Kacie's Quiche

 This is a really easy, fun and healthy recipe to make ahead in the week for lunches or for quick dinners.  

Quiche Crust:

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup flour (I use whole wheat flour)

1 stick very cold butter, cut into 1 inch pieces 

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup ice water

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the flour into a Cuisinart mixer and sprinkle in the salt.  Give it a quick run to mix it together.  Spread out the butter pieces throughout the flour.  Turn on the mixer until the flour and butter mix and become mealy.  Finally, drizzle in the ice water until the dough combines into a ball (you probably won’t use all of the water). If you don't have a Cuisinart, you can still make the dough by hand.  It's just messier and not as easy, but it should turn out fine for this recipe!

Roll out the dough on a floured surface until it will fit into the bottom of your quiche dish.   Make sure it overlays the edges a little because it tends to shrink up a bit.  If it shrinks to much just use the bottom of a small measuring cup and smoosh it back into place...don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect, it will turn out just fine! 

Pierce the bottom of the crust about 10 times with a fork and pop it into the oven for 7-11 minutes, or until lightly golden, remove it and let it cool while you assemble the quiche ingredients.

Quiche:

1-2 Tablespoons toasted pine nuts

1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese

2 large shallots, thinly sliced and sauteed in olive oil and cooled

6 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk

1 cup fresh spinach, lightly sauteed and cooled

1 Roma or plum tomato, thinly sliced

1/2 Tablespoon fresh herbs (I’m using thyme and chives), diced 

1 teaspoon of salt 

freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

On the bottom of your quiche crust, layer half of the spinach, half of the shallots and half of the goat cheese. Mix up the eggs and milk with the herbs, salt and pepper until blended and pour it into the dish before sprinkling in the rest of your spinach, shallots and goat cheese.  Gently lay the tomato slices and pine nuts so they sit on top of the egg mixture and transfer the quiche gently into the oven and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until a skewer comes out mostly clean (but not runny).  You don’t want to overcook your quiche or it will taste dry!

You can easily vary this recipe by adding, removing or substituting ingredients like asparagus spears, prociutto, pancetta, parmesan cheese, red onion, etc.   It's also easy to make a totally kid friendly quiche and they can assemble it. Poppy helped put this one together, you just prep all the ingredients and then they can assemble it.