Posted on

Chicken Parmesan Quiche

Member Content
Chicken Parmesan Quiche with a Puff Pastry Crust
Chicken Parmesan Quiche with a Puff Pastry Crust

Everyone at the rink seems to like Chicken Parmesan, so this was a request from the teams.  It has the usual chopped breaded chicken breasts, tomato sauce and the required cheeses, plus a little but of bacon just to help finish it.  It is a breakfast meal after all.

I made this version with a puff pastry crust and top to try and lighten it up and add some crisp flakiness.  But it’s also good in a regular crust or a fritatta.

Serves: 16 – 22 (2 quiches)

Ingredients

  • 4 boneless skinless Chicken Breast halves
  • 4 slices good quality Bacon, chopped
  • 2 tspn. Salt
  • 2 tspn. Pepper
  • 2 Garlic Cloves, chopped
  • 1 extra egg
  • 1/4 cup Italian Seasoned Breadcrumbs
  • 1/4 cup Sun Dried Tomatoes, chopped
  • 1/4 cup of your favorite Spaghetti Sauce
  • 1 cup shredded slices Mozzarella Cheese
  • 1 cup shredded Parmesan Cheese
  • 2 Puff Pastry Crusts

Preparation

Place each Chicken Breast in between a couple of sheets of plastic and pound the breasts out evenly until they are about 1/4 – 1/2 inch thick.  The thinner the better.  Then prepare an egg wash in a small bowl using the extra egg by whisking if with a fork.  In another bowl or plate large enough to hold each of the chicken breasts, place the breadcrumbs.  Working one breast at a time, dip each flattened chicken breast in the egg wash.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper and garlic on each flattened chicken breast.  Place in the breadcrumbs to coat evenly on all sides.

Chop up the bacon into 1/2 inch chunks, put them into a skillet on medium high heat and cook until done.  Remove bacon from skillet and place on a paper towel to drain.  When drained, place in a container and refrigerate until ready for final assembly.

In the same skillet, with the bacon remains, cook each of the Chicken Breasts until browned on each side.  Remove and place this on some paper towels to drain.  Repeat for each piece of chicken.  When they are all cool enough to handle, chop them into 1/2 – 1 inch chunks and place in a container and refrigerate until ready for final assembly.

Chop the Sun Dried Tomatoes into small pieces and store until ready for final assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Place evenly into each of the two pie crusts the prepared chicken breasts and chopped sun dried tomatoes.  Prepare the usual base quiche mix and add to it the spaghetti sauce mixing thoroughly.  Pour this mixture into the pans leaving about 1/8 from the top of the crust.  Cover with the two cheeses and top that with the bacon slices.  If you’ve saved the puff pastry top, put that on top of the everything and place in the oven for 30 – 40 minutes, or until the top is fluffy and turning golden brown.  Remove and it’s ready to go.

Posted on

Greek Gyro Quiche

Member Content
Lamb and Beef Greek Gyro Quiche
Lamb and Beef Greek Gyro Quiche

While this one is similar to the one in the Real Me DO Eat Quiche cookbook it is a more authentic Greek Gyro Quiche primarily because it uses a different cut of lamb and adds in some beef and falafel as well.  This one also can be done with either the pizza crust or a regular crust.  I just haven’t figured out how to make a pita bread crust yet, but I’m still working on it.  Also, this falafel recipe is really good, but as with most things good, it takes time.  What I usually do is pick up 5 falafel from Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill just to cut down on the work.

