What We Share 4.2 - Crustless Quiche

Welcome to the second April installment of What We Share! I’m so relieved to be here with you. Here’s a recipe to try out and a playlist to listen to.

Let’s Listen

This playlist is all about the dreamy feeling of working in the garden at dusk. Everything here is either ready for harvest or close to it. The bees are half-drunk and heavy and busy. Everything smells like spring. The songs on this playlist feel like nudging big leaves aside to hide mantis egg sacs, moving caterpillars off the vegetables and onto the lawn, watching fat strawberries redden a day at a time until suddenly they're irresistible.

As always, you can listen in any order. If you don’t have Spotify but want to put the playlist together for yourself some other way, the songs are all right here.

Let’s Cook

Springtime comes with random, absurd abundance. If you're anything like me, you've got a thousand little bits of things floating around in the fridge, waiting for you to do something with them. To solve this, and to feel some of the unhinged glee of spring, I've been making a dish that's unspeakably simple and absolutely decadent.

Let’s make Crustless Quiche.

(By the way, some folks will tell you that a crustless quiche is a frittata. This is kind of true, but kind of not; quiche has more milk than frittata, and frittata gets cooked on the stove, while quiche goes into the oven. All that said, if you make this dish and call it a frittata, I promise not to come yell at you about it.)

Step Zero — Prep!

• Preheat your oven to 350F.
• Acquire six eggs. I know, that seems like a lot of eggs, but... this dish is pretty much Eggs + Stuff.
• Shake and open a can of coconut milk.
• Grate a cup of cheese of your choosing. I like a blend of jack and cheddar.

Step One — Put it all together. Drop everything into a blender or food processor. Add salt and pepper. Go whZZZZZZZZZ for about a minute.

Step Two — Cook it. Pour the whole deal into a pie dish (I like my OXO pie dish best, not least because it has a lid). Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the top is a little brown and the center is set (not jiggly) but not dry. Let it cool in the pan for about 15 minutes before serving.

Can you believe how easy that was? You made a crustless quiche! Just like that! It should be velvety, rich, and delicious.

That's just the base recipe. You can add tons of stuff to it, and you can make loads of modifications. First, here are all your substitution options:

• If you don't have a blender or food processor, that's okay! Grate the cheese fine as you can, then beat everything together with a whisk for several minutes or until your arm threatens to pack up and head for the coast. You might end up with something a little denser than I get using the blender, but it'll still cook up swell.
• If you don’t do cheese, you can leave it out or use a cheese substitute of your choice, so long as your cheese substitute will definitely melt. In my experience, lots of Daiya non-cheese melts pretty well. Miyokos is great, and gets kind of soft inside but doesn't melt in a way that'll integrate into the eggs.
• If you don't do eggs, I don't have direct experience that can help you, but my understanding is that liquid egg substitutes like Just Egg (made from mung bean) work great in egg-forward dishes. If you do eat eggs but are trying to reduce your fat/cholesterol intake, it's okay to leave out some yolks when you make this dish – it won't be as rich, but the structure will hold up fine thanks to the protein in the whites.
• If you don’t do coconut milk, substitute another milk. Literally any milk. Oat milk, goat milk, stoat milk. Go wild.

Now, let's talk additions! Infinite versatility, seriously. You can add one to two cups of whatever you want. I like to put my Added Ingredients in the bottom of the pie tin and then slowly pour the egg mixture over them, to ensure even distribution. Here are some combinations to start you off, if you're not sure where to begin:

• Make duxelles (which we renamed Varenne last year in honor of a guy who doesn't suck. Click that link for the recipe). Sweat some greens on the stove until they've lost a lot of moisture and volume. Layer both in the bottom of your pie dish.
• Flake a salmon filet with two forks (or just open a can of salmon, if you have it). Combine with capers, dried garlic, dried onion, black and white sesame seeds, and poppyseeds. Put that in the bottom of your dish; halfway through the cooking time, gently lay very thin slices of lemon on top of the half-cooked quiche.
• Simmer some diced tomatoes and onions until they've given up most of their moisture. Meanwhile, combine ground beef (or turkey, chicken, lamb, whatever) with garlic powder, onion powder, ground cumin, paprika, oregano, sage, and however much cayenne you like. Brown thoroughly. Pour off the grease (not down the sink! save your pipes!). Combine it all in the bottom of the dish and serve your quiche with avocado and fresh chopped cilantro.

Those are just a few options out of an infinite stretch of possibilities. The biggest key is not to put too much moisture under the egg mixture – you don't want a soggy quiche, that's no fun. Beyond that, the sky's the limit. Experiment! Improvise! Exercise your hubris! If not now, then when?

Thanks for being here, friends. If you’ve been experiencing the April book and beverage, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below! Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you’ve been modifying and substituting as needed. Remember, our conversations about these experiences aren’t limited to a particular time — there’s nothing quite like connecting over things we share across time and space.

Let’s put some good music on and cook a meal together.

—Gailey