Garden Quiche (Florence Fletcher)

Ok, so here I was thinking it had only been a few weeks since I last updated. Turns out I was way off...

That doesn't mean that I have stopped cooking though! As promised, I bring you grandma's quiche recipe today. This is by far one of my favourite recipes in this little box. One that I know very well and always looked forward to when she made it. Seriously, egg with pastry. Does it get much better?

One of my favourite things about quiche is it's really an "anytime" kind of meal. Winter, summer... Morning, evening. I've made it for Easter brunch, and I've made it for a casual Sunday night dinner. When in a pinch, make a quiche.

This recipe belongs to Florence Fletcher. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Florence ("Flo"*), but I know they are around. My grandma had a wonderful album from her time working for the war effort some place in Quebec. I believe my brother still has the album, so I'll scan a photo and post it as an update soon. Until then, I thought I would share this absolutely wonderful photo of my grandpa helping my grandma up on to a tree stump. I adore this photo.


The Recipe Card:

The Process:

This is such a super easy and quick recipe to make. If you're using frozen prepared pie shells, it's even quicker. The majority of my time in the kitchen was spent making (and braiding) the pastry. In fact, it took so long to make the pastry that I worked up quite an appetite. My absolutely darling husband made me a gourmet snack of toast with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. He should start his own blog, don't you think?!

I prepared my pie shells and placed the broccoli inside and then sprinkled with the (delicious) cheese.

You will notice that with the second pie crust, I did not braid the edge. I needed to save time and my sanity. I opted for a very classy fork-design-in-the-edge option, a la Stouffer's Chicken Pot Pie.

Whisk together the soup mix, basic, milk and eggs.

Pour over the broccoli/cheese and you're done like dinner. 

Pop it in the oven for 40-45 minutes and socialize with your brother, sister-in-law and adorable nephew while you wait. This last part is optional, but highly recommended.

Yum!

The Recipe:

Ingredients:
1 Knorr Leek soup mix
1 pkg frozen broccoli thawed & drained
1-1/2 cups grated Gruyere Cheese (see notes)
2 unbaked pie shells (coming soon!)
1/2 tsp dry Basil
4 medium Eggs
1-1/2 cups 2% Milk

Directions:
Over 375.
Arrange broccoli and cheese in pie shells.
Whisk soup mix and basil with eggs and milk.
Pour into shells.
Cook 40-45 minutes
Cool 10 minutes


My Personal Notes:

I remember one time I tried to make this for a small group of friends that I was having over. I was probably around 15 or so. Natalie, Ben, Nick and Marieka were coming to "hang out" and I thought it would be grand to show them how fabulous I was in the kitchen. When I got to the part in the recipe about adding the Knorr soup mix, I figured you actually had to prepare the soup as per the instructions on the package, and then add it to the recipe. Needless to say, we had a very sloppy quiche that night. I highly recommend not doing that!

• I used fresh broccoli, not frozen/thawed/drained. I know, I'm such a traditionalist. 
• If you're at all like me, you have no idea what Gruyere cheese is and why it's any different than cheddar (which I was going to get until I realized I have access to infinite information in the palm of my hands -or more accurately, the bottom of my purse- my iPhone!). I pulled over in the cheese and deli section of the grocery store and quickly googled Gruyere Cheese. It is in the swiss family and is named after the city Gruyere in Switzerland. It's also ridiculously expensive and tasty as all get-out. Mine looked like this and cost around $8-$9. It yielded almost the 1-1/2 cups. 

• As it turns out, non-fancy crust tastes just as good as fancy crust. 

My husband has an aversion to quiche that I don't quite understand. Regardless, he suffered through and ate it all, saying "for quiche, it was OK". I've got to take what I can get ;)

Please give it a try!

Up next, I'm going to share the Pastry recipe I used for this. It surprised me some of the ingredients in it, but it was hands-down the best, flakiest pastry I've made.

*~Tara-Jane~*


*A little bit of "history"
My grandmother always used to address cards with the recipients name on the envelope, but the name was always in quotes. I would get a card addressed to "Tara-Jane", as if to say "if that is your real name". It was so endearing. These are the small things I remember about my grandmother - the things that will never be forgotten. My brother and I often sign our cards like this, just for fun because it makes us smile. 

