Quiche

Quiche is good.  Quiche is better with bacon and lots of yummy veggies.  I tend to make quiche pretty regularly since it makes a good breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner.

Preheat Oven to 475 and get your pie pan greased up.  You can use store bought pastry, but making your own is cheaper, tastier and way more fun.

Basic Pastry:  1.5 cups of all purpose flour, 1 stick of cold butter in cubes, and a little bit of ice water.  Place the flour in the bowl of your food processor with the blade attachment.  Pulse to get rid of any clumps.  Cube up the cold butter and drop into processor.  Pulse about 3-5 times until it has a sandy appearance.  Add in ice water by the tablespoon full until you get a wet sand look to your dough.   Dump out the dough on to a floured work service, form into a disc and then roll out and place in your pie pan.  You can do this ahead of time and either freeze or refrigerate the dough.  I've gotten in the habit of keeping about 2 discs of pastry in the freezer.

You can add flavor to your pastry by adding black pepper or a little grated Parmesan cheese for savory dishes like quiche. 

Now that you've got your pie pan prepared your going to need to fill it with stuff.   Quiche is basically egg custard, cheese and some sort of veggie and or meat combo.

This time I filled mine with: Swiss cheese, crisp crumbled bacon, finely chopped broccoli and some baby squash.

Egg Custard:  4-5 eggs and about 1/3 cup of half and half or heavy cream with a dash of salt and pepper.  Don't use milk, it won't set up properly.  Heavy Cream is best.

In your food processor finely chop up about 1/2 cup broccoli.  This is the first layer in the pie.  Then sprinkle a little bit of cheese.  I then added 4 strips of bacon cooked crispy and broken into small pieces.  I topped the bacon off with thin slices of the baby squash.  The squash got a nice layer of about a 1/3 cup of shredded Swiss cheese.  Finally I poured in the egg custard and sprinkled a bit of pepper on top.

Pop the pie in the oven at 450 and then turn down the temp to 350 immediately.  Bake for 30-40 minutes until eggs are set and crust is browned.   Cool for 15 minutes before slicing.

I think this makes a wonderful dinner with a side salad.