Okay, so, due to the large influx of posts on my home-grown tomatoes, it’s time to post what I baked tonight online. I’ve been making this since my dear friend Erica told me about Farm Patch Market in Bryan, Texas. God how I miss Farm Patch! The freshest produce, take-home potted herb plants, all at the lowest prices! Not only that, it was stuck to a meat market where they custom chopped any kind of meat and seafood to your liking, even hard to find meats and deli selections. And fresh cheese! Getting nostalgic and missing it…
Anyway, here’s the Tomato Basil Quiche ingredients:
* 1 pie crust (make your own or buy the plain, roll-out from the freezer section)
* Pie plate
* One white onion
* Garlic (amount will be left up to user)
* 1, 2 or 3 Tomatoes (Tonight I used home-grown that someone was nice enough to share with us fellow employees in the break room – thank you, oh mystery gardener. Home grown tomatoes not only look better but TASTE SO MUCH BETTER!)
* Mozzarella (I have used the fresh, out of the water mozzarella – it lacked taste in this recipe. This evening I used slices of mozzarella from Kraft, layered them over the onion and again just under the surface with very pleasing results. There’s also a white, wrapped cylinder of mozzarella that I really like – the packaging has red and green in it – that I like to use)
* 1 bunch fresh basil (FRESH, NOT DRIED)
* 4 – 8 Eggs
* Milk or Water
See what I mean about home-grown tomatoes and how amazing they are?
Commence Cooking!
Get your pie crust (use your gra’ma’s recipe or the frozen, quick, modern semi-made one) ready. Bake according to directions and have a golden crusted pie crust ready. No, do not get graham cracker or oreo crusts. Sure, they look good now, but they will not benefit this recipe. Anyway, the pie crust I used was an H-E-B brand that I had to bake for 11 minutes at 475 degrees F. When your pie crust is finished baking, reduce oven heat to 375 degrees F.
While the pie crust is baking, this is a good time to get some prep work out of the way. Dice up that onion of yours and get it sauteed, along with as much garlic as you’d like. Tonight, my lazy ass took a couple of spoonfuls of that store-bought pre-chopped juiced-up garlic and it was just fine. Saute down to your liking, and place in baked pie crust.
Now, this is the part where it becomes up to your discretion – layering mozzarella, slices of tomato, and fresh basil. Tonight, I placed a layer of sliced mozzarella over the onion layer and proceeded to layer tomatoes, then more cheese, then more tomatoes, and then fresh basil. When I have really thick slices of mozzarella, I just layer tomatoes, said thick mozzarella slices, and then fresh basil. However you decide, stack these ingredients how you’d wish. Pour an egg and water or egg and milk mixture over the stacked pieces very slowly and carefully as if you lock in your pieces. Reserve some fresh basil out for topping later.
Bake for about 45 – 60 minutes (50 is usually a safe bet) at 375 degrees F. Remove, and let cool. I know that it is REALLY HARD not to dive into this puppy (and I totally burned my mouth on it tonight… Just couldn’t help it, it was so delicious!). Top with enough fresh basil to include in about every other piece with each slice you cut…
Umm. Fair warning, it’s pretty delicious. Try not to get addicted.
