Today is your lucky day, people of the world wide web. I've decided to dust off and re-post a dear old favorite blog post. Easter is three days away and I can't help but return to my very first adventures in the land of quiche-making. This year it's coming to you a couple days early so you can make the most of it as Sunday approaches. Enjoy.
how to save a quiche April 2009
I'm writing this post in honor of tomorrow being Easter, for which many of you may be making quiches of your own. The following advice can be applied to any kind of quiche. Broccoli/cheddar/bacon, Asparagus/mushroom/swiss, you pick it. I don't know what you people put in your quiches.
Let's start with some helpful preventative tips, so you don't have to master the art of saving a quiche.
preventative tip #1: It is NOT necessary to read the instructions on the pre-shaped, frozen crust you bought. Trust me on this one. Just go with your gut. Throw the insides of the quiche into the pie crust (which comes in a nice little pie tin) and just bake that sucker.
If you decide to ignore my preventative tip #1 (shame on you), you’ll need preventative tip #2: The pie crust instructions will tell you to remove the crust from the pie tin it comes in. Again, go with your gut (you know you feel like you should leave that crust in that tin). Do not discard the tin. It will not blow up in the oven (you may have considered this as a reason Marie Callendar is trying to get you to remove the tin).
Ok, last preventative tip is coming up here. When all your ingredients are INSIDE the pie tin with the exception of the liquid eggy mixture your recipe calls for, mind preventative tip #3: You DO NOT have to use ALL the liquid eggy mixture your recipe told you to make. If your recipe says something like “Make sure it doesn’t overflow,” you should make sure it doesn’t overflow. When your eggy mixture starts to kind of almost overflow, STOP POURING. The truth of the matter is, you might just have to throw a good bit of that stuff out.
If you followed these helpful preventative tips, you and your quiche will probably end up looking something like this:
If you do not heed this preventative advice, you and your quiche will probably end up looking a little more like this:
It’s going to be ok. Don’t panic. You’ll probably be thinking, “Should I just eat this quiche for dinner? Can I even serve this at my Easter brunch tomorrow? This is no quiche. It’s a quichish blob with tin foil all stuck to it. Did the quiche blob swallow up the crust?”
Now this rescue-desperate quiche is never going to look quite like quiche #1 (shown above my rescue-desperate quiche), but there are steps you can take to make your sorry quiche servable at tomorrow’s brunch. Here we go:
Step #1: Let the quiche cool. If you need to walk away from the quiche, that’s ok. If you need to nibble a little bit of the quiche to make sure it tastes better than it looks, go ahead. But be sure not to nibble too much or your quiche will look slightly deformed after you save it.
Step #2: When your quiche-blob has cooled a bit, try sliding a (preferably) stainless-steel pancake flipper underneath the crust, without ripping the tin foil (if you didn’t use tin foil, you won’t have to worry about potential ripping).
Step #3: (this is the most difficult step) Grab a friend, husband, or other trusted individual who can help you, and who knows what a quiche is supposed to look like. As a team, slide the pie tin under the quiche-blob, simultaneously lifting and maneuvering the quiche-blob into the tin.
Step #4: Squish any outlying pieces of quiche-blob into the pie tin so that the quiche-blob begins to look a little more like a quiche. Let sit.
After successfully completing these four steps, you and your quiche should look like this:
After all of this you should give yourself a pat on the back or have your trusted individual give you a pat on the back, because you saved your quiche. It is now safely contained in a pie shape, and you can serve it at your brunch.
