Spinach and Feta Quiche

I realize that I posted a quiche recipe just a little while ago, but here’s another one anyway: no excuses, no apologies, no regrets. The basic formula is the same in its ratio of dairy and eggs, but this one has a vegetable in it. I also took down the butterfat in the filling by forgoing the luscious heavy cream and using low fat milk instead. It’s still really good. And some Parmigano-Reggiano makes up for it quite well, thank you.

While I love, love, love quiche, my relationship with pie crust has become decidedly love-hate. I want to make good pastry by hand, but find it time consuming, and when my crusts are lackluster at best, it’s really disappointing. (I try not to have rage.) For this quiche, I made my first attempt at the luxurious All Butter Pie Dough recipe in Sister Pie by Lisa Ludwinski. (I’m dying to have time to explore this book and this seemed like the proper place to start.)

This dough recipe is a labor of love, with the butter (much, much butter!) cut into the flour by hand, and the ice water-vinegar mixture worked in by hand. You may be able to do this with a food processor, but I wanted to experience this whole thing at its most primal level. About one third of the way through I was questioning my own sanity.

I used to make pie crusts this way, and I don’t remember finding them this painfully difficult. I won’t grumble, because I don’t want you to be discouraged by my laziness. I think everyone who has an interest in learning things about good food should do this for themselves. (And the engaging instructions and photos in Sister Pie are a great place to get your lessons.) In the end, the crust was probably the best I’ve ever made!

That being said, I did learn something important about making quiche, and blind baking crusts in general: you’re going to need to use visual cues and develop some experience to get the crust right. I didn’t bake mine long enough because I followed the instructions I used with the store-bought crust (and some other homemade crusts) that encased my quiches in the past. Ludwinski’s All Butter Pie Dough is special and needs more time in the oven, perhaps because of all of the butter, perhaps because the crust ends up thicker.

Ok, so quiche is much more than crust. Spinach and feta are wonderful with eggs, and this was a fabulously delicious example of that. I also stirred a dose of good parmesan (the Real stuff, actually, but use what you like) into the custard mixture, and its flavor permeates and enhances every bite. I didn’t miss the cream in the custard, but it would still be good if you like extra-rich quiche. The lighter mixture was perhaps a cleaner showcase for the spinach and the sharp, creamy feta cheese.

So, in the last few weeks, I’ve posted a rich and bacony quiche and a lighter vegetarian one. Hopefully this demonstrates the power that quiche has to take on many forms and suit many tastes and needs. Lots of things can be mixed in. It can be served at any meal. Once the crust is mastered (or purchased), it really doesn’t take very long or require many cooking tricks.

And I will continue on my pie crust Odyssey. If you really can’t do crust, there’s always frittata. Enjoy!

Spinach and Feta Quiche with Parmesan

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

You can use your favorite pie crust recipe here. I tried out the recipe for the All Butter Pie Dough in the book Sister Pie by Lisa Ludwinski, which is similar to Pate Brisee from classic sources like Martha Stewart. I found that it really needed more time in the oven during the blind baking stage, and recommend you use color and other visual cues to determine whether your crust is properly blind baked rather than time.

1 pastry for a single-crust pie

4 eggs

1 ½ cup milk (I used 2%)

¼ teaspoon coarse salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

½ cup freshly grated or shredded Parmesan cheese

About 4 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, about ½ cup once squeezed

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

1. Preheat oven to 450 F. Roll out the pastry dough into about a 12-inch circle. Drape into a 9-inch pie plate. Crimp the edges decoratively if desired.

2. Spray one side of a sheet of aluminum foil with nonstick cooking spray. Place the foil, spray side down, on the pastry. Place pie weights inside the foil. Bake the crust at 450 F for 8 minutes, or until the crust is just beginning to brown. Remove the foil and the weights. Return to the oven and bake 4-10 minutes more, or until the crust is gently browned and appears dry. The time will depend on your crust recipe, with store-bought crusts taking less time than thicker, buttery homemade ones. When the crust is finished blind baking, remove from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 325 F.

3. While the crust is baking, begin the filling. Beat the eggs in a medium-size bowl. Beat in the milk. Stir in the salt, pepper, nutmeg and Parmesan.

4. Place the pie plate with the baked crust onto a sheet pan. Spread the spinach evenly over the bottom of the crust. Sprinkle the feta cheese evenly over the spinach. Pour the egg mixture over all, being careful not to overflow the crust.

