Quiche a new way: with ricotta

Annalena has commented on quiche in these posts before, and you could do a search to see her remarks.    Today, she veered from the usual, and made a quiche differently.  And it is good.

Annalena and the Guyman do not eat quiche very often, and that is because they like it so much.  There is no way to deny it:  quiche is rich, heavy, fattening stuff.  If you do it right.  If you're going to do one of these quiches with a vegetable spread crust (or no crust at all), non fat milk, egg whites and low fat cheese, frankly, carini, you'd be better off playing basketball with it ,than eating it.  It just does not work.    So, especially for those of us who are now old enough to (theoretically), have grandchildren who can drive, eating quiche often is not in the cards.


But kiddos, when the vecchi (the old guys:  Annalena and the Guyman), go to a show, they often do not eat until they come home.  Annalena falls asleep and/or gets a nervous stomach when she eats before a show, and the Guyman has similar issues.  So, dinner when they come home must be ready.  And quiche fits the bill.

So, venturing into the kitchen, Annalena was planning to make a standard quiche, until she remembered the pound of sheeps milk ricotta that she had in the refrigerator for a week.  "Use it or lose it," right ragazzi?  She also remembered the oyster mushrooms from her "CSA sort of" this week, and the idea was born.


First, for those of you who are visual, let's see what it looks like:

It's a bit ragged, but that's home cooking for you.  Let's begin. 

First, you should make the crust.  It's easy, and you can always have some around. To make enough for two crusts,  put two cups of plain, all purpose flour in a food processor, with a teaspoon of salt. Pulse it.  Then cut up a stick and a half of cold, unsalted butter into small cubes.  Put in the stick's worth, and pulse until you get very fine grains - like rice, or smaller.  Then, in go the cubes from the half  a stick and now you pulse until you get pea sized granules.  Once you're there, add four tablespoons of ice water, and pulse again.  You probably will not have a cohesive dough at this point (turn the machine OFF and reach in and check), and then repeat with additional tablespoons of water, until you have something that holds together.  Dump it out on a surface or into a bowl, push it together with your hands, and then divide it in half.  Freeze one half, after you've formed it into a ball.  Form the other half into a ball, and let it refrigerate for at least a few hours.  (If it refrigerates for overnight, or more than one night, let it come to room temperature before you use it).  Sprinkle a good amount of flour on a surface, and then roll out the dough nice and thin.  No need to be afraid to use flour here.  Then push it into a 9 inch pie pan.  Annalena likes glass for this.  Put a piece of foil on top, and then weights.  Annalena has pie weights , which are like metal pearl necklaces, but you can use beans, or rice.  Once you use them for this, though, they cannot be cooked.  

Bake the thing for about fifteen minutes at 400, and then take it out, remove the foil and let it cool.    Drop the oven to 350. 

Now, Annalena's quiche used half a pound of fresh spinach, and a third of a pound of mushrooms for a filling.  If the spinach is young and fresh, all you need do is check to make sure it doesn't need a washing.  Separate the root portions, put it all in a pot, and add two tablespoons of water.  You'll need a big pot.  Cover it, and cook at low heat.  That spinach will collapse to about a cup.  Pull it out, and let it sit in a bowl, cooling, while you slice up the mushrooms, and cook them with a bit of salt in a couple tablespoons of olive oil.  No worries about undercooking them  here, cause they're gonna cook again.

When your spinach is cool, squeeze the water out with your hands, and chop it roughly.  

Now the fun part.  Your ricotta should be good quality (none of the stuff that ends with "o" ragazzi), and about a pound.  Put it in a big bowl, and add three eggs, a half cup of milk, and your veggies.  Stir this all together.  Taste it, and add salt and pepper if you like.  

You put all this into that prepared quiche shell and put it back in the oven for 30 minutes.   Annalena finds it convenient to put it on a baking sheet.  And you get what you saw up top. 

The key here, ragazzi, is that you can use ricotta, which is lower in fat (MUCH lower in fat) than the other cheeses normally used for quiche.   And you can use whatever vegetables you like.    And you have a crust recipe for the next time around. 

Lots of veggies available now for making things like this.  Let's get in there and cook.  You won't regret it.