Ingredients

Meats

  • 1/2 lb. ground lamb
  • 1/2 lb. ground hamburger
  • 1 cup shredded onion
  • 2-3 minced garlic cloves
  • 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground marjoram
  • 1 teaspoon ground rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon ground thyme
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Falafel

  • 1/2 cup canned chickpeas, drained and dried for 30 minutes
  • 1 tbsp. fine-grain bulgur
  • 1/2 medium yellow onion –  finely chopped
  • 1 minced garlic clove
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley leaves
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • Pinch freshly ground black pepper, or more to taste
  • Pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste
  • Pinch turmeric, or more to taste (optional)
  • Pinch cardamom seeds (optional)
  • Vegetable oil to cook with

Extras

  • 1/2 cup Greek Yogurt
  • 1 small shredded cucumber
  • 2 minced garlic cloves
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 cup loose chopped lettuce
  • 1 cup diced tomatoes
  • 1 cup feta cheese
  • 2 teaspoon sumac

 

 

Preparation

Meats

Either in a food processor or a mixing bowl, combine all of the ingredients listed above and mix thoroughly.  Place in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to chill.  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and prepare a baking tray by lining it with foil and putting a grill on top of the foil.  Remove the meat from the refrigerator and with damp hands either roll this into a long 1-1/2 inch tube or into 1-1/2 meat balls.  I like the tube approach as the meat seems to loose less moisture when cooking.  Put the meat on the grill in the baking tray and place in the oven for 30 -40 minutes.  You want this to just start to get some crispness developing on outside.  Another way to do this would be to cook this on your flame grill and that would be quicker.  When done remove and allow to cool until you can chop this meat up into small chunks no larger than 1/2 inch.  Refrigerate until ready for final assembly.

Falafel

Put the chickpeas in a food processor and grind them up until they are all like small enough that they are almost a powder.  You should also be able to squeeze this together and it stick together.  If it’s too wet let it dry some more.  Put all of the other dry Falafel ingredients into a large mixing bowl and thoroughly mix.  Then mix in the ground chickpeas until everything is completely mixed together.  Then add 1 – 2 teaspoons of water and stir well.  Cover and set aside, while you prepare a large skillet with about 2 inches of vegetable oil.  Heat to at least 325 degrees.  Taking enough of the falafel mixture from the bowl with damp hands, and form into a 1 – 1/2 to 2 inch ball.  There should be enough to make about 6 – 8 balls.  Then slowly add them to the oil and cook for about 3 – 4 minutes each.  They should be brown and crispy when they are ready.  Remove them and place on a paper towel to drain and cool down.  When they are cool enough to chop, cut each ball into 4 pieces and refrigerate till ready for the final preparation.

Extras

To make the Tzatziki, skin and shred and de-seed the cucumber and place this on a paper towel to dry for a few minutes.  In a bowl, mix the yogurt, olive oil and 1 minced garlic clove together.  Then add the shredded cucumber and mix thoroughly.  Refrigerate till assembly.

Chop up the lettuce and tomatoes and mix them together with a pinch of salt.  Refrigerate this separately until ready for final assembly.  You should also have 1 minced garlic clove left that you’ll want to refrigerate till assembly.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat oven to 375.  Prepare the base quiche mix and instead of the 1/2 cup of milk, fold in the Tzatziki yogurt and mix thoroughly.  Get the other ingredients from the refrigerator and  mix them loosely into the pie crusts.  Pour the modified base quiche mix over that.  Then top with some chunks of feta cheese, the remaining minced garlic cloves and a light sprinkling of sumac.  Bake for 30 – 40 minutes until the top starts to turn golden brown.  Remove from the oven and either serve right away or pack it up for the rink.

Posted on

Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche

Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche
Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche

At the beginning of Carl’s Jr. attempt to spice up their menu they came out with a buffalo wing inspired featured burger that they called the Buffalo Blue Cheese Burger.  It was pretty good, but didn’t quite have the right mix of flavors, in my opinion.  But it got us working on making a quiche inspired by it and some other ideas.  This Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche took a few tries to get right.

