mediterranean quiche

i am continuing to stick to my plan to make one quiche each week to try learn "the art of the quiche". this week i selected a mediterranean quiche from emeril lagasse. i found the recipe online at the food network website. it is made with zucchini, mushroom, onions, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and a healthy dose of basil. but the best part is all the goat cheese which gets sprinkled over the top before you pop it in the oven.

this is one hell of a recipe! i usually think of quiche as a breakfast or light lunch food. probably because i think of the typical quiche filled with egg and spinach. i wasn't aware of all the varieties . . . which is of course is why i am trying out all these different recipes. this quiche is very rich and filling. i would definately serve it for dinner. it is not a breakfast recipe. the combination of flavors is absolutely amazing. there is something about the goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes that makes it taste like something you ordered in a funky restaurant in some botiquey part of town. i would be happy to pay $12 for a slice of this for lunch with a light salad. it is that good. in fact this is something i would make for a special dinner or when serving guests. it is very impressive and quite simple to make which is perfect for entertaining.

even though it came out well, i really botched it up while trying to follow the recipe. first of all, it calls for gruyere cheese and even after searching for it for twenty minutes in the supermarket - in all the different cheese sections - i could not find it. i had no idea what type of cheese is similar to gruyere. i think it is a mild cheese so i just choose shredded mozzerella. i figured that wouldn't overwhelm the veggies like swiss might. of course when i came home i looked it up online and discovered that i should have used swiss as a substitute for gruyere. oh well, i wasn't going to head back to the store. it ends up though that it only calls for half of a cup to be mixed in with a cup and a half of half&half so i don't think it really mattered that much.

instead of making the homemade pie crust i purchased the premade kind in the freezer section. i am intimidated about making my own pie cruse since i consider myself more of a chef than a baker and have never made a pie before. i guess i did not buy the right size. when i poured the cream and egg filling on top of the veggies in the pie crust, it overflowed all over the place. i had a total mess. and i didn't even get to use half of the liquid! i noticed that there were "deep" pie crusts available. i probably was supposed to buy those.

overall, my quiche came out well and will be an awesome leftover lunch for a few days this week. the taste of it way surpassed my expectations and i learned a lot of lessons about making quiches. so i consider it a really good success. i'm glad i got up off the damn couch to cook for a while because it was fun. i kind of like it when i get little goof ups and challenges. i used to freak out but the one thing i have learned from scrapbooking is that there are no such things as mistake. it's all art (yes, i consider cooking a form of creativity and art) and these little hiccups force your hand to personalize things and make them your own.