quiche-mania

I have kinda always hated quiche. I mean, I'm not a big egg fan anyway and quiche is always mushy and weird and yuck. But to be polite at a brunch my fabulous friend Karen hosted a few weeks ago, I tried a slice of caramelized onion quiche that she made. And...wow...SO delicious! The other quiche she made was mushroom and I took a slice of that home to Jose and he raved about it! Then and there I decided to make Jose's birthday party a breakfast potluck and try my hand at duplicating these dishes.

[i can't believe i missed a shot of the finished
caramelized onions]

Karen's quiches looked much fancier and were much tastier than mine, but since no one at Jose's party had the opportunity to see or sample hers, mine were a hit! One friend said she was going to dream of the quiche and another friend who is super particular about eggs went back for a second slice! Great success!

You can find the caramelized onion quiche recipe on the SimplyRecipes site. As Karen had done, I used the cheese and liquid portion from that recipe for both quiches.

Ingredients for the mushroom quiche filling:
3/4 lb cremini mushrooms
1/2 lb basic white mushrooms
3 shallots, diced
3 green onions, diced
2 cloves garlic
salt, pepper to taste
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of thyme
pinch of oregano

I hate mushrooms, but since they are Jose's fav, I took on this challenge. I'd like to also add that I was coming off of a migraine, so the smells were kind of overwhelming to me. I told him that after dicing and cooking 2.5lbs of red onions and 1.5lbs of mushrooms he should never, ever doubt my love for him.

So as Karen suggested, I sliced all of the mushrooms VERY thin. I chopped the shallots very finely, kept the green onion a little on the chunky side, and minced the garlic.

I melted butter in the pan and added the garlic, shallots and onion and heated for a few minutes. Then I added the mushrooms and seasonings and stirred to ensure an even coating. Then I sautéed the whole batch until it was brown. Since I wasn't tasting them, I just had Jose taste until he gave the thumbs up.

I did use frozen pie crusts this time. I *might* consider making them from scratch next time, but for a quiche...eh, probably not. I followed all the directions in the onion quiche recipe regarding the pre-baking of the pie crusts and it was completely tasty.

And as for the third quiche in the photo, that's my combo quiche. I had intended to make two onion quiches, but my double batch of onions wasn't enough for two (in the future, I'll probably cook 1.5 - 2lbs of onion for each). Maybe the issue is that I was using deep dish crusts, although I'm pretty sure that is the depth discussed in the recipe. But I overbought on the mushrooms just a bit in case something went awry, so that third quiche became a combination of the two. Recipes really are just suggestions.