I started with a store bought, uncooked pie crust. On a weekend day I might have tried making my own crust, but for a Tuesday, the store bought kind sufficed. The ones at Sprouts came in a tin baking dish and were quite small, so I decided to make 2. I chopped up my greens into strips - spinach, arugula, a little bit of mustard greens, and some radish greens. The greens cook down quite a bit, so while I started with a large pile, I wish I had used more. Then I cooked the greens for about 3 minutes, then spread them out on some paper towels to start draining. Then I mixed together the cheese - ricotta (I had about 2/3 cup leftover), grated peccorino romano (in retrospect I used a little too much of this strong flavored cheese, about a cup grated), grated asiago (I only had a few tablespoons leftover), and grated white cheddar (about 1/2 cup). I reserved some of the grated peccorino and cheddar for the topping. I also mixed in a cup of heavy cream, 4 eggs, nutmeg and black pepper. You can tell this is not exactly a low fat recipe! Then I squeezed as much water out of the greens as I could, and put about half of them onto the pie crusts. They were a little hard to spread out after squeezing the water out, so next time I will try to keep them more separated instead of a huge pile of cooked greens. Then I poured the cheese mixture on top, spread the rest of the greens on top of that, and sprinkled the remaining grated cheese on top. Both quiches went into the oven for about 40 minutes until they were nice and puffy. I let them cool off and settle for about 10 minutes and most of the puffiness went away, here is the final product:
The only thing is the bottom of the crust was not totally cooked, so I'm thinking about how to remedy that next time. And there will be a next time, this was sooo good! I could eat this for breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack.... or all of the above. It was actually pretty easy, and a good way to use up greens and cheeses in your fridge. Then go for a run or to the gym :-)
My running theory is that the gooey crust bottom is because of too much water in the veg and/or taking the crust out of the freezer too early. A good strategy for greens (and a yummy way to prepare them in general) is to toss them with some salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil until lightly coated, and then spread them out on a cookie sheet and roast on the top rack for 10 or 15 mins at 300. Keep an eye on them to make sure they don't burn, and if you do it right they will dry out to a consistency not unlike a potato chip with a nice nutty flavor.
ReplyDeleteThanks Bryan! I hear your quiche is really good, so I will definitely try any of your advice. It was tough to get the water out of the greens, so roasting sounds much better. As for the crust, I bought them frozen, they were in the fridge for about an hour, then on the counter for about half hour while I prepared everything. They definitely weren't frozen anymore, but still cold.
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