Quiche Lorraine...

In an attempt to keep my recipes from getting lost, I'm ever-so-slowly posting them here on my blog for easy access.  

A few years ago, I went through all my cookbooks and Taste of Home magazines, and made copies of what I wanted to keep, and then recycled the stained, falling apart cookbooks, and rehomed a bunch of still nice, but not necessarily wanted, cookbooks and magazines.  I put photocopied recipes into sleeve protectors, and then into two three-ring binders with dividers. I can add to the binders any time I find a recipe online that is a hit, or I want to try.  This system, along with my collection of recipe cards (stored in three recipe boxes) has served me well ever since.

But recently, it seems my old tried and true Quiche Lorraine recipe, that I'm sure I photocopied from an old Pillsbury cookbook, turned up missing.  I hope to someday discover where I stuck that original recipe, but without it I did what modern cooks do and I searched for quiche recipes online.

Working from a couple of different recipes I've found online in recent months, I have put together a recipe that I think is basically the recipe I used to use.

If you're so inclined to try this version, I hope you liked it as much as Hub did.  He pronounced yesterday's quiche "the best I've ever made."

Considering quiche a simple dish, but knowing somehow it can sometimes also be finicky, all I can add to Hub's high praise is "Good Luck!"

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*Note:  The amount of eggs, milk, cream, or even cheese can be adjusted depending on how deep or large in diameter is the pie crust being used.  Recently, I've been using Marie Callender frozen pie crusts (I bought at a great sale price details on that at the end), and I think they were 8" across.  They did not appear to me to be deep dish (even though the packaging said they were).   Regardless of whether or not there is an industry standard for frozen pie crusts, egg sizes can vary dramatically within the same size category.  All things combined, getting the liquid measurement to correspond to the size of a pie crust can be tricky, and amounts may need to be adjusted.  For example, when using a deep dish, or 9-inch pie crust, the recipe below might need an extra egg and/or 1/8 or 1/4 cup more milk or cream.  I prefer to possibly err on the side of needing to whisk up an egg with additional milk or cream to add at the last minute to a less than full pie before baking, if needed. 

Okay. Enough chatter. Now on to the recipe!

Quiche Lorraine

Ingredients:

1 par-baked pie crust (comments about par-baking a crust will be at the end of the recipe, and here is a video for reference, as well.  Note: I start with a 400 degree oven, and turned it down to 375 after a couple of minutes.)

1/2 lb strips of bacon (I prefer thick-cut bacon)

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 cup shredded swiss or gruyere cheese (or combination)

1 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream, or a combination of milk and cream.  Some recipes call for Half & Half, but I think Quiche Lorraine is better if more cream than milk is used.  That said, if you want to healthify this a bit, H&H is an option.

3 large eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper  

1/8 tsp nutmeg

Instructions:

Cook the bacon (here is a video for cooking bacon in the oven - I highly recommend this method).  Though you do need to keep an eye on the bacon toward the end of its cooking time.  It can go from perfectly crisp to burnt if you don't.  Also, thick-cut bacon will likely take a little longer to cook than regular-cut bacon.

After it's cooked and cooled, crumble bacon in 1 - 1 1/2 inch pieces and set aside.

Par-bake the pie crust.  Again, here is a short video that will walk you through this process.  I strongly suggest watching the video and/or reading my notes below before doing this, so you don't have to learn the hard way that there is a right and possibly very wrong way to par or pre-bake a pie crust.  I strongly urge against simply following instructions on the packaging of a store-bought pie crust for how to par-bake.

Preparing the filling:

Sauté chopped onions in butter (or oil) until they are somewhat translucent.   Add the sautéed onions evenly to the bottom of the par-baked pie shell.

Add half of the bacon, all of the cheese, then the other half of the bacon, spreading each layer evenly in the pie shell.

Whisk 3 large eggs, adding 1 1/4 cup whipping cream (or combination of milk and cream), 1/2 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper, and 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg.  Pour over the solid ingredients, covering everything, but be sure to not overfill pie crust.  If you need more liquid filling, just whisk an egg with some milk or cream and add to what is already in pie shell.  You can add additional, but tiny, amounts of the seasonings in this case, but for this small amount, it shouldn't be necessary. But it also shouldn't hurt.  So yeah...  go ahead if you have any doubts.

Place filled pie shell on a baking sheet, and loosely cover pie with aluminum foil (so that the crust doesn't burn).  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. The quiche will continue to cook as it cools for a few minutes.  My quiches almost always require a full hour of baking, but I start checking at 40-45 minutes.

