Quiche

I love me a good quiche. And last December I finally made my first one for my bestie's parents and then again for me and the hubby. I tweaked the recipe as I'm known to do and I do believe I have found our favorite variation. 

Quiche

1 pie crust
4 pieces of thick bacon, chopped
1/2 of a shallot, diced
3 large crimini mushrooms, chopped
4 cups of spinach
2 Tbs of sliced olives (optional)
1 cup of heavy cream*
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups of shredded cheese**

Pre heat oven to 375.

In a skillet, crisp up the bacon. Add the shallots and mushrooms and cook until tender. Add spinach (I just remove the large stems and do a rough tear as we like the bigger pieces of it, but you can slice it thinly if you prefer) and toss until it wilts. Add olives (these I like to do a rough chop on them) and mix until combined. Drain any excess grease if needed.

Lay the pie crust into a pie deep dish. I like to spray mine with Pam so it doesn't stick. Crimp the edges and trim any excess if you need to. You can totally make your own pie crust but I'm lazy and the refrigerated version works perfectly well. You can also use a frozen deep dish pie crust as well. Just let it thaw.

In a bowl, add the heavy cream and eggs. Beat together with some salt and pepper.

In your pie dish, add a layer of the bacon mixture and then a half a cup of the shredded cheese and repeat those layers. Slowly pour the egg mixture over the top. Cover with the remaining half cup of cheese and bake for about 40-45 mins. 

Stick a butter knife in the center and if it comes out clean it is done. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving. Sprinkle some chopped chives on top if desired and enjoy!

Notes:
* The recipe calls for half and half but I never have that on hand so I use half cup of heavy cream and a half cup of milk. It's literally the same thing.

** Cheese - the original recipe calls for mozzarella. And it works perfectly well and is quite tasty. I've done a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella as well as Gouda. Gouda is by far my favorite, it adds a nice little nuttiness to it. You can use any cheese you want, just make sure it's not a hard cheese as it will not melt as well.

Bacon Wrapped Potatoe Bites

Every so often the mood just strikes you. You start to crave something…sometimes you don’t know what other times you know exactly what it is. And then if you’re like me it will take on a life of its own.

Earlier I was getting a bit hungry and started to crave potatoes, specifically roasted potatoes. I knew we had some red potatoes left over from when I made corned beef and cabbage last weekend. Then I started to look through Pinterest and saw a recipe I just had to try. Bacon wrapped potato bites…my mouth started to drool just thinking about it. I was already craving potatoes and well bacon just makes everything better. Really bacon needs to be its own food group.

So I gather up all my ingredients and set out to make these bites, changing it up to suit our tastes a bit better. And let me tell you THEY ARE SO YUMMY! The husband and I inhaled these things. Already we are plotting on when we can take a batch (or two) over to our best friends’ house as we know they will love them as well.

Bacon Wrapped Potato Bites
1# red potatoes
3/4 – 1# bacon (cut into thirds)
2 tsp salt (divided)
1 tsp fresh crack black pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Italian seasonings
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup sour cream
2 Tbsp Mae Poi (sweet chili sauce)

Place a pot of water onto boil with a teaspoon of the salt. While that is heating up, wash the potatoes and cut into 1 inch pieces. You get the best bacon to potato ratio and they are the perfect popping size. Place the potatoes into the boiling water and cook just until you can pierce them with a fork. You don’t want them too cooked or they will fall apart in the remaining stages. Drain the potatoes and place into a large bowl. Add the rest of the salt, pepper, garlic, seasonings and olive oil to the potatoes and gently toss.

Next take your cut bacon and wrap each piece around a potato. Secure with a toothpick and place on a foil wrapped cookie sheet pan. I had a few extra potatoes so I just placed them on the tray as well. Using a basting brush I coated the pieces with the olive oil and seasonings that had gone to the bottom of the bowl. Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Turn the pieces over and cook for another 15 minutes.

While the bites were in the second oven round, I mixed up the sauce. In a bowl mix the sour cream and the Mae Poi together until smooth. I layered a little extra Mae Poi on top as I just love the stuff and thought it would provide a nice extra little kick. Then plate and serve!

