I once was deprived of pie and quiche. For health reasons I have been on a gluten-free diet for over a year. But now no more pie-deprivation! Because I discovered a gluten free pie crust!!! (Chorus of angelic voices singing refrain of Handel’s Ode to Joy)

Well, when my co-worker Liane told me that GF pie crust even existed I feverishly scouted out for it until I found it in the freezer section at the grocery store. And, oh, visions of pie and quiche danced in my head.

Well, this sunday, I was so desperate to have a quiche, that I didn’t even plan for it and I didn’t run to the grocey store for extra ingredients. So since I didn’t have any bacon or mushrooms I poked around the frig and freezer for some turkey or chicken sausage to turn up, instead I found a box of frozen Eating Right Gluten Free Cheesy Chicken. I defrosted it and it became the WHATEVAH ingredient for the recipe below. While my quiche baked I also made small salads with spicy chex mix croutons to go with the whole affair.

Here’s a customizable recipe with whatever you find in your frig:

GF Whatevah’s-In-My-Frig Quiche Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 Gluten Free Nation Pie Crust, 8-inch
• 4-5 eggs
• 6 oz swiss cheese, shredded
• 1/2 cup milk (skim or whole, you choose)
• 1/2 tbsp Kirkland Signature No-salt Seasoning OR spices to taste. Add a dash of cayenne for a subtle kick.
• 1/2 cup of your choice of vegetable combo—chopped onions, veggies, tomatoes, sweet peppers, green pepper, whatevah.
• 1/2 cup chopped of WHATEVAH— chicken, smoked turkey, bacon, sausage, ham, or just more veggies. Leftovers works!
• optional, 4 tbsp butter, melted

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Unwrap the frozen pie crust and bake for 10 minutes. While that’s baking, prep the filling.
3. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs until frothy. Add the swiss cheese, milk, and veggies.
4. In a small bowl, toss the chopped the WHATEVAH ingredients with the spices to your taste.
5. After the pie crust is heated, take it out and let it cool down.
6. IMPORTANT: NOW RAISE THE OVEN TEMPERATURE TO 375 DEGREE FAHRENHEIT.
7. Optional: For flavor. spread the melted butter on the inside of the pie crust.
8. Pour your seasoned and chopped WHATEVAH inside the cooled pie crust. Spread it evenly.
9. Pour the egg-cheese filling gently over the pie crust. Be careful to not let it overflow. (Any extra filling can be made into a small soufflé.) If you have time, arrange any of the colorful veggies evenly around the surface for visual balance.
10. Place a cookie sheet in the oven and the pie pan on to the sheet. Bake for 45 minutes or until the center is firm and a knife pierced into the middle comes out clean.

When done, cool the quiche for 15 minutes before serving. Tastes great warm or cold.

A few observations and remedies:

The GF Nation pie crust is very flaky and crumbly. The quiche as a whole came out pretty good. Only thing, when I first made it I missed the taste of buttery crust, so next time I may just melt some butter and spread it into the base of the pie crust before i put the filling in. Thus the optional butter ingredient and step.

To increase your odds for a successful quiche, it’s good to go with classic combos of WHATEVAH such as spinach and mushroom, bacon and swiss, etc. But if you’re a confident cook you can experiment.

When the quiche first comes out of the oven, the filling is puffy, about twice the height it was. As it cools it will shrink back down level with the crust.

Most quiche recipes call for half-and-half milk. But I only used regular milk. Still, the quiche came out aromatic like custard. Yum!

The quiche recipe I roughly based mine on called for 6 eggs and 12 ounces of cheese because it was going into a 10-inch pie crust. But the gluten free pie crust from GF Nation is small—about 8 inches wide. Don’t worry, the recipe above is adjusted for this smaller pie crust already. I think that a whole number of us GF peeps can post on the FB timeline of GF Nation and tell them that we want a regular 10-inch pie crust! And. I. Just. Did.

Again, when I made the filling for the first time, I didn’t adjust the egg amount. So i had extra filling, so instead of throwing it or scrambling it I (accidentally) made a tiny soufflé when I buttered up the inside of a small baking bowl and poured the left over egg-cheese quiche filling into it. Then as the pie baked, I baked the bowl on the side and it came out to be a perfect tiny, fluffy, golden soufflé. It baked for only 30 minutes.

Because she requested it, this recipe is dedicated to Sockie.

If you want the recipe for my spicy chex mix, visit again soon, because I’ll be sharing that recipe too.