Remove from oven, and let stand for a few minutes.  Slice, eat, and enjoy!

Comments on pre and par-baking a pie crust:

I have recently learned (or have maybe relearned) the benefits and hazards of pre or par-baking a pie shell.  The benefits are that the result will be a crispy, flavorful crust instead of soggy, bleh one. I didn't used to do this when making quiche, but it makes such a difference I can't imagine not par-baking a shell for quiche ever again.

See that flaky, crispy crust!  

I makes me kind of sad to remember 

all the soggy-crust quiches we've eaten.  

Now, the hazard in pre- or par-baking is that if the oven is not hot enough, or crust is not cold enough, or possible not made with a solid fat, the crust can melt, shrink, and fold in on itself when put into a hot oven.  This happened to me for the first time (that I remember) a few months ago when I was making quiche for young friends who'd just had a baby.  

I think I was using a prepared refrigerated pie crust that you unroll onto a pie plate, and I par-baked the crust according to the package instructions.  When I took it out of the oven, I was panicked to find I had an unusable pie crust (well, at least it was unusable for a quiche).  Fortunately, Hub was at the grocery store right then, and I called and asked him to bring home a couple of new frozen crusts.  Meanwhile, I searched online how to prevent this from happening again.

The suggestions to use pie weights, I think, is the best and most reliable suggestion, but I didn't (and still don't) have pie weights.  And even if I wanted to buy some in the future, the expense vs how often I'm likely to use them gives me pause.  And I have no way of knowing if one package of pie weights would be enough.  If not, they're even more expensive. While I realized that the world had gone ahead of me and had been using pie weights (probably before I was born), the concept was new to me, and I wasn't crazy about spending that kind of money on something that seemed like an experiment to me.  And besides, I needed a quicker solution than ordering off Amazon.

Then it dawned on me.  Dried beans might work!  I thought I had a bag or two, but all I found in the pantry were two bags of dried lentils.  

Hmmm.  Well... why not.  

So, when Hub got home with the new pie crusts, I cranked up the heat in the oven. Then being sure to only partially thaw the frozen pie shells, I pricked them thoroughly with a fork, then lined the very cold crust with parchment paper and poured in the lentils.  

It worked!

A nice, flat-bottomed, crispy crust

And I cooled and collected the lentils 

in a gallon zip-top bag to be used again.  

And again.

And again.

I think I've got my pie weights!

I know in the past I've pre-baked pie shells (homemade and store bought) to fill with custard fillings, and I don't remember using any kind of weight to keep the crust in shape, and I don't remember ever having a crust melt in on itself.  This makes me wonder if the main reason this happened recently is that manufacturers have moved away from using solid fats in their crusts and have replaced the fat with oil.  What made me think of this, was reading some comments on a product page for Marie Callender pie crusts, people were complaining that their once delicious pie crusts were no longer as good due to this change.

I have no idea.  The first time I'd ever used a Marie Callender crust was when Hub brought some home for me when I was in my predicament, and I thought they were good.  In fact, one day after that, I was going to pick up some more frozen pie shells, and I noticed that their Marie Callender shells were on sale.  It was some crazy low price, so I think I bought four 2-packs.  I figured they would keep nicely in my freezer at home.

Well...  At home with my bounty, I pulled out a two-pack to make whatever it was I had gone looking for pie shells to make, and when I took them out of their packaging, I found they were cracked - like in a lot of pieces!  Aaaaah!  That's why they were marked down so low. Grrrrrr. 

Seriously disappointed, I went online to see what I might do with these pie crusts, and I came across the idea of patching them with a flour and water paste.  While on a small scale, I had patched pie shells by wetting the dough and pinching tears back together, or layering dough on top of a hole, the idea of "pasting it back together" seemed both wild, and obvious at the same time.

Instructions I read call for a 1:1 ratio of water to flour, but measuring seemed unnecessary.  I just made a paste and starting filling in cracks.  Yesterday, when I did this again, I snapped a picture to show you what this looks like:

Back into the freezer it went until I was ready to pull it out for baking.  And here's a picture again, of yesterday's par-baked pie crust:

Except for a few spots where I could have spackled it better, you can't tell this pie shell was dropped and cracked at some point in its life.

Would I knowingly buy frozen pie crusts at a questionably deep discount in the future?  I don't know.  These were all broken differently, and some were a real mess before their repair.  BUT, I don't worry about the possibility of bringing home a broken or cracked shell now.  While it felt annoying to discover them cracked, it's a relatively simple fix.

