Usually with spinach, and meat if you have it.

Living a sheltered life means I was twenty-nine years old before I ever had quiche. Whatever absurdity in the universe permitted this oversight has since been reconciled because something about the way the way egg morphs into a different texture as it cooks fascinates me. While the act of baking a quiche is the hallmark of the egg’s transformation, that process unfortunately almost aways goes unobserved due to the limited design of the modern residential baking oven. If I had grown up as a child with the pleasure of quiche-baking in my home, I’m sure I would have found myself sitting by the oven’s glass door, watching the quiche rise and solidify like an ominously overt fascist movement you never saw coming; hidden in plain sight as the idiom goes.

Ingredients

  • onion
  • eggs
  • salt and pepper; herbs and spices
  • spinach
  • chicken sausage
  • milk
  • pie crust

Method

If you don’t have the ingredients for this dish, then you must obtain them if you want to make it. The first step is to dice an onion into tiny pieces. By now my wife is committed full time to cutting onions for me so I don’t have to spend so many hours in the kitchen.

Whatever land animal you choose for this quiche is up to you if it’s been grounded, in which case you might wonder why I prefer chicken, but I maintain that a glorified moon jump does not constitute flight. I have used other meats like finely diced steak, bacon, or pulled pork, but I believe finely diced or ground chicken sausage gives the best outcome.

Using your favorite burner, cook the chicken sausage in any type of pan on the stovetop. It makes no sense to hoist up your cast iron for this, so take it easy there, you beast. As the meat becomes halfway cooked through, toss in your onions to get them softened and dash in a mysterious amount of salt and pepper. When the meat has reached the safest internal temperature for human consumption strain it without dirtying up a strainer by putting it on a plate that’s been lined with a few paper towels. It occurs to me that by now you could misinterpret my aversion to strainers as a missed opportunity to be environmentally conscious regarding my paper towel usage but let me remind you that trees are renewable resources. The water you will use to wash the strainer will go down the drain and stay underground as it passes through treatment systems to be eventually reintroduced into the water cycle. Both paths involve using energy, so the destruction is dealer’s choice—for me, it’s about not having to wash a strainer because they’re too bulky for a dishwasher and the little holes make it annoying to clean in the sink.

I like to use the same pan to cook the spinach; I’m sure there are flavorful consequences, but the only reason is because I don’t want to dirty up another pan. Drizzle a twelve-inch, nonstick pan’s worth of fresh spinach with olive oil, and continue stirring without stopping over medium heat until the spinach is transformed into a slimy reduction of its former existence like the pedagogical strategy for civics in elementary school. When the spinach has cooked all the way down you need to squeeze the liquid out of it, but it’s too hot right now to use your hands so you’ll have to let it cool down—and God help me if I find out they make a spinach squeezer, I will lose my shit. Son of a bitch, I just googled it.

Crack six eggs into a mixing bowl. For reasons of diversity, equity, and inclusion, it’s best if you use three brown eggs and three white eggs. You’ll notice they’re all still the same yellow on the inside, but something about the equal proportions makes the quiche better than if you had only white eggs. I plead with you to understand that I do not understand the science on this, but I do believe in the magic of absurdity and just like the middle class, we’re going to need some more liquid. So, for six eggs it seems to be that three-quarters of a cup is appropriate. I use milk but others have used cream, or even stock. Sprinkle in whatever you like here: salt, black pepper, parsley, garlic powder, nutmeg, paprika—for the flavor, not the color. Why do people say they add paprika only for the color, as if it doesn’t have a distinctly earthy smokiness?

Now, if your whisk has any gears, hinges, cranks, or knobs, you’re going to want to throw it in the trash and go to the store to buy a proper whisk so you can scramble the eggs in your mixing bowl. In a separate mixing bowl, combine the cooked meat with the cooked spinach, add at least one cup of shredded white cheese, and mix it all together very well so the spinach is evenly distributed.

If you decide to make your own pie crust, then I commend you on your one thousand horses of power because that takes a lot of work, but I like to buy a graham cracker pie crust at the store; the graham cracker creates an appealing contrast to the “umami” which is just a dumb, redundant word in search of a smart audience; umami is etymology’s Catcher in the Rye.

Sprinkle a thin layer of shredded cheese into the pie crust and then evenly spread the mixture of meat, spinach, and cheese to around the pie to avoid a meniscus. Slowly pour the seasoned mixture of eggs and milk into the pie pan while using a fork to gently poke the mixture of meat, spinach, and cheese so that the liquid fully seeps into the crevices. Sprinkle a little more shredded cheese on top and bake in the oven at 375° for 45 minutes, or until a butter knife can be inserted and removed without any egg sticking to it.