like crust that holds up. If you’re just doing a veggie-free quiche, then you’re basically done. Skip to Step 4.
STEP 3: Cut up onions and saute in coconut oil or your favorite cooking oil (olive oil, ghee, butter, it all works). Add minced garlic and saute until onions are translucent. Add the spinach (as much as you want) and any of the optional ingredients listed. I don’t usually plan this out. If I have a leftover baked potato from a previous meal, I dice it up and put it in. If I have 4 cherry tomatoes (not enough for a salad), I add those in…and they’re yummy in the quiche when they’re cooked and burst in your mouth. Saute everything with seasonings, pesto, tomato sauce….whatever you have on hand. One day I didn’t have any pasta sauce, so I used this Masala sauce. It gave the quiche a yummy Indian flavor. If you add sliced black olives and mushrooms and season the sauce with basil and Italian seasonings your quiche could end up tasting like pizza. Do your thing here. Make it yours.
I do the meat in a separate pan just to keep it separate from the vegetarian quiche that I’m making simultaneously, but you incorporate the meat to this spinach mixture.
STEP 4: Set your oven to 400 degrees. Place the spinach mixture on top of the cheese-topped crust (skip this step if you’re only doing egg and cheese). Ladle the egg mixture on top. Then add some cheese on top…or feta. Bake in oven for 45 minutes, until crust browns and eggs firm up. Take it out and let it set for 30-40 minutes. Don’t skip this step. It needs to set. If you cut it too soon, it’ll be runny mess.
Eat and share!
Guaranteed: You’ll go from this
to this
in no time. So make several!
Let me know if you try it.