This week’s recipe uses one of my favorite vegetables – mushrooms! And I love quiche, so I’ve been waiting to make this recipe. I had a whole bunch of crimini mushrooms on hand, so it worked out perfectly (well, almost). I also remembered to pick up a nice bunch of thyme from the house up north, so I thought I was ready.

Luckily (!), I had on hand the exact amount of cream required. As you can see in the picture, I was punting on the cheese – I didn’t have the Gruyere (which would have been perfect), so I considered brie – as you’ll see later, I switched that out too after I read the recipe and saw that it needed to be on top. Oh, and the scallions – didn’t have those either. Oops!

I’m not showing the entire tart shell recipe here, but things did go a bit awry with this. I have made this recipe so many times – who knew I could mess it up so badly? Luckily, I made my usual double recipe so I had a bit of extra dough so I could paste things together!

I guess I should back up and let you know – I decided that I should bake this and share it at work. So I did most of the prep the night before, including pre-baking the crust. One of the things I love, love about this crust is that it’s sturdy – you can even pick up a slice of whatever tart you’re making without it falling apart. It retains its crispiness so well.

I’m not 100% certain why I got the massive fissures in my baked crust. It was completely intact when I took the pie weights out. I had completely frozen the crust prior to baking – but… I forgot to poke any holes in it. So that may have been the culprit. I didn’t think I had stretched the dough either – but maybe I did. I was super pleased with the fact that I had enough other dough to fill in the cracks. it worked!!

I also made the mushroom mixture the night before. Simple enough, the shallots are softened in butter, then the mushrooms are added.

Once they are cooked, the chopped fresh thyme is added and the mixture gets its final seasoning of salt and pepper.

This all cools before the quiche gets assembled. When I was ready to bake the quiche, the mushrooms are added to the pre-baked shell, and then the eggs, cream and a bit more salt and pepper are whisked together. This all gets topped with a bit of cheese.

This bakes for about 30-35 minutes. It’s to be served either room temperature, or a bit warm. I took it out of the oven in time for a bit of a rest before carting it off to work with me!

This was definitely a blast of mushroom flavor. And I loved the thyme that added its flavor note as well. I would have liked the gruyere better, I think. I really didn’t think that the cheese offered much to this (I can’t believe I’m saying that!), and I probably would have liked just a bit more custard in the ratio to mushrooms. I probably over-salted a bit too. My bad… all of the times we’re supposed to season with salt and pepper. All of that said, I’m just quibbling – this was a really good dish, and fun to make. Oh, and my friends at work liked it too! 🙂