Another Swiss Chard Quiche

Okay, so I want to start by saying that I could pretty much use 4 basic recipes over and over all season long and incorporate the bulk of our CSA shares into those 4 recipes and keep my family happy.  Pizza, pasta dishes, risotto, and quiche are my go-to meals.  I have the basics of making these down and I can play around with them using a variety of different veggies and herbs and make them work.  My family is guaranteed to eat them most any time.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule though.  No one cared for the risotto-style farro with kale or the butternut squash lasagna.  This following recipe though, was a hit.  I'll give you the basic version first, and then the specifics about this one.

Sarah, here is our version of the swiss chard quiche.  I am sorry (or maybe not so sorry) to say that we did not have the same problems at our house as you did at yours.   That said, I'm not sure that it had a thing to do with the recipe, probably more so with the size of appetites in my household.  

 Swiss Chard and Garlic Scape Quiche

Basic Quiche

1 pie crust of your choice

5 eggs

2 cups milk

 (I usually just use whatever I have on hand which is most often 1% milk.  Purists would tell you that you should use heavy cream or at the least, whole milk, but through trial and error I have found that you can run the whole gamut from using heavy cream through skim milk, or any combination.)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, whisk all ingredients together, pre-bake crust for 6 minutes, pour in filling, then bake for 15 minutes as 450 degrees.  After the 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 375 degrees and continue to bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, until center is fully set and when tested with a toothpick comes out dry.

That's it, the basic recipe.  Technically, you could do that and call it a quiche.  For us though, quiche isn't quiche without cheese and something green.

 Swiss Chard and Garlic Scape Quiche

1 pie crust of your choice

5 eggs

2 cups milk
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 Tbsp olive oil

 1 small bunch swiss chard

3-4 garlic scapes

1/2 to 1 cup shredded cheese of your choice 

(we used up a bunch of white cheeses, gruyere, parmesan, and mozzarella)

Follow the steps above:

pre-bake the crust

mix the custard (stir in the cheese after the rest is whisked together)

remove the stems from the chard and chop, chop the leaves, and chop the garlic scapes

saute the garlic scapes and chard stems in olive oil for a couple of minutes then throw in the chard leaves and saute an additional 2-3 minutes.  Spread these on the bottom of the pre-baked crust.  Then pour the custard mixture over the top.  Make sure the cheese is evenly distributed.  Then bake according to the directions above.

Other great flavor combinations, spinach, swiss, and dill; broccoli and cheddar; and herbs and goat cheese.  Well, I'm the only one who eats this last combination.  Really though, we do a lot of use-it-up quiches with whatever veggies and cheese we have on hand and they almost always turn out great.

Also, don't forget about the great dairy-free quiche recipe that Sarah shared last summer!

I'll share my basic recipe for risotto with variations the next time we whip up a batch.