I love you, "grandma". 

A little more information!

Hello everyone,

I wanted to pop by quickly before I wrote up the next recipe to share an email I got from my aunt (my grandma's daughter) the other day. She graciously filled in some of the blanks in my recipes, and gave me a little more of the 'personal' side of the story:

"SAVOURY SUPPER was one of my favourite meals as a kid and I still make it, even though Michael doesn't get the point. I use 'breakfast sausages' and brown them first. Using a good tomato soup is also important. The batter topping is essentially a Yorkshire pudding, which always collapses soon after coming from the oven. Mom always made it in a square or rectangular dish with two lines of sausages. 

CRANBERRY COBBLER was exciting to see, because that's my handwriting, and is from my high school home ec class. I loved it, but had completely forgotten about it until I saw your blog. I'm going to try it again. 

GUMDROP CAKE - saw it in the 'upcoming' list. This was Grandma Ada's recipe and one of my favourite cakes. She used to make it and ship it to me out here. She left the gumdrops whole, which made for an extremely heavy cake, and makes it very hard to bake all the way through, so it might be worth experimenting with using a bundt pan. 

The other dinner both Bob and I loved is something Mark and I always called 'Hamburger Slop'. Mom had a different name for it, but it's essentially her version of Sloppy Joes over mashed potatoes. Did you find that recipe? 

Mom was known as a good cook and baker - at school, kids used to fight over who would get my unwanted lunch items"

Thanks aunt Jeanne for the email!

Last thing... this picture :) Grandma in the kitchen of "the cottage" long before I was even born. I just love her pants.

*~Tara-Jane~*

Through Grandma's Cookbook - The History

On May 1 2013, my beloved grandmother, Mrs. Mary Winnifred Murphy (nee Turner) passed away. This blog is in loving memory of her.

After my grandfather passed away in 2010, my brother and I reminisced that through the years my grandparent's were always our "constant". They were our home away from home.

My grandparent's home was a place of constant comfort and love... and great food! It wasn't "gourmet" or over-the-top. Nothing you would find in a fancy foodie magazine. But it was awesome. Always.

Grandma could throw together a Christmas dinner in her sleep.

After she passed, I spent some time looking through her photographs - It shouldn't have surprised me the number of photos there were of us eating around their formal dining room table. I cringe looking back through years of horrendous haircuts and my incredibly unfortunately '90s apparel, but I digress.

Grandma taught me many things (the foxtrot, how to iron a shirt collar, and how a lady announces she needs to use the washroom - "I must powder my nose"), but above all else, she made me love food.  Was it because her cooking was exceptional (yes), or because all my favourite memories revolved around dinner (yes), or because it was her way of always taking care of her family (yes)?

Everything was always prepared perfectly, served on hotplates they had collected through their travels, and there was always so much of it that we had to call in the reserves (the extra side tables) to hold it all. To say we were all borderline comatose by the end of our meal would be a gross understatement.

When my grandparent's moved into a nursing home, I was the very lucky recipient of a lot of her recipes - even the "old red box" - my personal favourite. 

That's where this journey begins. 

Part of what I love most about these recipes is that they're old, tried and true, and don't require any fancy or excessive equipment. Which is awesome, because I don't own any.

Oh, and lard. Lots and lots of lard.

For me, this is a journey of love. I'm still learning and healing, and this is a way for me to remember my grandmother in a very intimate way. I'm not an expert chef and I don't know tons about food or photography, but I'm anxious to learn.

Your mind has a way of forgetting how amazing something smells - like peanut butter cookies right out of the oven; or the way something tastes - like the crisp crunch of a cool, fresh cole slaw. But as soon as those cookies come out of the oven, or your fork touches your lips, it all comes flooding back to you. And it's not just the smell or taste you remember, it's every time you've ever pretended to be sick to stay home from school with your grandparents (and ended up baking cookies), or every Sunday dinner 'just because', with the infamous cole slow in the mint-green glass bowl.

She'd probably think this is all poppycock ;) 

It's time to open the red tin box...