From Quiche to Crawfish

My husband and I traveled home to New Orleans this past weekend for his little brother's high school graduation. An added bonus to being home this weekend was that it was also Mother's Day. Normally we wouldn't travel home for this holiday so it was nice to be able to spend the day with our moms. Since it was my first Mother's Day that I had someone other than my own Mom to honor, I wanted to make it special. We spent the night at Forrest's parent's house on Saturday so I planned on making a memorable Mother's Day Breakfast for his mom and his family. I knew Quiche wouldn't be the most popular choice for a house full of men but it was Mother's Day after all and women love quiche (stereotypically). I was still interested in pleasing the boys too so I chose a quiche that had a hashbrowns-crust instead of pie crust and added sausage to one of them to try and "man it up" a little. I recruited Forrest's brothers and his dad to help out and they all did an awesome job. Simon took my emailed grocery list and did the shopping for all the items I needed, Denton woke me up at 6:00am so I could get started cooking and Mr. Paul made sure Mrs. Pat knew the plan and didn't make conflicting breakfast plans for that day.

I purposely chose a recipe I had made before since I knew I was cooking for a bunch of people on a big day and I didn't feel it was a good time to start experimenting. Well despite my best efforts it ended up being a huge science experiment to say the least. Cooking in someone else's oven proved to be quite the adventure. I had a big piece of humble pie (or should I say humble quiche) that morning. Maybe I wasn't such the little chef after all - I had a recipe that was fairly simple to assemble and cook and for some reason it took me twice as long to cook than it had the first time I made it. I even had to call in the guest of honor to help me re-asses the cooking times and the rapidly browning crusts (Sorry Mrs. Pat!) The flavor turned out correctly, but the cooking times were so off that it really bugged me. In the end, everyone was happy and I was elated to cook for my new family!

Hashbrown Quiche
Recipe courtesy Paula Dean, 2007

3 cups, shredded frozen hash browns, thawed and drained
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, melted
3 large eggs, beaten
1 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup diced cooked ham ( I put ham in one and Andouille Sausage in the other)
1/2 cup diced green onions
1 cup shredded Cheddar
Salt and freshly ground black pepperPreheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Gently press the drained hash browns between paper towels to dry them as best as possible. In a 9-inch pie plate, toss the hash browns with the melted butter into the plate. Press them into the bottom and up the sides to form a crust. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown and starting to crisp.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. When the hash brown crust is ready pour the egg mixture over it and return to the oven.

Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for about 30 minutes until the quiche is light golden brown on top and puffed. (By the Way - The sausage quiche was voted the crowd favorite.)

After breakfast, we headed to my family's for a crawfish boil. The crawfish were delicious and I couldn't have asked for two better meals with two better families during our visit to New Orleans!