REAL BEARS EAT QUICHE

One of the easiest “gourmet” type foods for a Sunday morning is a good quiche and I’ve decided to share with you the secret to a totally fine one. The technique and recipe were refined in this bears college days as a cook in a soup-and-salad restaurant while putting his furry ass through school. 

The filling is easy and I’ll cover that in a moment. It’s the baking container and the shell that is completely different. I am not talking about making a pie crust here. Oh no! Something far easier that results in a perfect, light quiche every time.

Before beginning, preheat oven to 400° F. (Be sure to read The Perfect Oven first!)

The Crust

Start with a 9x9 glass pan. You MUST use glass here. Using butter that has come to room temperature, generously smear a full quarter pound onto the bottom and sides of the glass pan. Take day old French bread and run this through a food processor until you get medium sized bread crumbs. Do not over process here, you want chunks of bread still, not bread dust. You can also do this using your hands and then a French knife to cross cut the pieces on a cutting board. A large sized blender and doing this in small batches also works.

Now, take your bread crumbs and press into the pan. Using your knuckles, press the bread crumbs into a shell. The bread is going to absorb the egg and cream mixture and will cook into a crunchy layer. This is so much better than a slab of soggy pie crust. Set aside.

Once you have the glass pan and bread crumb shell ready, time to make the filling....

The Filling

Now, the filling requires that the eggs and cream be left out so as to not be completely cold. The quiche will rise better and have a much better consistency if the eggs and cream have warmed up a bit before mixing. You will also need a French mill from grating the cheese. This is critical! If you use a regular cheese grater, the resulting cheese gratings are too large and will sink to the bottom of the quiche, resulting in a cheese layer under the egg layer – yuck. A French mill is very fine and the cheese will happily “float” in the egg cream mixture and cook properly.

6 large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon finely chopped onion (do NOT use dried!)
1 teaspoon garlic (fresh is much better)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 cup finely shredded cheese
1 cup anything you like (be creative: mushrooms, bell pepper, bacon pieces, etc.)

Start by breaking the eggs into a bowl. Using a wire wisk, beat them well until lemon in color. Add seasoning and heavy cream. Mix well. Now, add the cheese and your filling of choice. Stir until mixed and cheese is well incorporated.

Pour this into your prepared glass pan with crust. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.

Place into your preheated oven of 400° F. for 10 minutes. (Yes, you should have tiles in the oven, but DO NOT place the glass pan onto the tiles, use a rack above them.) After 10 minutes, reduce heat to 300° F. and cook until done. 

Now, “done” varies from oven to oven. The quiche will rise up quite a bit and will begin to crack, this is the point that it is done. Remove from the oven and let sit for a good 15 minutes. If you try to serve it immediately, the slices will break apart.

There you go. Enjoy!

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