I think that's about all I have to say about pie crusts.  I sometimes think of making them from scratch again, and while that isn't exactly hard to do, it's a bit time consuming, and messy, and results vary.  

But, especially in today's economy, they would be a lot cheaper...

Maybe someday...

Let me know if you enjoy making pie crusts, and if you have any secrets to a delicious flaky crust. 

The day after...

I'm not sure when it finally stopped snowing today, but we went out around 2:00 pm to start shoveling the driveway.  In the flattest parts of the yard, the snow measured about 8 inches, so that's what we're calling it.  

Took a break to notice a flock of sandhill cranes:

It seems early for them to be migrating this far north already, but their call is unmistakable.  Unfortunately, the wind is blocking out their calls, so you'll just have to trust me about what we're looking at here.

Then, we were back at it...

Drifts at the front door got above 19 inches. I couldn't reach the spots taller than that without walking into snow above my boots, and I wasn't about to shovel more snow just to get close enough to measure those tallest drifts.

Two hours later...

A tired Greg makes the final push of snow off the driveway:

And before I came in, I cleared a path to the front door:

While it wasn't quite as bad as predicted, it will be really nice if this first snow is the worst we get this winter.  

It's probably too optimistic to hope it's the last.

I hope you're staying warm and dry wherever you are!

First snow of the year...

While it's pretty in our backyard, it's dangerous out there on the roads.  If you're in this band of winter weather, please be careful.  

A Christmas card from me to you...

I hope you are having a lovely Christmas season, wherever you are.  December is now nearly over and before taking down the tree and putting decorations away, I thought I'd create a little video "Christmas Card" for my readers - even if it's a little cheesy, and a lesser quality than seems to play on my phone.  I trust you will appreciate the attempt, as amateur as it is.  If it makes you dizzy, just close your eyes and enjoy the 2-minute tune.

From my home to yours, Merry Christmas 
and Happy New Year!

The song playing is called Long Years Ago (on the album cover).  It's a beautiful tune and I've tried to locate the words to this song, but the only things that come up are an English folk song about a sailor and his bride, and a church choir singing something that sounds nothing like this rendition.  If you're familiar with this song, I'd love more information.

Just a week and a half 'till Christmas...

I debated with myself about not posting anything YOP-related for another week, or simply posting nothing much at all.  I finally decided to do the later - peeking in and just saying "Hi!" is a better choice over being absent.   

Like everyone else, I suppose, I'm finding the time leading up to Christmas is too short this year.  I've been making gift lists, shopping for said gifts - online and in person. I'm even still considering making a few simple gifts this upcoming week.  Why do I always wait until the last minute for such things?  I've done this since I was a kid, so I have a tough time believing I'm going to actually change now.  Even though I have thoughts in July of making some Christmas gifts, I never quite seem to get started until sometime in December.  I don't know...  'Tis a new year coming up - maybe I can turn over a new leaf.  Hope springs eternal.

There is no urgency to finish the projects I've been working on recently, so while they are coming along, they get back-burnered very easily.

This series of cute small (and free) monthly cross stitch patterns are fun to work - once I get going on one again:  

Once I started on this I began questioning my choice of using this linen-type aida cloth with sparkles in it for making a December themed pillow, but now I'm kind of loving it.  It sort of evokes snow - which is probably why I considered it to begin with.  I'm going to keep going with it and hope for the best.

~~~~~

And my colorful Dahlia blanket is still a pleasure to crochet.  I'm just about finished with the rows, then there will be a couple dozen ends to weave in, and finally, I'll make a border.    

There are quite a few more hours of crocheting before this is completed, but maybe I'll finish it by the end of the year.

And does it sound silly that I'm already entertaining starting another blanket as soon as I finish this one?  Winter is just such a perfect season for crocheting a big blanket. It keeps me warm and cozy while I work on it, and will make someone else (or maybe just me - who knows!) warm and cozy when I'm done.

The sermon I heard this morning was about Hope.  I hope your holiday season is filled with blessings to give and receive.  I am thankful to continually be reminded that the reason we celebrate is because God gave us the best gift of all - salvation through His son, to all who believe.  The hustle and bustle and last-minute gifts start to fade in importance when I focus on that.  

I hope you all enjoy this last week leading up to Christmas!  And if anyone reading this has anything difficult going on, I pray God will break right through the hard things, and show you His love and grace.