Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, but We Make It.

Since I no longer have a real job (other than baking for Firefly), I’m working a bit more at my Mom’s inn. Since all I really want to do is cook I’ve decided that I’m going to go through some of my cookbooks, and attempt some recipes that I’ve always wanted to try. The first on my list was the Quiche recipe from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook, mostly because I could justify the time, if I served it for breakfast.

Now I hate rolling dough…that is to say, I totally suck at it. That’s why I served Apple cake at Firefly rather that apple pie, and why if I do make a pie, it usually has a crust I can just press into the pan (like the Bouchon nut crusts, which are insanely good). The crust for the quiche though was incredibly easy to make and even easier to roll, so it was no problem making two of them. That’s when things started to go wrong

My mother didn’t have enough beans to fill both pans for the blind baking, and I didn’t have a lot of rice on hand, so instead of baking them one at a time I split them among the two pans, and wished for the best. Well both kind of puffed on the sides creating some cracks. No problem I thought I’ll just use some of the extra dough to patch it up. Then I realized that in my over-zealous cleaning, I had thrown all of I away. The way Keller does Quiche, and apparently how quiche should be done, is making the quiche in a two inch high pan, so it’s quite thick. With this being the case any cracks could cause a large amount of filling to leak out. And that’s exactly what happened with one of them. Filling all over the place. Luckily I had put both pans on a larger sheet pan just in case, so it was more a pain to clean then anything. So one worked out well, and the other was about half the volume it should have been. Everything else though went pretty well, although cleaning cutting and sautéing 4lbs of mushrooms was a bit of a pain.

The taste though made it all worth it, and changed the very idea of a quiche for me. The filling was like a custard and cooked slowly to keep it some and silky. The crust was also pretty thick, so the egg didn’t soak through and turn it soggy. The guests seemed to rave about it as well, and my Mother said it was the best quiche she ever had. So over all I think it went quite well, and definitely something I would do again (and better). So far every recipe I make from this cookbook turns out incredibly. The recipes are finiky, but the extra steps really do make a difference in the refinement of the dish and really elevates the dishes to a different level.