Serves: 16 – 22

Ingredients

  • 1.5 – 2 lb. 80/20 Hamburger
  • 2 tspn salt
  • 4 tspn black pepper
  • 1 extra egg
  • 1/2 cup of Panko or bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup – of your favorite buffalo wing sauce (we found Frank’s RedHot Wing Sauce works best)
  • 1 cup – chopped tomato
  • 1 cup – chopped lettuce
  • 1 cup – chopped red onion
  • 1 cup – chopped white onion
  • 1 cup – shredded Swiss cheese
  • 1 cup – crumbled Blue cheese
  • 2 pie crusts

Preparation

Prepare all of the items that need to be chopped by cutting into 1/4 – 1/2 inch sized chunks.  Fine chop the white onions.  You can put the tomato, lettuce and red onion into the same container and return to the refrigerator until final assembly.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the hamburger, salt, pepper, chopped white onions, extra egg and panko.  Make sure this is fully mixed together.  Add in half of the wing sauce and thoroughly mix.  Save the rest of the wing sauce until final preparation.  Form the meat into 3 – 5 hamburger patties.  On a medium high heat either in a skillet or preferably on a grill, and cook the patties until they are starting to get a little char on the outside, medium well.  Remove from grill and allow to rest until cool enough to chop into 1/2 sized chunks.  Put the chopped burgers in a container and refrigerate until final assembly.

For the crust, you can use a basic crust or if you want to take it up a notch make a bacon crust.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  In a large mixing bowl combine the tomato, lettuce, red onion and burger together and mix.  Then half and put each half into each pie crust.  Prepare the basic quiche mix and mix into it the 1/4 cup of wing sauce that you didn’t use in preparing the hamburger.  Pour this over the chopped ingredients in the pie crusts.  Mix together the cheeses and spread evenly on top of the pies.  Sprinkle a little salt and pepper if you want for a little extra seasoning.  Into the oven the pies go for 30 – 40 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown.  Remove and it’s ready to go.

Posted on

Updated Potato Crust

Member Content
Since the Real Men DO Eat Quiche cookbook was completed, I’ve come up with a new way to make this crust which tastes just as good, maybe a little better, and most important it holds up better when cutting.  Most of the credit for this goes to Rachel Ray.  I don’t know her or anything like that, but she did a quiche once that had a potato crust that used corn starch to help bond the potatoes together.  That got me to experimenting with different amounts of corn starch in my usual Simply Potatoes, Southwestern Hash Browns base.  Turns out that you don’t need much corn starch to make this work well.  And you can even substitute coconut oil or olive oil for butter to try and keep this kind of healthy.  The bigger bonus, it doesn’t take as much time to cook as the original recipe.

Ingredients

  • 2 nine inch pie pans
  • 2 tablespoons of either butter, olive oil or coconut oil
  • 1 package Simply Potatoes Southwestern Hash Browns (or 4 cups of shredded potatoes with your favorite seasonings)
  • 2 tablespoons corn starch

Preparation

In a large mixing bowl, mix the potatoes and corn starch thoroughly.  In each of the pie pan apply a coating of either the butter, olive oil or coconut oil.  Take half of the potato mixture from the bowl and place it in the bottom of the first pan.  Spread out the mixture from the center to the edges so that there is an even coating of the potato mixture that is about 1/4 inch thick.  Try to go all the way up on the top lip of the pan if possible.  Repeat this for the other pan.  Put both of them in the refrigerator and turn on your oven to preheat at 400 degrees.  When the preheat is done (about 10 minutes) remove the pans from the refrigerator and put them in the oven for about 10 – 15 minutes or until the potatoes start to brown.  Remove and allow to cool before putting a quiche mixture in them.

Posted on

Grilled Artichoke, Bacon, Olive and Mushroom Quiche

Member Content
On a food hunting visit to Denver, my wife ordered a really good pizza. It was an Artichoke, Olive, Mushroom and Garlic pizza from Fat Sully’s, home of the biggest pizza I’ve ever seen. A 26 inch round thin crust pizza and its awesome.

This pizza prompted this recipe. I just added bacon because everything is better with bacon. You can either use the recipe provided for the grilled artichokes or you can just buy some already prepared and skip 90 percent of the preparation. You’ll just need to add the rosemary and thyme into the egg mixture instead of cooking the artichokes with it. This is really good with the pizza crust from Real Men DO Eat Quiche, but you can just use a prepared pie crust if you like.