5.Place the quiche on the sheet pan into the oven and bake at 325 F for 40-45 minutes, or until the center is just set. A knife inserted in the center will come out without any liquid egg on it.

6. Remove from the oven and cool at least 10 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 8 main-dish servings. Leftovers can be covered and stored in the refrigerator. Warm in the microwave to serve (the crust will not remain crisp, but all will still be pretty tasty.)

Other recipes like this one: Bacon Cheddar Quiche, Chard Tart with Feta Cheese and Olives, Spinach and Feta Souffle, Winter Squash and Kale Frittata with Feta

One year ago: Caraway Rye Soda Bread

Coming soon: Raspberry Cream Cheese Baked French Toast!

Lemon, Olives and Feta

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.  I rarely hesitate to put feta cheese and kalamata olives in salads with greens or beans, pasta dishes, and tarts and on pizzas, but for some reason it never occurred to me to put them in a cabbage slaw.  That is, until I read the interpretation of “Lahanosalata” in Recipes from the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman.

I’ve put various vinaigrettes and creamy dressings on cabbage slaws and flavored them up with caraway, coriander, apple jelly, and horseradish. I’ve applied sesame vinaigrettes and spicy peanut dressings. I’ve added carrots, apples, cauliflower, radishes, turnips and packaged ramen noodles. But never feta cheese and kalamata olives. Huh. Well. I’m glad I was able to remedy that flaw in my repertoire.

This salad is a less summer-weather-dependent version of the Greek salad with which we’re all probably somewhat familiar. It leaves out the tomatoes and cucumber, which are unreliable at best in the supermarkets this time of year. In lieu of the more familiar lettuce or spinach that demand to be eaten as soon as the lemony dressing is poured upon them is sturdier shredded cabbage. It’s quite simple, really, and if, like me, you have a lonely cabbage threatening to dry up in your neglected refrigerator and you can’t quite face another traditional slaw, it’s a revelation. It’s exciting. It’s delicious.

I added even more lemon juice and a little lemon zest to the dressing. I liked its pucker-y zing, but if you don’t care for foods so tart or acidic, you might want to leave out a tablespoon of juice just to be safe. You can always add more if you want it. The same goes with salt. I kept the amount small, since the feta and olives contribute a lot of their own saltiness, and the acidity of the lemon juice fills in some of the flavor necessity for me that salt might in a blander dish. I recommend tasting for salt after the salad has been sitting for the recommended time in the recipe below and deciding then if it needs more.

I also added a bit of fresh parsley and a smidgeon of fresh rosemary. The rosemary just gives that little, little piney note that I like in a lemony, feta-y, olive-y dish, but I wouldn’t want it to dominate the flavors like it so easily can. Just a tiny bit is enough, and if you don’t have rosemary on hand, it probably wouldn’t be worth buying a bunch just for the pinch I added to this slaw.

Whatever you do, at least try to remember this treatment of cabbage slaw. In fact, go make it right now. Okay, at least write the idea down. It’s really great.

Cabbage Slaw with Feta and Olives
Adapted from Recipes from the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman

6 cups thinly sliced or shredded cabbage (about ¾-1 whole small head)
½ cup thinly sliced red onion
½ cup kalamata olives, pitted and coarsely chopped
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary (optional)
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste if needed
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Combine cabbage, red onion, olives, feta, parsley and rosemary in a very large bowl. Toss gently to combine.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon zest and juice, olive oil, salt and pepper until very well blended. Pour over cabbage mixture and toss gently to coat evenly. Let stand 30 minutes refrigerated or at room temperature. Taste for salt and adjusting seasoning before serving. Refrigerate leftovers for a few days

Makes 6-8 servings.


Other recipes like this one: Radish and Carrot Slaw with Zesty Citrus Dressing, Deconstructed Spanakopita Salad, Chickpea and Olive Salad with Greek Flavors

One year ago: Chicken and Vegetable Tetrazzini

Celebrating Spinach

After a lovely trip to Featherstone Farm, the farm with the CSA program in which we participate, we lucky subscribers were offered a parting gift of impossibly fresh lettuces or spinach. I had visions of a celebratory meal rather than the usual near-instant gratification of a gigantic salad with tender baby lettuces, and selected the spinach. It was a tough choice, but I was determined to learn to make soufflé this spring and the spinach was a prime flavoring candidate.

I can’t believe I’m getting this excited about a bundle of spinach, but boy, oh boy, was this great stuff! At least as tender as the so-called baby spinach you might buy in a plastic bag, but with large, deep-dark, curly leaves, so fresh as to be completely innocent of the concept of wilt. It almost seemed a shame to eat it. Perhaps I should have made it into a bouquet.

