(no subject)

[rivka]

Please share with me your favorite vegetarian quiche recipes. I've never actually made a quiche before, but it's just a big ol' omelet in a piecrust, right?

Also, does this sound like enough food for a brunch party? Quiche, tossed green salad, fruit salad, zucchini bread, cake, coffee/tea/punch?

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Omelet in a crust is about right, maybe with a little more dairy than I'd put in an omelet. I like mine with caramelized onions and tomatoes. And yeah, if I had to throw a brunch party, that's the menu I'd use.

[brooksmoses]

Ooh, caramelized onions and tomatoes sound like a really yummy omelette. I'll have to try that sometime.

[brooksmoses]

Yes, that sounds like enough, indeed.

Quiche isn't so much an omelette in a piecrust as a custard in a piecrust, optionally with cheese mixed in so that it melts into it. My standard quiche recipe is based on this:

2 cups cheese, either muenster or gruyere
4 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 cups light cream
1 T melted butter
1/8 t white pepper
1/8 t nutmeg

For the standard recipe, one takes 1/2 pound of bacon (cooked and crumbled) and the cheese and sprinkles it over the bottom of the pie crust, and then mixes the remaining ingredients and pours them over top of it, and cooks at 425 for 15 minutes and then 350 for another 10-15 minutes until it's done (determined by sticking a knife in and seeing if one gets gooey uncooked eggs on it or just a bit of watery liquid corresponding to cooked eggs).

One trick to this is using a cheese that melts pretty easily; if you use standard Swiss (as many recipes call for), it will remain in cubes in the final quiche, and be really quite cheesey. Anything that's good in a fondue is probably pretty good here; muenster seems to be a nice compromise between "tasty" and "not too pricey", and add a bit of something like gruyere or maybe cheddar or something to adjust the flavor.

Anyhow, one can do pretty much any quiche with this basic recipe, by substituting stuff for the bacon. Spinach is good, asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes are good, mushrooms, broccoli, et cetera.

Quiche

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Onion and tarragon. (Ask if you need actual details.)

B

Re: Quiche

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

And comte.

K.

[geminigirl]

Carmelized onion, spinach, mushrooms and cheese along with whatever seasonings I feel like. I make the egg mixture more like I would for custard than an omelet, but the basic idea is there.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

One of the early Moosewood cookbooks - I think it's in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest has a "quiche by formula" - take your pie crust, sprinkle in cheese, add your choice of ingredients, and pour over 3 beaten eggs - or something like that. I've made mushroom quiches (saute those mushrooms in oregano beforehand, and the whole thing ends up tasting remarkably like pizza) and a broccoli quiche (saute broccoli in garlic first, for garlicky amazement) and we really liked both of those.

[juthwara.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (I was just about to post the same thing!). It also has a great series of alternate pie crusts beyond the normal butter and flour pastry crust which make for a more interesting pie.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Do you have a copy of "Joy of Cooking" around? Their quiche recipe is the *best*, and I've been using it for years. It does call for heavy cream (hey, it's a party), in relatively high proportion to the eggs. It's perfect for filling a deep-dish glass pie plate.

I like to load mine with lots of Swiss cheese, crumbled bacon and sauteed leeks.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I've used this recipe as well (but using lowfat milk), with various ingredients. Last one I did was gruyere and sun-dried tomatoes, with a handful of some sort of fresh herbs. I don't remember, exactly

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Low-fat milk will work, but (IMO) it makes for a watery quiche; cream results in a silken custard that's more the sort of thing I like to serve to company. A good compromise, believe it or not, is canned, evaporated milk; you get a lower fat content, but the mouthfeel of cream.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

If she doesn't have The Joy of Cooking we have three or four copies of it from various years around here that she's welcome to borrow.

[telerib.livejournal.com]

I don't have the recipe, but I had a "torte of egges" at an SCA event that was just divine... I think it was carmelized onions and saffron.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

http://walton-eats.livejournal.com/tag/quiche

The mushroom and onion one, obviously :).