Serves 16 -22

Ingredients

  • 2 grilled artichokes (or 2 – 8 oz. jars of prepared artichokes)
  • 1/2 lemon, cut into wedges (1 tablespoon of lemon juice if using prepared artichokes)
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary
  • 1/2 tablespoon of fresh chopped thyme
  • 1/2 tablespoon sea salt
  • 1/2 cup garlic, grilled
  • 1/2 cup black olives, chopped
  • 1 cup mushroom, chopped
  • 8-10 slices bacon chopped
  • 2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 2 pie crusts of your choosing
  • Optional – 1/2 cup tomato sauce (a fire roasted pizza sauce makes for the best flavor)

Preparation

First you must prepare to grill the artichokes and garlic.  Take the chopped rosemary and thyme and place it in a small microwave safe bowl.  Pour in the olive oil and then microwave it for about 30 seconds (or you can do this on a stove top on medium high heat for about 4-5 minutes).  The set this aside and let everything mingle while you prepare the artichokes.

Get a large pot with about an inch of water in the bottom and a steamer rack ready.  To prepare the artichokes you’ll need to have some scissors and the lemon wedges ready.  Trim all the points off with the scissors and rub with the lemon wedges.  This keeps the artichoke from turning brown and loosing some flavor.  You’ll also want to cut off about 1/2 inch of the pointy top of the artichoke with a knife and rub it with the lemon as well.  Use a vegetable peeler to remove the thick outer layer on the stems and then trim the stem to 2 inches from the base of the artichoke and rub all these surfaces with the lemon wedge.  Then cut the artichokes in half.  Then use a strong metal spoon to the fuzzy chokes and small inner leaves.  Again rub everything you just cut with the lemon juices.
Immediately turn on high heat for the pot and bring the water to a boil.  As soon as it boils, reduce the heat to medium high and place the artichokes, cut side down on the steamer rack.  Cover and steam for about 20 minutes.   To be sure you should be able to easily pull off an outer leaf and easily poke through the artichoke with a knife.

Remove when done and start your grill for high heat.  While the grill is heating, break apart a garlic clove and coat with a light coating of the seasoned oil you prepared first.  Make a little tray out of foil to hold the garlic clove on the grill and place the coated garlic in the tray.  Then rub the oil all over the artichoke with a pastry brush and sprinkle a little sea salt all over them.  Place all this on the grill, artichokes cut side down on the grill.  Cover and grill for about 5 to 10 minutes.  Remove from the grill and allow both the garlic and the artichokes to cool.  Break up the artichokes by pulling each leaf from the stem.  The using the edge of a knife, scrape the tender meat from the inside of each leaf.  Also the stem and some of the heart will have some soft meat, chop that into small pieces too.  Also fine chop the garlic.  Store until ready to assemble the quiche.

Or you can just get these already prepared and skip the above labor intensive steps.  I’ve only done this once.  From now on, I’ll buy them prepared!

Chop up 1/2 cup of black pitted olives into small chunks.  Chop 1 cups of mushrooms into small 1/2 inch sized bits and put both of these away till assembly.  If you’ve still got the grill going, grill the bacon strips on the grill, so you don’t have to disposing of the grease.  Just keep and eye on them as they cook really quick and the potential for a grease fire that will burn them is very high.  Should only take about 2-4 minutes per side.  Allow to cool and chop into small 1/2 inch chunks and store till assembly.

Assembly

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  If you do use the pizza crust make sure to coat the crust with some clarified butter before you put all the ingredients in.  It will help keep the crust a little crispy while cooking.  Prepare your usual egg mixture and mix in 1 cup of the mozzarella into the mixture.  Also if you choose to add the tomato sauce, it goes into the egg mixture too to make it taste a little pizza like.  Gather all the other ingredients together and thoroughly mix together.  Place the mixture into the pie pans and pour the egg mixture over them.  Mix this gently to make sure everyone is thoroughly mixed.  Top with the remaining cheese and place in the oven for 40 minutes.

Remove and serve or pack it for the rink.