Quiche Season
It’s Quiche Season! And custard season…and egg salad season. After a long winter of not-very-many eggs, the chicken are back in business. (It’s about time they paid their way again!)
As you may know, laying hens go through a molt in the late fall - early winter, losing their old feathers in ugly bald patches and growing new ones just in time for winter. At the same time, their laying decreases or stops completely so they can give all their energy to their new feathers. It really doesn’t pick up again until spring, when the days begin to lengthen.
Many farmers supplement their layers’ lighting over the winter to stimulate them to lay, but that’s always seemed a little unkind to me. I always appreciated a little rest between MY babies, thank you very much! I did set a light to turn on a couple hours before sunrise for my NEW egg layers, since they were just coming into lay, hadn’t molted, and didn’t need a break yet, but I gave my older girls their well-deserved winter rest. Now, they are richly rewarding us…out of 17 older layers, we’re getting about 13 eggs per day, and that is AWESOME.
Then we’ve got our new layers giving us another 12-20, and you can see why it’s Quiche Season! Even selling as many as I do, we’ve got plenty for our own consumption.
I’ve been whipping up Vanilla Custard Ice Cream, Butterscotch Custard Pie, Egg Salad Sandwiches…and Cluckery Quiche. And as I put together our quiche on Monday, I realized I had it WAY over-complicated, using a blend of THREE recipes plus my own twists!
So just in time for the spring flush of eggs, I’m consolidating my quiche recipe and sharing it with you.
What I love about quiche is its flexibility. Some kids don’t like mushrooms, some do, so I make one with and one without. I add in sauteed onions or not, according to whim. I use whatever greens I have on hand, whether that’s frozen spinach, chard, or lamb’s quarters. Grab dandelion greens in early spring for a spring detox! I never-no-never have exactly all the cheeses called for, but I’ve found it doesn’t matter. I just add handfuls of whatever cheese I DO have on hand, and it works just fine.
One caveat: leave plenty of time for making quiche. There’s lots of hands-off time as it bakes, but if I think I’ll start it at 5:30 and eat at 6:30, I’m in for a rude awakening. Thankfully, quiche is great at room temp, so it works well as a make-ahead meal.
My Cluckery Quiche Crust is really just a basic pastry crust. I’d also use it for an apple, rhubarb, or butterscotch pie!
Other than the eggs, just about everything here is optional! Use more greens or fewer greens; use heavy cream or light cream; add in onions and skip the mushrooms…flexible, flexible quiche.