Cauliflower Quiche

Well sometimes you produce a winner and sometimes you don't. By the time I sat down at the dinner table last night the verdict was clear: no one liked it. This quiche is part of my "things I don't like but will try to more" effort. Its similar in motivation to the mushroom quiche I made a while ago. Cauliflower has long been the weird white broccoli thing I had little interest in eating. Quiche's are generally forgiving ways to sample vegetables (as they're covered in cheese and eggs :), but this didn't go over well. Honestly I didn't really like it myself. Let me give you the recipe as I made it and then make some observations about how it could be improved, in our minds. Sara and I both agreed that it wasn't horrible, just not good. This is from that same Vegetarian cookbook.

Golden Cauliflower Quiche

Pie crust
1 small head of cauliflower (about 4 cups chopped)
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2 eggs
1/2 C milk
1/2 C mayo
2 C cheese (you pick, but cheddar is a good stand in)
1/8 t pepper
1/8 t nutmeg

Heat oven to 400 degrees F.

Set up your pie crust and cook it at 400 degrees F for about 10 minutes as discussed in previous posts.

Cut cauliflower into 1/2 inch thick pieces until you have 4C. Steam for about 5 minutes over boiling water. Drain, rinse, drain again.

Once your pie crust is done, drop the temperature to 350 and spread the almonds on a pan and lightly toast them. Keep an eye on them it'll only take a few minutes.

Put the cauliflower in the bottom of the baked crust and sprinkle with almonds once they're done.

In a blender, whirl eggs, milk and mayo until smooth. Add 1 and 1/4 C of the cheese (saving the rest) along with the pepper and nutmeg. Whirl briefly to mix. Pour mixture over the cauliflower and sprinkle remaining cheese over the top. Bake on bottom rack of the oven for 30-40 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Let stand for 5-10 minutes before serving.

NOTES:

• Nutmeg = Yuck. I almost didn't use it but as I have little experience with cauliflower I went ahead and used it. You might like it but none of us did. Sara suggested garlic instead and I think I might add a minced (or pressed) clove next time with maybe a few tablespoons of minced onion also.
  
  
• Texture: My family also didn't like the texture, though I rather did. The cauliflower, being steamed, is almost crunchy. As crunchy as cauliflower can be anyway. But they've all decided that quiches should be a bit more homogeneous. I'm not sure I'm going to change that next time, I might just chop it a bit finer though I imagine you could toss it in a food processor along with the egg/milk/mayo mixture.
  
  
• Mayo: Increasingly I want to cook with basic ingredients not an assembly of other assemblies. So I could make my own mayo but we don't use a lot of mayo or perhaps I could try yogurt (my current favorite substitute for everything.
  
  
• Blender: You probably don't need a blender either. So if you don't have one, just get ready to burn a few calories...something we could all benefit from.
  

So not a success....yet!