Sausage, Tomato, Asparagus Quiche

SAUSAGE & ASPARAGUS QUICHE

2/10/2015

POSTED BY: Stefanie Brodeur

There's nothing I love more than getting a new kitchen toy.

Most recently, I purchased this 11 x 7 inch, removable-bottom tart pan. When I get something new, I tend to go a little overboard at first - like make 3 quiches in 2 weeks. I bought this tart pan specifically for this quiche recipe - you can see they use a similar one in the original recipe. I have since found other uses for it as well - stay tuned for future posts featuring tart-shaped things!

Everything looks more beautiful when it's done in a tart pan.

ADAPTED RECIPE - WHAT'S DIFFERENT?
I adapted the recipe below from Real Food by Dad. Two things are different.

The crust - the original recipe calls for a puff pastry crust, which I'm sure would be buttery, flaky, and delicious. I've been experimenting with pie crusts lately, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and turn this into a pie crust recipe. This does add the extra step of blind baking (or pre-baking) the crust, which adds about 20 minutes of cook time.
The asparagus - I used frozen asparagus spears. Why? Because my supermarket didn't have any fresh ones in the dead of winter. But as it turned out, there were lots of other benefits too - The frozen ones were cheaper, came as the perfect size, and were already blanched. If you use fresh spears, just make sure you blanch them for a few minutes in boiling water before adding them to the quiche.

MAKE IT AHEAD
You can make and prep the entire quiche ahead of time. Make the crust a few days in advance - just keep it wrapped tightly in the fridge, or put it in a freezer bag in the freezer.

Mix the quiche filling (at least everything except the pretty things you lay in last) a few hours, or up to a day before you are going to bake. Eggs, cream, cheese, broccoli, cooked sausage - just whisk it all together and keep it covered in the fridge until it's time to bake!

PRESENTATION
I like to leave it in one piece until it's time to eat. I haven't found a way to cut it as clean as they do in the original (see the nice, fancy triangle pieces?). So save yourself the trouble, and keep it all together so everyone has a chance to oo and aww at it before you cut 'er up.