Changing up cheese gives quiche a tangy twist: Spinach, Bacon and Goat Cheese Quiche

Goat cheese adds a lively tanginess to spinach and bacon quiche. Recipe below.

WE GOT A NEW FOOD PROCESSOR LAST WEEKEND and wanted to test drive it. Two things we expect a food processor to do well are puréeing stuff and making pie crust dough. Next week, we’ll share a puréed mushroom potato soup that showed it could do the former. This week, we’ve made a quiche in a crust of well-made dough.

We like quiche a lot and don’t make it nearly often enough. Still, we were looking for something new to do with it. After thinking about different add-on ingredients, we thought about the cheese. The classic cheeses for quiche are Swiss or gruyere. Our go-to is a mixture of gruyere and Parmesan. But when we found a few recipes using goat cheese, we knew we were on to something.

Goat cheese—chèvre in French—delivers a nice tanginess to the quiche, along with a mild creamy quality. While you can buy pre-crumbled chèvre, we used a goat cheese log. The pre-crumbled kind is drier and better for use on salads. The log sort of crumbles, producing soft chunks of cheese. To our surprise, in the baking, it didn’t all melt into the egg mixture; instead, there were little tangy bits throughout, making their presence deliciously known.

A quick word about the food processor. We are not bells and whistles people in the kitchen—we want simple (and economical, if possible) tools that do their assigned tasks well and hold up. Our old processor had done just that for many years. The Cuisinart Elemental 8-cup food processor we landed on to replace it seems like it will fit the bill. Four buttons, three blades and dishwasher-safe components. And no, we’re not being compensated by Cuisinart. We bought it ourselves.

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Spinach, Bacon and Goat Cheese Quiche

Goat cheese adds a lively tanginess to spinach and bacon quiche.

Ingredients

For the pie crust (can also use store-bought crust—see Kitchen Notes)

• 2 cups unbleached flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 5 or 6 tablespoons iced water

For the filling

• 4 strips bacon
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of unsalted butter (2 pats will do it)
• 2 medium shallots, chopped—about 1 cup
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 5 ounces baby spinach, coarsely chopped
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup half & half
• 1/4 teaspoon each, salt and black pepper
• 6 ounces goat cheese from a log, crumbled

Instructions

• Make the dough. Cut butter into 1/2-inch cubes, place in a small bowl and chill in freezer or fridge. Place flour and salt in food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Scatter butter over flour mixture and pulse several times, until it resembles a coarse, crumblike meal.
• Working quickly, add 4 tablespoons of iced water and pulse several times. Add 1 or 2 more tablespoons of water and pulse again, with slightly longer pulses. If necessary, add more iced water, a tablespoon at a time, and pulse until mixture forms large dough balls. The change will be quick and dramatic—you'll know when it's happened.
• Form dough into a flattened patty—again, work quickly and handle the dough as little as possible—and wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 3 days.
• Par-bake the crust. Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Grease a 9- or 10-inch glass pie plate, or a tart pan with a removable bottom, with butter. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about a 1/8-inch thickness (more important, it should obviously be larger than your pie plate). Gently transfer it to the pie pan; Marion showed me a trick of folding it back over the rolling pin to lift it. You may also need a spatula to unstick it from the table or other surface. Gently press it into the bottom and inner edges of the pan.
• Pinch the edges of the crust into pleats extending a bit above the edge of the pie plate, because of inevitable shrinkage during baking.
• Prick the bottom of the crust at 1/2-inch intervals with a fork. Lightly press a sheet of aluminum foil inside the crust and fill it with pie weights or uncooked rice or dried beans. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, until edges are slightly colored.
• Meanwhile, prepare the filling. While the crust patty is chilling/the crust par-baking, fry bacon in a large, lidded skillet over medium heat until crisp and drain on paper towel; crumble into small pieces. Pour off bacon fat and wipe the skillet with a paper towel, but don’t wash it. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of butter, swirling to combine. Add shallots to pan. Sauté until soft, about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and cook, stirring, about 45 seconds. Add spinach a handful at a time, stirring it in. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until spinach is completely wilted, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let it cool.
• Lightly beat eggs in a medium bowl and add half & half, and salt and pepper. When crust is ready, place it on a cooling rack and remove foil with weights. Sprinkle some of the goat cheese in the bottom of the crust, then add the spinach mixture, spreading across the crust. Add the rest of the cheese, then carefully pour egg mixture over everything, gently working everything with a fork to allow eggs to settle in around filling.
• Bake the quiche. Transfer pan to oven and bake until filling puffs up and browns slightly, and is set, about 25 to 35 minutes. A knife or tester should come out clean when inserted in the middle. Cool on a rack for at least 10 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve. Quiche may be served warm—my preference—or at room temperature.

Kitchen Notes

Let’s talk crust. If you use a frozen store-bought crust, go for a deep 9-inch one to accommodate all the filling. Let it sit out to thaw for a bit as you heat the oven, so you can prick it with a fork before par-baking. We’ve also been using fresh rolled pie dough you find refrigerated in stores. Follow the package instructions for rolling it out and putting in the pie plate.

Reheating quiche. We reheated ours in a toaster oven because we were just doing two slices; the same approach works for the oven. Here’s how:

• Remove quiche from fridge and let it come to room temperature.
• If you’re just reheating a slice or two, cut those and transfer to a sheet of foil that will fit in the toaster oven on its wire rack. You might also put strips of foil over the crust edges to keep it from browning too much.
• Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Transfer quiche slices, still on the foil, into the oven. Heat until thoroughly warmed through, 10 to 20 minutes—you can remove the foil from the crust for the last few minutes to let it brown a little.
• If you're reheating an entire quiche, definitely use your oven; you can leave it in the pie plate to do it.
• Do NOT microwave your quiche. The crust will turn soggy.