Whip up a quiche
Hearty dish easy to bake or buy
By Susan Reilly news@hippopress.com
Years ago, between college and working at 9-to-5, I cooked at a pub where I learned t, how to make a great quiche.
The pub’s scruffy fry cook taught me to make a quiche that had a dollop of mayonnaise and a teaspoon of flour in it. We varied the filling week to week but mostly it was the garden variety ham and cheese (quiche Lorraine) and broccoli and cheese. This guy’s recipe was creamy, moist and easy.
Not as tricky to whip up as a soufflé or a pan of risotto, with quiche the thing is to find a recipe you like. Once you have that, what you put into a quiche is only limited by your imagination.
One tip: whatever you fill your quiche with should be chopped and cooked first. Meats should always be cooked and vegetables at least blanched or quickly sautéed. Onions are better caramelized, mushrooms lightly sautéed to release their earthiness, and broccoli lightly blanched.
Otherwise, a quiche is fairly easy to put together. Fill an uncooked pie crust with a mixture of about half a dozen eggs, a couple of cups of a liquid/cream combination and your chosen meat, vegetable and cheese combination.
But you don’t have to make it. Throughout southern New Hampshire, quiche seems to be a lunch staple on menus. And several places, like Jerome’s Delicatessen in Londonderry and Manchester and Angela’s Pasta and Cheese in Manchester, sell whole quiches that simply need to be re-heated to serve.
At Patisserie Bleu in Nashua, owner and chef Deb Soby makes deep dish-quiches everyday for lunch. Soby changes the fillings week to week depending on what is in season.
She has been making quiche for more than 20 years and has tweaked her recipe to the point where she is happy.
“My very first quiche, many years ago, was Bisquick’s ‘impossible quiche.’ Everything was tossed into a blender and when it came out of the oven, it had a crust and all. Truly impossible,” she said.
Tom Eddleman, chef and part owner of the Grainery in Nashua, says that real men eat quiche — lot of quiche, in fact.
“I guess that if you think of it as an egg pie, and not quiche per se, it is all good,” he said with a laugh.
Eddleman admits that he is not a pie guy, so he can not appreciate the “anything in crust is good” ideal, but adds that he makes a lot of quiche because he sells a lot. At the Grainery, the quiche is a hearty deep-dish and the fillings change regularly.
Quiche is a quick way to use what you have on hand — leftover rotisserie chicken, beef cooked on the grill, ham, any cheese and vegetables. Plus, with quiche, you only need about a half cup of whatever fillings .
Keep crust on hand, and it is likely you already have all the fixings for a great quiche. If not, head out and grab a slice, or a whole pie. It is quick, easy and yummy.
Where to get a slice
• Angela’s Pasta & Cheese, 815 Chestnut St., Manchester, 625-9544
• Black Forest Café, 212 Route 101, Amherst, 672-0500
• Country Tavern, Amherst St., Nashua, 889-5871
• Ecos Café, 704 Milford Road., Nashua, 881-9635
• Grainery, 36 E.Otterson St., Nashua, 889-9524
• Jerome’s Delicatessen, 44 Nashua Rd., Londonderry, 425-1820; 393 Bridge St., Manchester, 623-5388
• Jewell & the Beanstalk, 793 Somerville St., Manchester, 624-3709
• Madeline’s, 124 North Main St., Concord, 224-5353
• Patisserie Bleu, 215 Main St., Nashua, 886-0007
• Puritan Backroom, Hooksett Rd., Manchester, 669-6890
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