Recipes Part 7: Mama Poulton's Leftovers Quiche

My mom is the most wonderful woman I know. She worked full time for forty years (recently “retired”), ran a farm that had up to seven horses, two dogs, four cats, and an assortment of other animals, raised two daughters (with my dad, who is also awesome), and still came home every night and made us dinner from scratch. I hardly ate out before going to high school and never realized how lucky I was. The other thing about my mom is that, bless her, she can’t smell a thing due to a workplace mishap many years ago. Subsequently, her cooking, though delicious the majority of the time, occasionally included burned vegetables and other interesting ingredients. But I digress.

My mom is, and always will be, the master of the leftovers meal. Any normal person would look in the fridge at 6pm and be convinced a meal could not be assembled from the odds and ends yet my mom would have a hot delicious meal on the table by 7. Stews, casseroles, even calzones would be born out of soggy peas, half jars of tomato sauce and a single pork chop.

So in the spirit of Mother’s Day on Sunday, I made my mother’s famous leftovers quiche. There is no recipe anywhere in the world for this dish - the only two things you must have are eggs and a pie crust. This recipe doubles as a great way to get rid of farmers market odds and ends: I used broccoli from Houston Farms that wouldn’t quite make two more servings, the end of a block of cheese from Simply Local, and sausage from Windy Hill Farms. As always, the eggs came from Windy Hill but, I confess, I bought the crust from Trader Joe’s (I still haven’t tackled homemade crusts).

Mama Poulton’s Leftovers Quiche

3-4 eggs depending on size

1 pie crust

¼ cup milk or cream of your choice

½ cup of shredded cheese

¼ cup cooked broccoli, chopped

½ cup cooked breakfast sausage

1. Beat eggs
2. Saute broccoli and sausage until sausage is cooked through
3. Fold all ingredients into eggs
4. Pour egg mixture into crust
5. Cook for 20-30 minutes or until top is firm except for a little jiggle at the center

Yes, it tasted as good as it looks!

Two side notes: first, my pie dish is at a friend’s house so I had to improvise with a cake pan which actually worked just fine.  Second, I accompanied the quiche with sliced tomatoes from Windy Hill and dill from a new vendor at the market and doused them in balsamic vinegar and cracked salt and pepper over top. 

Simply delicious!