Spring quiche...

I had to get a head start on tonight's dinner, Asparagus, Leek and Gruyère Quiche, as I wanted to make a homemade crust and it needed a couple stints in the refrigerator before it would be ready to bake.

If you haven't gotten your hands dirty and made your own pie crust, it's the perfect time to give it a try! A few tips to help you along - make sure that all your ingredients are cold - the butter, the water and even the flour if you think about it before hand. When you work the butter into the flour, you want it to be distributed throughout and have some lumpy pieces about the size of a pea to ensure that sought-after flakiness. Once you begin to add the water, don't mix it like crazy to get it to come together in a ball - work with it just long enough so the flour looks moistened and if you squeeze a handful of the mixture, it should hold together well.

Once it gets to that point, toss the crumbly mass onto your work surface and work it into a disc - stop right then, wrap it well and put it into the refrigerator to give the butter time to firm back up and the flour to finish absorbing the liquid. After we rolled the chilled dough out and fitted it into our pie dish, it needed to once again go back into the refrigerator to get cold again - since this crust isn't pre-baked, this will help the dough keep its shape and not slump down once it hits the heat from the oven.

To go on top of that buttery crust, we first placed an ample layer of shredded Gruyère cheese, followed by a cooked and cooled mixture of leeks and thinly sliced asparagus. To round out the quiche, the rest of the filling is a concoction of half-and-half, eggs and a pinch of fresh grated nutmeg for a little zing. The half-and-half adds to the luscious nature of this quiche and since you've already gone and made your own crust, you might as well enjoy the extra calories. However, you could swap that out with milk if you wanted it to be a little lighter.

When baking, be sure you set this quiche on lowest rack in your oven so the crust gets the extra fire to cook the bottom through. After it is ready, you'll want to give this at least a 15 minute rest so the egg-y mixture has a chance to firm up before you slide your knife in. I loved how the Gruyère seemed to not overtake the quiche, but still made itself known with a pleasant nuttiness. Jeff commented how the freshness of the spring asparagus worked well to cut through the richness of the quiche and after finishing his portion, he was left feeling satisfied without being weighed down. If you know you'd like to make this substantial dish for dinner, but won't have the time to do all the prep work, you could even assemble and bake this off ahead of time if needed. Just slide it back into the oven and rewarm the next day until the center is thoroughly heated through!

Recipes

Asparagus, Leek and Gruyère Quiche