Quiche

When cooking with heavy ingredients, I like to use a little more of the more flavorful fats and cut back on the less flavorful ones. The recipe for this quiche called for a 3 tablespoons of butter, 2 cups of cream, 4 strips of bacon, and a cup of shredded cheese. Instead of cooking my vegetables in the recommended butter, I used a comparable amount of bacon grease to get the job done. I made a few other replacements and reductions - thus decreasing the fat and calories - but the end result was a very flavorful quiche.

I'd never made a quiche before, and somehow both recipes I based mine on didn't recommend pre-baking the crust. Miraculously, it came out minimally soggy, but I won't repeat this mistake again. There's really nothing worse than soggy eggs.

1 pie crust
4 strips thick-cut bacon
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups broccoli, chopped into small pieces
1/2 cup shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
4 eggs
1 cup half and half
1 cup 2% milk
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon mustard powder

Heat oven to 425F. Fry bacon in saute pan until crisp and set aside. Remove bacon grease from pan except about 1-2 tablespoons, and return pan to medium-low heat. Add onion and broccoli to the bacon grease, stir to coat, and cook until onions are translucent. With the pie crust arranged in a pie plate, evenly arrange the cheese, onion and broccoli in the crust. Crumble the bacon into the pie plate along with the vegetables and cheese. Whip togther the remaining ingredients and pour into the pie plate. Bake the quiche at 425F for about 15 minutes, and then reduce the heat to 300F to bake for 30 more minutes, or until quiche is solid and a knife stuck in the center comes out clean.

Okay, it's time to confess: I love storebought pie crusts. They're so easy to use and taste just as great as anything I've ever made. If it's Thanksgiving or some other special occasion, I'll make my own, but for a Wednesday night dinner, storebought pie crusts are a convenience I don't mind relying on.