Learn this basic quiche recipe and let your imagination go wild!

Quiche au Fromage de Gruyère

I am fresh back from a week in the south. I basked in the sunshine and warm temperatures, but the thing that really recharged my spirit were the plants. Everywhere I looked, there was green – trees, bushes, grasses all made a verdant backdrop for flowers exploding in color. After months of what felt like endless gray in the north, I rejoiced in the richness of spring in the south.

Back in the Kitchen, the skies continue to be steely grey and there’s a nearly steady drizzle of cold rain. This is spring in the north. Happily, the market had bunches tulips in a riot of colors. I couldn’t help myself, but honestly I didn’t try very hard to resist. A little spring in the Kitchen is nearly as good for my mood as a week in the south.

A springboard for your creativity

To keep that spring feeling going, we are making quiche this week. At its most basic, a quiche is just eggs cooked in a pastry shell. What makes quiche so interesting from a cook’s perspective (and from a diner’s too) is that eggs are a perfect base for any number of additional ingredients – bacon, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms, the list goes on and on. The flexibility of the dish means you follow a traditional path, or let your imagination go wild.

The only note of caution I’d offer is to precook ingredients that are high in water like tomatoes or mushrooms. Use them raw and they will release their water as the quiche bakes, which will affect both the texture and cooking time.

Today, we’ll start with a basic quiche recipe, but feel free to add your own touches as you like. I like to serve this with a green salad, but it works equally well as part of an antipasto board with olives, ham and crispy breadsticks or crackers.