Kitchen Adventures Continued...

I love quiche.

Partly because it's a one-dish-dinner and also because they're just plain tasty. AND you can make a quiche a week and they can each be totally different from each other because you can put just about anything in a quiche as long as you buddy it up with complementary ingredients. The only downside is that they sometimes take a long time to bake.

Last week I picked up some frozen pie crusts at the grocery store with the intent of making a quiche or two. Every other quiche I've made has had a cheese crust (made with a LOT of shredded cheese and butter c/o The Joy of Cooking) so I decided to branch out and actually use a pastry crust. I have also been on a bit of a southwest kick lately. I even stocked up on bbq chicken and baja style Lean Cuisine quesadillas for lunch at work. So of course I had to try my hand at making a southwest style quiche.

Before leaving work I did a quick bing search for "black bean quiche" with not much luck. So I spent the whole drive home brainstorming what I was going to fill my beautiful pre-made pie crust with...

I think it turned out pretty well considering I was in a bit of a time crunch since I had a meeting at church and wanted to make sure it finished cooking before I had to leave (I can't stand to leave the oven on for any length of time when I'm not at home - I'm far too paranoid). I will share my makeshift recipe with you in case you'd like to give it a try. It definitely needs some tweaking so feel free to make any changes you like. This is merely a record of how I did it this time. My suggestions for possible changes are in blue.

Southwest Quiche
1 frozen pie crust - deep dish
1 can (15oz) black beans (8-10 oz black beans)
1/2 can (8oz) canned sweet corn
1/2 small red pepper, diced
1/2 small green pepper, diced
1/4 cup diced onion
1/2 cup chunky salsa
3 large eggs (4 large eggs)
1/2 cup milk (1 - 1.5 cups milk)
1/2 cup grated colby jack cheese (1 - 1.5 cups shredded cheese - Mexican blend)
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cover the bottom of the pie crust (you can either leave it in the aluminum pie tin it came in or place it in a glass pie plate) with the diced pepper and onion. Mix the corn, black beans, cheese (save some cheese to sprinkle on top), and salsa together in a bowl and add to the crust. Also in a bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, salt and pepper together and pour over the bean/corn/salsa/cheese mixture to fill the crust. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Cover a cookie sheet with foil, place the quiche in the middle, and put the whole thing in the oven for 40-50 minutes (until the middle is set and the top is as brown as you like it). Some of the egg mixture may overflow during cooking (hence the foil). Allow it to cool before serving.

Two other suggestions:
1. All of the quiche recipes in The Joy of Cooking say that you should brush the pie crust with egg yolk before putting in the ingredients. I did not do that this time because I had already started putting stuff in the crust before I opened TJoC.
2. I didn't have time to saute the onion and pepper before putting it in the crust, but I would highly recommend doing so as it will reduce the amount of extra moisture in the mix and will keep the crust from getting soggy. I did end up with a bit of a "watery bottom" when I sliced my quiche open due to my veggies that had not been precooked.

Mine was also a tad on the dark side of golden as it sat in the oven at 200 degrees for an extra hour while I went to my meeting. But it still tasted great!

If you happen to try this recipe and tweak it, please share your additions/deletions/modifications etc! And I'll be sure to let you know what I do with the other crust...