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Grilled Artichoke, Bacon, Olive and Mushroom Quiche

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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.

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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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Stuffed Bacon Wrapped Dates

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These were found while on a trip to DC.  This is the basic recipe for these sweet and flavorful bite sized snacks.  Bacon Wrapped Dates are actually a favorite snack dish from Spain.  But these are ramped up a bit by stuffing them.  Also this recipe isn’t quite the traditional recipe because in Spain these would be breaded and deep fried.  We are trying to keep this a little healthy right!

This makes 32

Ingredients

  • 16 slices of thin sliced bacon
  • 32 pitted dates
  • 32 thin slices of apricot (about 6 dried apricots)
  • 1/2 cup shelled pistachios (at least 64)

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Cut the bacon slices in half.  Slice up the apricots.  Stuff each date with the slice of apricot and at least 2 pistachios.  Then wrap this in the half slice of bacon and secure with a toothpick.  Line a baking pan with foil or parchment to catch the grease that will come off these while cooking and then place a baking rack on top of the pan.  Place each of the stuffed bacon wrapped dates on the rack with the toothpick horizontal.  This all goes into the oven for 10 minutes.  Then flip each date by the toothpick and cook for another 8 minutes.  Remove and these are best served at least warm.

If you want to make these even better serve them with a dipping sauce.  Make a quick and easy Chutney Mustard Sauce by mixing 6 tablespoons of a Dijon Mustard or Beer Mustard with 6 tablespoons for Chutney in a pan over medium heat for about 5 minutes.