Time for a quick quiche
Want to ruin a good thing? Just write a best-selling book strongly implying that people who eat it are unmanly.
Quiche was widely enjoyed in America in the 1970s, until Bruce Feirstein wrecked it for everyone when he wrote the best-selling book “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.”
It was a great title, but it had a profound effect. Quiche sales dropped precipitously as men everywhere immediately stopped eating the tasty pastry. But why? What type of a real man would turn up his nose at eggs and cream baked into a crust?
Fortunately, quiche is beginning to make a bit of a comeback, and high time, too. Not only is quiche an irresistible combination of custard and flaky crust, it is also exceptionally versatile.
It is unbeatable for breakfast, luscious for lunch, superb for a light supper.
Best of all, you can make one with almost any filling you want.
Bacon is a classic, because nothing goes with eggs like bacon. Cheese is great, too, because — as with so much in life — everything is better with cheese.
But I wanted to think outside the crust. I wanted to make quiche that you don’t find at your local quichetaria.
In other words, I wanted to make Leftover Chinese Takeout Quiche. Leftover Indian Takeout Quiche would be just as good, or maybe even better, but I didn’t have any leftover Indian food on hand.
But before I get to the Leftover Chinese Takeout Quiche and the other quiches I made, I want to say a word about crust.
I made my own. Using a basic 3-2-1 dough, I wound up with crusts that were impossibly flaky and rich with buttery goodness. But they did take time (the dough has to chill for an hour) and effort, and I can see why a busy cook would not want to bother with it.
So you can use a frozen or roll-out pie crust, as long as it isn’t sweetened. It won’t be as good as homemade, but no one will notice because the fillings are so sumptuous.
In fact, if you’re looking to save a few calories, you can even make quiche without the crust. With quiche, it’s the filling that matters most.
The thing about Leftover Chinese/Indian Takeout Quiche is it doesn’t matter what kind of food you have left over. If you have a dish with a sauce that is served over rice, it will make a great quiche (though you don’t want to use too much of the sauce).
I made mine with leftover garlic chicken. It perhaps wasn’t quite garlicky enough, but that was really the fault of the restaurant that made it. The better the takeout food, the better the quiche.
And if you want a little more heft to your custard, you can even add some of the rice.
My next inspiration for a quiche came from a bagel — that is, it came from what goes on top of a bagel.
I’ve had quiche with smoked salmon before, so I guess it wasn’t entirely my idea. But along with minced smoked salmon, I also added sautéed onions, capers and dill.
I did not add any cream cheese, because I was already using cream (well, half-and-half ) in the quiche, and it was time to be nice to my arteries. But you can put in the cream cheese if you want. It will only make it even better.
For my next quiche, I turned to one of my favorite fast dinners, sausage with peppers and onions. I chopped up the ingredients, sautéed them in butter, though oil is more traditional, and added them to my quiche.
The only problem was I had wanted to make the dish with Italian sausage. The store that is closest to me did not have any Italian sausage, ahem, so I wound up getting beef kielbasa instead.
My last quiche, admittedly, was a little mundane: Asparagus with Wild Mushroom Quiche. Then again, when are asparagus and wild mushrooms ever truly mundane?
My neighborhood grocery store did not have any fresh wild mushrooms, ahem, aside from shiitakes. So I bought one of those packages of dried mixed mushrooms, and reconstituted about half of the package in warm water. It worked like a charm.
The key to making this quiche is sautéing the asparagus, mushrooms and onions together just long enough that they are tender but not yet soft. It takes a little patience; just five to seven minutes is needed.
The other key, of course, is cheese. A cup of shredded cheese (I used an Italian blend) is all it needed to make quiche cool again.