Trust me you will LOVE these things! Even just the plain potatoes with the sauce were delicious!

New Recipe! Superbowl Munchies

After talking with my friend who is hosting the game day party we decided on....

Sweet and Spicy Bacon Chicken Bites!

It was an meat dish I found on Pinterest but I've made a few tweaks to it for my liking.

You need:
2 pounds of chicken tenders, thawed out (about 13-15 pieces)
1 T of salt
1 tsp of fresh cracked pepper
1/4 tsp of paprika
2 tsp of chili powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Enough bacon to wrap (about 1 1/2 packages depending on the bacon)
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
Toothpicks

Mix all seasonings in a bowl. I prefer to mix all the seasonings together for things like this to ensure a more uniform flavor.

 

After seasonings are mix, cut each chicken tender into two or three pieces, depending on how big you want the bites to be. Season the chicken liberally with the seasoning. You may end up with a little extra seasoning mix but you can store it in an airtight container for another use.

 

Cut your bacon into smaller pieces. One strip of bacon is way too much for a bite, no matter how much I like bacon. Wrap each piece of bacon around a piece of chicken and secure with a toothpick. (Note: I find it easier to skewer the toothpick at an angle vs straight in. I find it holds the chicken and bacon together more securely for the latter stages).

Take your brown sugar and put into a plate. Scrunch it around so it is nice and loose. Roll, coat each bite into the brown sugar and put into a pan sprayed with a Pam. Don't be surprised if by the time you are done coating the bites, the earlier pieces don't look like they have much brown sugar. The bacon soaked up that yummy brown sugary goodness and it will make for some nice caramelization. Trust me.

Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven. It took about 35 minutes with me turning the bites over every 10 minutes. I hate when something that is bacon wrapped but the bottom part of the bacon is soggy. No I like my bacon crispy all the way around. I found some pieces were done before others so I pulled them out and set aside so they didn't burn. The one good thing is the bacon fat keeps the chicken moist so they don't dry out.

End verdict? Well so far the husband and I have given them two thumbs up. First you taste the sweet smokey bacon and then the juicy spicy chicken. The spice leaves just a touch of lingering...enough to for you to know you had some spice but not enough to over power your taste buds. 

I will let you know what the group thought of them after the game.

Oh, as a bonus picture...my two pups who act like they never get fed kept watch over me while I made these. Every time I looked behind me I saw this:

Please Mom, can we have some? We love bacon!

EDIT: The group LOVED the bites! They are best warm as cold chicken tends to toughen up a bit. But there wasn't a single bite left by the then of the evening. Found out that it is REALLY good with pineapple so next time I just may make a pineapple chutney to accompany the bites.

Pinterest is useful after all

So I finally decided to give Pinterest another shot the other night. Of course being somewhat drunk and bored may have had something to do with it. So through my random clickings and pinnings I run across a picture of a breakfast I just have to try...bacon pancake strips. There were no instructions to go with the picture but lets face it...it's pancakes and bacon. How hard could it be?

This morning while my husband was out doing a Starbucks run for us, I decide to let's do this. I fry up some bacon in a pan, a few pieces at a time so that they are out straight. I didn't cook them in the griddle I was going to cook the pancake strips because I don't want all that grease. I transfer the bacon to the griddle when it's about 3/4ths of the way crispy. It's still slightly chewy but I let it cook for about a minute more.

While the bacon is cooking I get my pancake batter together. Just your simple everyday pancake batter, nothing to write home about except I do add cinnamon to my batter. The husband and I love our cinnamon pancakes. I make the batter thinner than I normally do to ensure easy pouring and the covering of the bacon.

With my griddle I got to cook about three strips at at time. The bacon makes for some more interesting shaped pancakes.

Buttering them was a little interesting. I found just plopping little pats of butter on them and let it melt was the most effective method.

Overall they were good. The novelty of them is getting a piece of crispy bacon in every bite. I think next time I want to make the pancake batter a bit thicker. I much prefer the thicker pancake and we found that the bacon separated from the pancake at times while eating. But it was a fun idea and one we'll definitely will do again.