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Cauliflower Steak Quiche

This one is almost straight from a recent Men’s Journal article describing Cauliflower Steaks.  This takes the premise of their recipe and adds quiche to the mix.  The only difference is that after you cook these up, chop them into smaller chunks and use them in the quiche for the filling.

Serves 16 – 22

Ingredients

  • 1 head of Cauliflower
  • 2 Garlic Cloves or about 4 tspn. Garlic Paste
  • 1/2 cup Pitted Kalamata Olives
  • 1/2 cup chopped Cilantro
  • 1/4 cup Olive Oil
  • 2 tspn Red Chile Flakes
  • 4 tspn fresh squeezed Orange Juice.

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Slice the cauliflower from top to base into 3/4-inch slabs.  Crush and rub both sides of each slab with garlic.  Sauté over medium-high heat in a skillet with 1 tbsp olive oil until golden brown, about 2-4 minutes per side. Repeat this for all of your slices.

Lay all the cauliflower steaks on a baking sheet that has been lined with either parchment or foil.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast for 20 minutes.  When done, remove and allow to cool until you can easily chop them in to large chunks.  Place in a container till final assembly.

In a food processor or blender, puree the olives, cilantro, olive oil, chili flakes, and orange juice.  When complete place in a container until your ready for final assembly and cooking.

Final Assembly and Cooking

I used 2 store bought gluten free pie crusts for the one that I made.  I also substituted almond milk for the half and half in the base quiche mix.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Place the cauliflower steak chunks into the pie crusts.  In a large bowl mix up the base quiche mix as suggested above and also add in the olive citrus puree.  Thoroughly mix these ingredients together.  If you want to make it taste a little richer, add 2 teaspoons of a good quality truffle oil.  Pour the quiche mix over the cauliflower steak chucks.  The two quiches then go into the oven for 35 – 40 minutes.  Then they are ready to serve.

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Rye Pizza Style Crust

Member Content
Cooking up a quiche with corned beef, pastrami or a lot of sharp cheese?  This Rye Pizza Style Crust is a good foundation for it.

Makes 2 pie crusts

Ingredients

  • 2 – 9 in deep dish pie pans
  • 1 pkg. active dry yeast
  • 1 tsp. honey
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/3 cup med. rye flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tbsp. dark molasses
  • 2 tbsp. vegetable or olive oil

Preparation

Dissolve yeast and honey in 1/4 cup warm water and set aside until yeast foams.

Place both flours in a large bowl. Add yeast mixture, salt, molasses, oil and 1/2 cup water and stir to combine. Turn dough out into a floured board and knead until dough is smooth, about 5 minutes.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, turning so that top of dough is lightly covered with oil. Cover with towel and let rise in warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Cooking

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Remove dough from bowl and half.  Each half should be a in between baseball and softball in size.  Roll that out with a rolling pin on a floured surface until it’s about 1/4″ thick, round and a little bigger than the pie pans.  Coat the pie pans with a little brush of the oil and drop in the rolled dough.  Make ridges around the edge of the pan and remove any excess.  Using a fork poke some holes through the dough in the bottom of the pans to allow for any trapped air to escape during cooking.

Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until  the dough starts to turn a light brown.  Remove and allow to cool before putting your quiche filling into the pan.

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Triple Threat Quiche

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Late one afternoon while trying to come up with a new quiche for the skate, I was drawing a blank. So I watched some Food Network shows, and there was an inspiration. They had a guy eating a calzone with two kinds of meat, two kinds of onions, mushrooms and tomato sauce with some Swiss cheese. The only thing missing from this combination calzone is the million dollar bacon and some chile peppers for some heat.  This turns that into a nice spicy quiche.

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs of quality smoked bacon
  • 1 cup of brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon ground pepper
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 2 teaspoons red chile flakes
  • 1 lb of thin sliced beef (Philly steak meat)
  • 1 lb of thin sliced chicken (Philly style chicken meat or thin sliced rotisserie chicken breast)
  • 1/2 red onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 1/2 white onion, chopped
  • 1 can of RO*TEL Original
  • 1 cup chopped mushrooms
  • 2 cups shredded cheese, blended Dubliner and Swiss

Preparation

This requires you to make the fabulous bacon crust with the added zing of millionaire style. Weave the bacon over the pie pans and when finished coat with the cayenne, ground pepper and brown sugar. Cook in the oven at 325 degrees for 45 minutes, draining the grease roughly every 15 minutes. When done allow to cool and then refrigerate till assembly. In a medium sauce pan over medium high heat, sauté the white onions in 1 teaspoon of olive oil until they caramelize, occasionally adding water. Then add in the mushrooms and RO*TEL and continue to sauté until nearly all of the liquids are gone. Remove from heat and set aside. In the same pan, add the beef and chicken meat together and thoroughly cook. I also like to add some of the drippings from making the bacon crust to help this along. When thoroughly cooked, remove from heat and let it rest for 5 minutes before chopping up into 1/2 inch chunks. Set that aside until ready for final assembly.