[charlottezweb.livejournal.com]

My sibling has best quiche recipe ever which may be related to the Enchanted Broccoli Forest formula--three eggs, 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup veggie matter, 1 cup cheese. Mmmmmmm!

[selki.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I hadn't thought of sour cream in a quiche, but that does sound good.

Rivka, the food quantity sounds pretty good for a brunch party.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

By "vegetarian quiche", you are meaning lacto-ovo, right? 'Cause I don't know any vegan recipes.

Actually, I don't know any recipes for quiche. It's one of those things, like "stew", or what my father calles "bottom two-shelf-of-the-fridge soup", which I just sort of make.

Ingredients:

1 pie crust.
Some eggs.
A bunch of whatever cheese I've got a lot of and am trying to get rid of -- usually a mix of cheddar, Swiss cheeses of various sorts, Romano, stuff like that. Try to get some stuff that melts well in there, if possible.
Other stuff.

Cook the other stuff. If it's frozen veggies, defrost it. Drain off all the excess water in the other stuff you've cooked. (Yeah, I don't want to tell you how many years I'd occasionally make a watery quiche that just didn't hold together and I didn't know WHY, until I finally figured that one out.)

Grate the cheese into grated cheese. Beat a bunch of eggs. Stir the cheese into the eggs. This probably doesn't do anything, but it makes me feel good.

Put the other stuff into the pie crust. Pour the eggs and cheese over it.

Bake at some temperature for, um, time. Three fifty for, um, an hour? Forty five minutes? I dunno.

The other stuff usually includes sauteed onions, 'cause I like them, and frozen broccoli, because we tend to have a lot of it in the freezer for no good reason. I think I keep buying it at Costco and forgetting that I already have some.

[brooksmoses]

Ah, right -- my description of my recipe did forget to mention grating the cheese. You can also cut it into small cubes, but grating certainly helps it melt better.

xiphias, I find it interesting that your recipe doesn't include any cream or milk -- the quiches that I think of as definitively quiche-like seem to have quite a lot of it. But I wonder if I'm just being unusual there, since a lot of the recipes posted here don't have any....

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, that's right -- I sometimes put milk and/or cream with the eggs and cheese, too.

Except when I don't.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

I have a fondness for frittata (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frittata) which is more dense than a quiche. I start mine with by sauteing refrigerated bag hashbrowns in a skillet until partially cooked. then pour in an egg mix containing onions, shredded cheeses, meats if you like, frozen chopped spinach thawed & drained, top with more cheese. Let cook a bit longer until set, and then pop under the broiler to allow the cheese to melt and become Golden Brown & Delicious.

[ailbhe]

Veg I Need To Use Up, especially spinach
Onions
Rice milk
Eggs
Non-dairy pastry

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My quiche, which you liked at New Year, is 3 big onions, sauted in oil with a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of sugar and more tarragon than you think. No, more than that. You want a big handful of dried tarragon or two of freshly chopped. You put that on top of a good handful of grated cheddar in a pre-baked for 10 mins pie-crust and cover it with more cheddar and then add three beaten eggs and a quarter pint of milk. Bake for 30 minutes at 200.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I am sure others have pointed out it's actually a custard (one egg to a cup of milk, cup and a half, of milk, and an extra yolk if you want to make it richer, every four/five cups).

Onions are a staple. I am fond of onion and apple (soften the apples by sauteeing in butter, you can caramelise the onions at the same time. Add a clove of garlic if you like. Absent the garlic cumin is a nive flavor, but really they are all season to taste).

A small puree of squash (not more than about 1/4 the volume of milk, add an extra egg, entire, to stiffen the mix), or carrots. Celery seed and (again) some softened onion.

Cheddar cheese and apples, swiss cheese and (if you care for it) spinach, or other leafy green vegetable.

You can do the cheddar 9(or swiss) trick with pureed cauliflower (treat as with the sqaush).

Basically, anything you wouldn't mind a custard wrapped around works.