Anyway, I did get around that celebratory soufflé. I’d never made a soufflé of any kind before, but thanks to Alice Waters and her book, The Art of Simple Food, I was pretty confident that I knew what I was doing. This is a lovely book filled with basic (but by no means simplistic) recipes and guidelines for essential traditional dishes that feature high-quality ingredients and allow them to shine. The descriptions and instructions are so detailed, so minute, that you might just feel like a master before you even turn on the kitchen light. And so, with this book, I felt like I had learned how to make a soufflé and I just had to follow through.

The basic concept of the soufflé, sweet or savory, is a white sauce (or pastry cream for a sweet soufflé) flavored (in my case with fresh spinach and feta cheese), combined with egg yolks and folded together with foamy beaten egg whites. It seemed pretty complicated to me until The Art of Simple Food helped me to take everything apart and consider each step in the process individually. The good news is that each preliminary step can be done separately and the results held until you’re ready for them. There’s no real hurry from stage to stage. You have to fold the egg whites into the base as soon as they are beaten, but you don’t have to beat them until you are ready for that step.

The only thing you must do quickly is eat the soufflé when it comes out of the oven, which is the best part anyway. If you delay, this airy dish will deflate and your carefully planned procedure will have been for naught. That doesn’t mean you can’t eat a fallen (or even leftover) soufflé. It just means you’ll have something more like a frittata or a thick omelet.

For my first attempt at soufflé, this went extremely well. The spinach was beautiful and tasty and was complimented well by the intermittent pockets of semi-melted feta cheese. The dish was nice and puffy with a golden-brown surface, and I was glad that I had made some effort to find a nice round dish to make it in. A smaller dish (or bigger soufflé) would have allowed for more dramatic rising of the soufflé over the edges, but who needs drama? Especially when all you really want to do is celebrate the first fresh spinach of the season.

Spinach and Feta Souffle

Depending on how salty your feta cheese is, you might want to use less salt in this dish than I did. I prefer my egg dishes well-salted, so may have used more salt than you would like or need.

1 tablespoon butter, plus more for buttering the baking dish
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1 cup milk
½ teaspoon coarse (kosher) salt (plus more for blanching spinach if desired)
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
8 ounces fresh spinach
4 eggs, separated
3 ounces crumbled feta cheese

1. In a medium-size saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and sauté about 1 minute. Whisk the flour into the butter mixture. Cook about 1 minute more, stirring frequently.

2. Slowly whisk in the milk. Try to keep the flour mixture (roux) from forming lumps. Cook, keeping the heat at about medium-low and stirring or whisking frequently, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg. Remove from heat and set aside.


3. Bring a large pot of salted (if desired) water to a boil. Add the spinach and cook about 2 minutes or until wilted. Remove the spinach, drain and rinse in cold water or plunge into a bowl of ice water. Squeeze dry and chop. (You will not need the pot of water any more for this recipe.)

4. Pour the milk mixture (white sauce) into a large bowl. Whisk in the egg yolks one at a time. When each yolk has been incorporated, stir in the chopped spinach and feta cheese.

5. Butter the bottom and sides of a 1-1.5 liter (about 1 -1 ½ quart) soufflé dish. Preheat oven to 375 F.

6. With an electric mixer (or by hand, if you’re so inclined) beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. That is, when you lift the beater or whisk out of the egg white foam, it will stand up in peaks that do not collapse. Be careful not to overbeat the egg whites.

7. Fold the beaten egg whites into the base mixture, preferably with a rubber spatula or wide, flat spoon. To do this, spoon about one third of the whites at a time onto the base. Cut down through the whites with the edge of the spatula and turn it to bring some of the base up over the whites. Gently stir this way until the whites are incorporated with the base, leaving a puffy mixture. Try not to deflate the egg whites.

8. Spoon the mixture into the buttered soufflé dish. Bake at 375 F for 35 minutes or until the soufflé has puffed up significantly, but is still a bit wobbly if very gently shaken and the top is golden brown. Serve immediately.

Makes about 4 servings.

Other fresh spinach dishes: Deconstructed Spanakopita Salad, Spinach Salad with Apples and Maple Walnut Vinaigrette

Other egg and vegetable dishes: Zucchini Frittata with Tomatoes on Top, Potato and Bacon Frittata
One year ago: Spring Vegetable Tabbouleh