Quiche

This recipe is designed for a deep-dish quiche. I use a deep pie dish when I make my crust, and that gives me enough room to just barely manage to fit all the filling in. A shallower dish would still make a good quiche, but you'd have some egg mix left over, and you'd miss out on the unique texture the custard in the quiche takes on when you get it to a certain thickness.
Quiche

1 Simple Pie Crust, set and cooled to room temperature
Filling Ingredients, cooked until ready (i.e.: if you want your quiche to be a mushroom and onion quiche, you would need to saute the mushrooms and onions. For ham, you'd need to cook the ham)
5 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
2 tsp salt
Pepper to taste (a little less than 1/4 tsp is generally what I use)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
Approx. 3 cups coarse grated cheese, loosely packed (I like a mixture of cheddar and Jarlsberg for this)



Preheat the oven to 325F.

Begin by scalding the cream and milk. Heat them in a pot over medium heat until a thin film forms on top of the mixture, then remove them and let them sit for 10 or so minutes to cool (if they're too warm they'll cook the eggs when you try to mix them).

In a large mixing bowl, combine the eggs, milk mix, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and vanilla. Whisk as quickly as you can for three minutes. The goal here is to produce a fluffy quiche by incorporating as much air into the egg mix as possible. Let the egg mix rest for a few minutes, and saute your filling. When the filling is finished with its saute, collect the egg mix, the pie-dish with the crust, the cheese, and the filling in one location.

Assemble your quiche. Sprinkle about half the cheese evenly over the bottom of the crust. Top this with about half your filling ingredients. Whisk the egg mixture vigorously for another two minutes or so, then pour in enough of the egg mixture fill the crust half-way. Sprinkle most of the remaining cheese in another layer, followed by all the remaining filling ingredients. Pour on enough egg mixture to completely fill the crust. You may not use all the egg mixture, but get as much of it in as you can. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the whole thing.

Carefully put your quiche in the oven, on a rack in the center. Bake the quiche for 7 minutes. The fillings and egg mixture should settle and deflate a little, so pull it out and fill it back up to the top with any of the remaining egg mixture. Again, you may not use all of it, depending on things like the thickness of your crust and the depth of your pie-dish. Slide the filled quiche back into the oven, and cook for another 1 hr and 15 minutes. The quiche is finished when the top is an even, deep golden color, and the center is set relatively firmly (it should only jiggle a very little when you wiggle the dish).

When the quiche is finished, remove it from the oven and sit it on a cooling rack for 15 or 20 minutes. It will deflate a little, this is to be expected. Serve warm, or (if you're making this in advance) refrigerate and serve chilled later.

My Favorite Filling Ingredients, and how to prepare them:

- Shitake mushrooms (approx 10 large mushrooms) and red bell pepper (1 pepper): Wash the mushrooms and remove the woody stems. Slice the mushrooms into 1/4 inch strips. Remove the seeds from the bell pepper, and slice it into quarters lengthwise. Slice each of the quarters into 1/4 inch thick strips, then cut these long strips into more bite-sized pieces (aim for the pepper pieces to be the same size as the mushroom strips). Saute the mushrooms in 3 tbsp olive oil for 5 minutes (or until soft), then add the peppers and saute for another 3 minutes.

Servings: 8-10