Bacon Saves the Day

This week's French Friday's With Dorie selection is Spinach and Bacon Quiche (pg 160). I've never met a bacon dish that I didn't like, so I was excited about this one.

Quiche has always had a mystique for me because my mother has never ever made one. Ever. I think she feels that if she's going to go through the trouble of making a pie crust (and she does make a mean pie crust), she'd rather fill it with apples than cheese and eggs. Valid point. I was a teenager the first time I tried quiche, and I was surprised at how mediocre and homely it was. My imagination had built it into something ultra-fancy. Despite that first letdown, I'm fond of quiche, because it still feels like a special treat.

This was my maiden voyage with a new tart pan, and I hit a few snags. The dough I rolled out looked like it would be big enough, but I discovered after it was in the pan that it was thicker on one side than the other, and while it was the perfect height for most of the circumference, there were a few spots where there was not enough dough to climb the side of the pan, and no overhang elsewhere to fill in the gaps. Not to mention that I forgot to flour the surface before I rolled the dough. That was fun to peel off the counter. The dough shrank away from the pan when I pre-baked it, so by the time the custard was poured in, there were a number of shallows in the crust where the liquid spilled right over, into the pan. I was worried that the crust would turn soggy, since it was sitting in liquid top and bottom, but I needn't have been concerned--it burned, instead.

 Onions and garlic cooked in bacon grease were good enough to salvage my semi-burned quiche. Matt liked this a lot and didn't notice the burned bottom. Now that I think about it, he was more vocally enthusiastic about this dish than most of the others I've made from this book, excluding the filet mignon (which I'm making again for his birthday tomorrow). Even though I knew it was there, I couldn't really taste the burned part, either. My one complaint, and Matt disagrees with me, is that I think I over-salted this. The instructions say to add salt at two stages: salt the onions and garlic while cooking in bacon grease, then add the already-cooked spinach and bacon crumbles and salt it again. I could have done with one fewer salting, methinks. Oh well. Live and learn for next time.

Conclusion: Liked it. Charlie actually ate a little, too, which says a lot, since he's spit out every other shred of spinach to ever pass his lips.