Sweet As Pie: Trisha Yearwood's Country Quiche

Last year, one of our very first Sweet as Pie Cooking Club recipes was for the Pioneer Woman Quiche.  Prior to that, I'd never made a quiche before.  It was so delicious that we ended up making it a few times last year.  It was not particularly difficult, but it did take some ingredients that we might not typically have in the house, and it took a lot of eggs and heavy cream.  It was good, but it was expensive and not the healthiest endeavor.  I guess that is what quiche should be, really: a rich treat.

This month it was my turn to pick recipes for the Sweet As Pie Cooking Club again.  Confession: I've been so busy and so bad at managing this year, that I haven't cooked even my own two most recent picks!  I've also been disappointed with some of our club's picks this year -- I think because we've opened it to recipes from "wherever," we've hit upon a fair number of duds.  (This is also true of some Pinterest recipes I've made this year.  Everything on Pinterest is "the best ever," and all that really means is that too many Pinterest-ers have limited palates and dining experiences.)  Sometimes it's pretty clear the recipes aren't written by people who are adept at sharing recipes -- things are described in odd quantities, or quantities are left out altogether, and other times it's been that recipes are rife with grammatical errors.  Anyway, it's silly stuff I suppose, but I've been less than impressed.  Of course in other instances, I've been tickled with how great the food came out.  But I'm me.  I don't need to know something has been tested ten thousand times when I trust the tester, but when I get ready to cook something and spend good money on groceries, I like to know it's not going to be a waste of my time and my money.

In the meantime, I've fallen in love with Trisha Yearwood's cooking show (Trisha's Southern Kitchen) on Food Network.  So, when I got the email that I needed to make a pick, I decided that for my pick this month I'd go to something that I was pretty confident I would like -- and which was vetted well enough to have made it to television and a cookbook. 

I basically clicked through on Trisha's page on foodnetwork.com, and came upon a country quiche recipe that looked good -- and also looked like the kind of thing we could "whip up" on a Sunday morning.  Today's only Saturday, but if you read my post the other day you know I went a-shoppin', so I was and am ready to cook.  I just made this and Mick already devoured two giant helpings.

Here's the review.

Trisha Yearwood's Country Quiche

Verdict: Just right.  Not a gourmet quiche, but definitely will satisfy a quiche craving -- and you can go from deciding you want to make it to sitting down and eating it in a span of 45 minutes.
Cook it again: Absolutely.
Cost Factor: Ridiculously inexpensive -- everything in this recipe is stuff we have on hand all the time, but to buy it all would be less than $10.

First of all, you use two store-bought pie crusts.  I always have my trusty old Pillsbury crusts on hand, but I suppose an ambitious soul could make crust.  My take on this recipe is that it's not meant to be fancy-pants restaurant-style quiche, so store-bought crust is perfect.

You brown up one pound of Jimmy-Dean-style sausage.  Trisha's recipe calls for the kind with sage, but here in Maine our sausage pickin's are limited.  I got the regular sausage and just added some ground sage to it.  (How much?  A few gentle shakes until I got the scent.  Maybe half a teaspoon at the most.)
 

Set that aside, and in a mixing bowl, whisk together six eggs (much better than PW's 200 or so, and much more likely to be available in our fridge at any given time) and a teaspoon of baking powder. Then add about twenty grape tomatoes that you've cut in half and sprinkled with salt, and about 2 1/2 cups of shredded cheddar.  The recipe says to add salt and pepper but doesn't specify quantity.  I didn't add any salt since I'd been generous with how I did the tomatoes, but I added about a tablespoon of black pepper.  Finally, add the sausage to the mixture.

You can see that I wasn't overly concerned with making the crust look pretty.  You can also see just how much excess crust there was! 

Pour the mixture into two pie dishes lined with the pie crusts.  At this point, I would say that I was nervous.  First of all, six eggs just seemed to get devoured by the rest of the mixture and I was worried that we didn't have enough egg for a quiche.  Second, I think -- but didn't test -- that you could actually get away with pouring all the mixture into one pie dish and just making a deeper quiche.  I am quite sure I will make this again, and that's what I am going to try.  These were not very deep and I was too lazy to make a shield for the excess of crusts.  (It didn't matter; they browned but did not burn.)

Throw these in the oven for about 30 minutes.  Into the oven they go ...

Just look at how clean the bottom of that oven is!  I love that ammonia trick I learned last year.  Thank you, Pinterest!

I kept watching to make sure the crusts weren't charring, and at the 30-minute mark the crusts were not burned but the eggs had set, so I took the pies out.

... and out they come!  Turns out that the six eggs really was just the right amount, but again -- too much unused crust. 

And serve!  In this photo I broke off the excess crust.  

I definitely enjoyed this, but I prefer taller quiches, so I am definitely going to pour the entire mixture into just one pie dish next time.

I don't have a bad thing to say, and what I love about this recipe is that it is a simple basic quiche that will satisfy a quiche craving without necessitating a trip to the grocery store.  You can throw in any other meats you might like -- or leave meats out altogether, if you prefer.  The whole thing took me 45 minutes from the time I decided to make it until Mick was on his second helping.  That's my kind of perfect!

--Jen

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