Real Men love this Quiche

Ingredients:
2 Deep-dish friend pie crusts
12-16 ounces thick cut bacon, cut into narrow strips (or “lardons”)
1/2 sweet onion, finely chopped
5 oz bag fresh spinach, chopped
4 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
2 1/2 cups half-and-half
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
8 ounces Gruyere or Swiss, grated
Simple Salad, recipe follows

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line the pie crusts with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake until the crust is set, 12 to 14 minutes. Remove the paper and weights and bake until golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on.
In a medium skillet, cook the bacon until crisp and the fat is rendered. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Reserve some of the bacon grease for sauteing the onions in. When almost done, add spinach and cook down. Sprinkle a small amount of cheese over the bottom of the baked crust, then arrange the bacon evenly, and finally, the onion and spinach mixture. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, yolks, and half and half. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk to combine. Pour into the prepared crust and bake until the custard is golden, puffed, and set yet still slightly wiggly in the center, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes before serving. Serve with Simple Salad.


Simple Salad:
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
optional 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup olive oil Mesclun salad mix or favorite greens
Beat the vinegar in a bowl with the sugar, garlic, salt and pepper until sugar and salt dissolves. Then beat in the oil by droplets, whisking constantly. (Or place all the ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake to combine.) Taste and adjust the seasonings. Toss a few tablespoons of the dressing with the salad mix and serve immediately. If not using dressing right away, cover and refrigerate, whisking or shaking again before use.

Savory Sweet Potato Pie

Finished product

Made a new dish this evening! I was inspired by a new hamburger restaurant in Madison: SmashBurger. They make sweet potato fries tossed in olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary (Sweet Potato SmashFries), and then serve with bleu cheese dressing. Well, Adrienne and I were talking and I wondered about a savory sweet potato pie with the same elements as the fries.

So, I went to the store for supplies (sweet potatoes, bleu cheese, pie crust, eggs). I called and got advice from my Aunt Janice on how to bind the pie and she suggested a milk and egg mixture like a quiche.

Once home, I tried to find a recipe to copy...there wasn't one. So, I made a mis-mash of about 4 recipes.  Preheat the oven to 350 °F (I have a thermometer in my oven to ensure cooking temps).  Line a cookie sheet with some parchment paper or aluminum foil, cause if you get a little spillage, it's a beast to clean.  I followed the directions on the pie crust and didn't prebake the pie crust; however, I did pull it out of the freezer and let it warm up on the cookie sheet while I prepared everything else.

I sliced one-and-a-half potatoes (a little over 1 lb) with my food processor, so that they would be super thin.

Uniformity!

Chopping by hand - boo

I always keep bacon in the freezer for seasoning food, and in my opinion, it is easier to cut when frozen.

Lardon

Happy bacon starting to render

Next, I cooked half of the potatoes with a slice of chopped bacon for 5 minutes on medium heat.  Leave the lid on and stir half-way through.  Transfer the first batch of potatoes from the pan to a large bowl to cool.  Repeat this process with the other half of the potatoes.

Cooking with the lid on steams the potatoes

To cool the potatoes faster, push them up the sides of the bowl.

Hmm, what to do about the bleu cheese?  (Do this concurrently with the potatoes, if possible.)  In a small, heavy bottom saucepan, heat 1/2 cup whole milk over low heat.   Add in approximately 0.3 lbs bleu cheese and, stirring constantly, melt the bleu cheese, taking care to not scald the milk.  Once it is mostly uniform, pour the mixture into a bowl to cool slightly.  Whisk in other 1/2 cup milk.

Right after adding all the roughly sliced bleu cheese.

I've got the eggs and milk sitting on the oven to warm up.

Milk on Low, potatoes on slightly above Medium.

Mommy's little helper

In another bowl, add a little less than 1 T fresh, chopped rosemary.  Add 3 eggs, 1/8 tsp sea salt, and fresh cracked pepper. Whisk.

Gradually, ladle 3 or 4 spoonfuls of the warm milk-cheese mixture into the eggs, ensuring to whisk the eggs constantly.  If you were to just pour all of the milk into the egg mixture, you would risk cooking your eggs.  Scrambled eggs.  Yuck.  We want custard.  Anyway, now you can add the egg mixture into the rest of the milk-cheese mixture.  Whisk to blend.

Sorry this pic is blurry.  3 to 4 ladle spoonfuls of milk-cheese mixture have been added to the eggs.

Egg, bleu cheese, and milk mixture.

Ok, almost there.  Remove the potatoes from the fridge, get the cookie sheet with the pie crust, and grab the egg-cheese-milk mixture.  Find a piece of counter top to assemble the pie.  Put down a single layer of potatoes on the bottom and side of the pie crust.

Add a couple (3 for me) of ladle spoonfuls of the egg-cheese-milk mixture on top of the potatoes.

Repeat layering until the pie is full, ending with a the egg-cheese-milk mixture on top.

Carefully, transfer the cookie sheet to the oven, and let the magic happen.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the pie reads an internal temperature of 165 to 185 °F.  Remove and allow to cool some.

Check out the layers!

Slice.  Serve.  Enjoy.  Repeat.  What I really like about this dish, is that
 it is sturdy enough to hold it's shape, but tender enough so that when you cut it with your fork, you don't pull out a whole slice of potato.