When my husband travels a lot for work, I like to make meals that hold up well to reheating for a couple of days. Enter this spinach quiche with ham and goat cheese. I baked this quiche Sunday night and have been enjoying leftover pieces for the past few days. Occassionally, I pack it in […]
When my husband travels a lot for work, I like to make meals that hold up well to reheating for a couple of days. Enter this spinach quiche with ham and goat cheese. I baked this quiche Sunday night and have been enjoying leftover pieces for the past few days. Occassionally, I pack it in my lunch-bag and eat it for breakfast at work. Other times, I eat it for dinner with a mixed greens salad.
Spinach Quiche Photo Credit : Jen Perez
One of the things I love about a good quiche is how they are adaptable to whatever you have on hand or your own preferences. I had a few random ingredients in my fridge that I wanted to use up in this spinach quiche, so I made a couple substitutions. First of all, I had some fresh spinach on hand. I ended up with 4 cups of spinach. While the recipe only calls for 2 cups, I love spinach, so I decided to throw it all in. I’m glad I did, because spinach cooks down so much.
I also doubled the amount of ham in the recipe. I had a ham steak in the fridge and just chopped the whole thing up into cubes. It came out to one cup, so I figured I’d use it all. The result is that I get a bite of ham more often then I would have if I hadn’t doubled the ham. That’s definitely a good thing in my mind.
Spinach Quiche Photo Credit : Jen Perez
The recipe called for Gruyere cheese, but I didn’t have any on hand and didn’t have the time to run to the store to grab some. Since our fridge always has crumbled goat cheese in it — which goes really well with spinach — I decided to use that instead.
The last substitution I used was Greek yogurt. This may sound odd to you, but I’ve found that you can use Greek yogurt in a lot of cooking and baking applications. I sub it for sour cream on top of tacos or in baked goods, for buttermilk in baking, and even in place of mayonaise in some chicken salads. Greek yogurt is low in fat and high in protein, so it’s a better bet nutritionally. Since Greek yogurt is very thick, I used ¾ cup of Greek yogurt + ¾ cup milk in place of the half and half in the recipe.
Spinach Quiche with Goat Cheese and Ham Photo Credit : Jen Perez
The result of all of these substitutions is a great quiche that fits my tastes and helped me to clear out my fridge a bit. Next time, I’d like to add some chopped red bell pepper to give it some more color and a little crunch.