Assembly

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Over the bacon crust mix together the meat mixture and the RO*TEL, mushroom and caramelized onion mixture. Then mix in the chopped red onions making sure that everything is will mixed. Prepare the usual egg mix and pour over the mixture in the pans. Top this with the shredded cheeses. Then place in the oven for 40 minutes. Remove and either serve or pack it up for the trip to the rink.

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Million Dollar Bacon

This form of bacon has been called may things, but we call it Million Dollar Bacon, because it taste like a million.

I’ve seen this done a number of ways and this will be the first in a series of slightly different versions of this style of bacon.  This is the original that started these tasty bacon hacks.  You won’t be disappointed with the sweet and spicy combination of flavors of this bacon and it’s good by itself or in just about anything else, including quiche.

Makes 24 or so slices, depending on thickness of cut

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs of quality sliced Smoked Bacon
  • 1 cup of Brown Sugar
  • 1 tspn of Ground Pepper
  • 1 tspn of Cayenne Pepper
  • 2 tspn of Red Chile Flakes

Preparation

Preparing Million Dollar Bacon
Preparing Million Dollar Bacon

Preheat oven to 300 deg.  Prepare a baking pan by lining it with foil leaving a spout in one corner to pour off the accumulated grease.  Drop in a baking rack on top of the foil.  Lay out all the strips of bacon with a small overlap between slices.  Spread on the brown sugar over the bacon till it’s got a nice coating of brown sugar.  As you work this out it’s very likely that the brown sugar will liquify by absorbing some of the moisture from the bacon.  Sprinkle the ground pepper, cayenne pepper and red chile flakes evenly over the sugared bacon.

When ready, put the bacon in the oven and bake for about 15 – 20 minutes.  Remove from oven and drain the accumulated grease from the bottom of the pan.  At this point you can either simply return the bacon to the oven, or flip the slices over and return.  If you flip them, you should dust the top with a little extra brown sugar.  When you return them to the oven continue cooking for another 15 – 20 minutes or until the bacon is starting to crisp around the edges.  Remove and allow to cool a little bit so that it becomes fully crisp.

It’s now ready to either chop up into bit sized pieces for simply devour.

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Updated Bacon Crust

Member Content
This updated bacon crust method is the result of fine tuning the bacon crust that was initially presented in the Real Men DO Eat Quiche Cookbook.

When cooking the bacon crusts, you have to pay close attention to the level of bacon grease that builds up in the pie pans as your cooking.  If it gets too high, the bacon in the bottom of the pan doesn’t cook enough and you run the risk of a fire.  And there will still be too much bacon grease left in the pan when you add the quiche ingredients in and it will be a flavorful but greasy quiche.

Makes 2 bacon quiche crusts.

Ingredients

  • 2 lb. of your favorite standard cut bacon – enough for 28 slices (14 per crust)
  • 4 – 9 in. deep dish pie pans

Preparation

Just like in the original, you’ll make a bacon weave in 2 of the pie pans.  Where this differs, is that you’ll need to put the other 2 pie pans on top of the bacon weave to make a pan – bacon – pan sandwich.  Trim off the excess bacon with no more than 1/2 in. of excess left sticking out between the pans.  Return to the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to firm up the bacon crusts.

Cooking

Preheat your oven to 35o deg.  Prepare your baking sheet by lining the bottom with aluminum foil, making sure to leave enough excess to make a pouring spout on one corner.  Then place a baking grill inside the foil lined sheet.  Take the prepared pans out of the refrigerator and carefully flip them over and place on the baking grill.  This will allow the grease to run off of the pans and down into the baking sheet.  Place these in the oven and bake for 10 –  15 minutes.  Remove from oven and drain the grease from the foil spout while carefully holding the pans on the grill.  You should be using hot pads of something to protect your hands from the heat.  Place it back into the oven for another 10 – 15 minutes and repeat the draining and then set aside to cool.  Flip the pans back over and remove the top pan.  You can wash this pan up and use it again for another crust.  Then either add your filling to continue cooking your quiche or refrigerate the bacon crusts until your ready to fill with a quiche mix.  Cook the rest of the way as by the instructions for the quiche filling.