The beloved spousal unit made a snyde remark when I mentioned we would have some kind of pasta for dinner (I think it was something like 'Oh well big surprise there') which of course entered him into the asshat of the day contest - especially when I told him that he could cook dinner then, and to remember to do the dishes afterwards. An hour later, when he had NOT started making any dinner - I'm guess he didn't understand that I was serious when I told him to cook dinner - I decided tonight would be the sweet potato crusted quiche night. Yes, I know he's not a fan of sweet potatoes or quiche, but he lost his vote way back on the pasta remark.
Thanks to dear friend and co-worker Shannon, I had some fabulous home-grown sweet potatoes, just the right size. I peeled 2 small sweet potatoes, and used the trust Pampered Chef Mandolin to slice them into uniform slices. I could have slice the potatoes myself, but figured the mandolin would do a better job getting them as thin as I wanted and safer/uniform. I can be a knife clutz occassionally, and sweet potatoes can be a bugger to cut. Tough little tubers.
I also broke out my trust (and not often used lately) Pampered Chef round stoneware baking dish (which I have just discovered they no longer sell - shame really because it is really a very versatile size/shape). It's slightly larger than a standard pie dish/plate with straight sides, but I've done a quiche in this dish before and have been very happy with the thorough cooking and release convenience.
I rubbed some olive oil onto the baking dish and put a layer of sweet potato slices in the bottom of the dish, trying to overlap just a bit to leave as little open space as possible. I used some of the smaller slickes for the upright sides, but wasnt terrible concerned about having the upright crust. I then sprayed the top of the slices with cooking oil spray - I need one of those oil sprayers so that I can really know what I'm spraying - and put the crust in a 450 degree oven to bake for 20 minutes. While the crust was cooking I sauteed some diced onion - mine happened to be some leftover red onion - about 1/2 cup, some red bell peppers - about 1/2 the pepper, and about 1 stalk of celery (which leads me to remember another Pinterest test I need to blog) in some olive oil, and added about 1/2 a pound of turkey sausage. When this was all cooked up I added about 3 cups of chopped fresh baby spinach, and sauteed it for just a couple of minutes until the spinach was well wilted. I then set this aside to cool as much as possible before adding the eggs. I also chopped up 2 pepperjack cheese sticks.
I opted to just use 4 eggs because I didn't want a super thick quiche. I removed the crust from the oven after 20 minutes and set aside, and reduce the oven temp to 375 degrees. I added the turkey onion celery pepper spinach cheese mixture into a mixing bowl, and added 4 beaten eggs, and stirred just to combine the ingredients well, then poured it all into the sweet potato crust. I put the quiche back into the 375 degree oven and baked for 40 minutes.
Incredients I used:
3 small sweet potatoes
4 medium eggs olive oil - maybe 2 Tablespoons in the saute
3 cups fresh baby spinach
1/2 red bell pepper
1/2 small red onion
1 stalk celery
2 pepperjack cheese sticks
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese (the powder kind)
Here are the pics at various stages of completion:
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| Crust ready for the first trip to the oven |
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| quiche ready to head into the oven |
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| completed quiche |
