Foodie, Formerly Fat

When our daughter was almost a year old she’d been eating “solid food” for about eight months, but no “table food” yet. The distinction being that even when babies can chew food they shouldn’t have all the salt and spices that go into adult food. (These are distinctions that parents of only/first children make and subsequently go out the window when the second kid arrives. At five months old my son ate a French fry off my sister’s plate… oh, well!) But I digress…

Anyway, at just under a year old my daughter was staring longingly at the spinach and feta quiche my husband was eating, so I said, “Give her some”. The result is that she ate the whole piece and wanted more. Almost five years later it’s still one of her favorite foods and I make this about once every two weeks. When the four/five/six year old requests spinach, you provide it. Enough said. It also makes me feel virtuous when I serve it for dinner with a salad and I can delude myself that it’s a meal that can help compensate for the 10 lemon bars I ate last week! (That post will come in time.)

But seriously, quiche tends to get a bum rap and be viewed as a high fat food. The truth is that it often is, if you buy it commercially made in the grocery store or local bakery. However, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, when I make it, it’s not. Most commercially produced quiches are made with heavy cream in them! Fat city! But when I make my quiche I skip the heavy cream altogether and make it with 1 or 2% milk, and sometimes part skim milk. One slice of my quiche has about 15 grams of fat (crust included) rather than the 26 grams in a store bough quiche and about 250 calories versus about 350 calories. These are substantial differences that in no way shape or form impact the taste. I say this with confidence because this is far and above the most requested thing I make.

Spinach Quiche:
3 eggs
1 ½ cups milk
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/8 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
3 scallions sliced thin
1 10 oz package frozen spinach (defrosted, drained, and chopped again)
4 oz. shredded Monterey jack cheese
4 oz. crumbled feta cheese
1 tbsp unbleached all purpose flour

1 pie crust (I sometimes use the roll out ones from the dairy case if I’m in a hurry)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

Roll the pie crust out and put it in the pie plate with tin foil on top and filled with pie weights or uncooked rice or dried beans to weigh it down. Bake for 10 minutes and then remove from the oven.

After the pie crust is out of the oven reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Beat eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg in a bowl. Mix in the scallions.

Squeeze out all of the water from the spinach and then give it a rough chop before adding it to the egg mixture.

In a separate bowl mix the cheese and flour together. Once all the cheese is coated with flour add it into the egg mixture. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake for 45-60 minutes. Test for a toothpick to come out clean before taking the quiche out of the oven. (In my oven it’s usually done in 50 minutes.)

Allow the quiche to rest for an hour at room temperature before serving.