French Entree
QUICHE LORRAINE
INGREDIENTS
1 pastry pie shell (follow instructions)
8 ounces bacon (leanest is best)
4 ounces Gruyère cheese
4 eggs
1½ cups heavy whipping cream
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
SPECIAL UTENSIL
pie tin
Makes 1 quiche. Takes 1 hour. A quiche is not a quickie.
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Trim excess fat from bacon. Fit puff pastry into pie tin. Use knife to trim all pastry that goes beyond the top edge of the pie tin. Add bacon to pan. Fry bacon using medium-high heat for 10 minutes or until bacon is cooked but not yet crispy. Remove and put on towel-covered plate to remove grease. Cut bacon into ½ squares. Sprinkle bacon squares onto puff pastry in pie tin. Grate cheese. Sprinkle cheese over bacon squares.
Add eggs, whipping cream, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Blend thoroughly with whisk. Pour the egg/cream/spice mix over the cheese. Bake quiche in over at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the middle of the quiche comes out clean. Let quiche cool for about 10 minutes.
TIDBITS
1) In May, 1789, inmates of L‘Andouille Prison in Lorraine, France petitioned the Supreme Court to stop whipping, because it hurt even more than a stubbed toe. The judges, having lost their heads in affirming the use of the guillotine against jaywalkers, decided a bit of mercy wouldn’t be amiss. They ordered that prisoners be coated with cream before being whipped to take out the sting.
2) Whipping the cream coated convicts made whipping cream. Pierre Le Fou added this whipping cream to his daily ration–French prison life was not all bad–of bacon, Gruyère cheese, eggs, nutmeg, pepper, and salt and made the fist quiche Lorraine. Next time, he poured the mix not on his hand, but in a pastry pie shell. This was the first quiche Lorraine. The recipe spread to the Bastille prison. On July 14, food lovers stormed the Bastille for the convicts’ quiche Lorraines. King Louis XVI repressed the mob with muskets. The Parisians reacted with fury. The French Revolution was born. Blood would flow. Excesses would happen, but quiche Lorraine became available for all.
– Chef Paul
My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World, and my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, are available in paperback or Kindle on amazon.com
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Thank Heaven for the French Revolution, for we now have Quiche Lorraine — with LEAN bacon!
A little bit of bloodshed then. In return, quiche Lorraine. A good thing, no?
Dear Chef Paul,
Did you think your sneak attack on bacon would go unchallenged? Au contraire, monsieur. You call for one and a half cups of “heavy whipping cream” but then indicate the BACON should be “lean.” And as for your call to trim the “excess fat” from the bacon, I assure you there is no such thing. Please reconsider before printing such higgledy-piggledy recipes again.
Mr. De Lancey,
I regret to inform you that in light of this latest recipe, the Bacon and Chocolate Party has withdrawn its endorsement of your candidacy.
Politics is hard.
The “excess fat” goes to an immense silo in Cochon, South Dakota as part of our National Bacon Fat Reserve.
Wait … you mean the quiche Lorraine specials I saw at restaurants on my birthday every July 14th weren’t in my honor?!
Mark, the entire Bastille Day is in your honor. The Parisians didn’t know how to spell your name.