in the kitchen & recipe: lazy girl’s quiche

My dear friend Gretel makes delicious quiche.  She rolls out a tasty homemade crust, boils up some veggies, maybe shreds up some cheese and *voila*poftim* a beautifully, fancy delicious quiche that is the envy of all.  Especially me.  I have some quiche roadblocks — a) I haven’t mastered the crust yet — I’m a bit intimidated by homemade crust.  b) Veggies are a bit hard to hide in quiche; David’s picky like that.   But I adore the idea of a quiche for any meal. Who wouldn’t love breakfast for dinner with only a few dishes to clean.

And then I remembered that my mom’s breakfast casserole is in essence a lazy girl’s quiche without the veggies that David dreads or the crust that scares me.  It was on the menu last night.  Since it’s such an easy recipe, I figured I’d share.  (Hope ya don’t mind, Mom!)   If you’re on your own, halving the recipe would be easy; It makes good leftovers, surprisingly.  I also have the tendency to add an extra egg and cut down the milk a tad since milk is kinda pricey here in Romania.  You could boil up some leftover veggies to add.  I might subtract some of the bread in that case or go vegetarian and leave out the ham.  Anyway, it’s a versatile and easy recipe with basic ingredients. So here goes.

Dottie’s Breakfast Casserole

In a lightly butter 13x9x2 dish, mix the following:
15-16 slices of bread, buttered and cubed (really, any bread will do, but you do want/need to butter/margarine the sliced BEFORE cubing)
3 cups of fully cooked ham, cubed (here in Romania, we used muschi and only 1/3kg of it)
2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese (in Romania, we used Cascaval, Dalia, about 200g)

In a separate bowl, beat the following together until foamy:
6 eggs
3 cups of milk
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Put both containers in fridge until ready to bake.  These can sit overnight even.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°
Pour egg mixture over bread/ham/cheese and mix well.
Bake uncovered for 60 minutes or until golden brown.
Yield 10 – 12 small servings.  Also can be made in muffin cups for individual servings.

Of course, I still aspire to Gretel’s quiche greatness.  I’ve got a bunch more months to try to conquer that crust and get sneakier with the veggies.