Italian Sausage, Pepper, Green Onion and Cheddar Quiche

Quiche is one of my favorite entrees.  It is a people pleaser regardless if you have it in the AM, brunch, or PM.  In my opinion, quiche is a great dinner staple, and I personally love breakfast for dinner.  If you use a premade pie crust, the only "hard" part about quiche is waiting for it to cook.

Kid tested, mother approved

Quick and easy meals that I can make after I put my son to bed are also a must.  And what is quicker than letting your entree come to room temperature or heating it in the oven for a few minutes until warm while you whip up a delicious side salad?  Exactly... Quiche is a great busy week night meal.

I love my Italian Sausage, Pepper, Green Onion and Cheddar Quiche recipe for a number of reasons.   You can make the sausage, peppers, and onions ahead of time and assemble the quiche the day you plan to serve it.  Or you can make it during the Super Bowl for dinner the following night... It was that or sleep.  Just saying.

Some notes before we begin.  I use the whole green onion, but if you prefer a milder taste then use the green parts only.  You can use any type of bell pepper, and while green or red peppers might be more visually appealing, I do not like the taste of either and they don't agree with my tummy.  Hey, it is my recipe and my preferences.  Feel free to substitute half and half or cream for the milk, but I find milk goes better when you have rich fillings, and Italian sausage and cheddar cheese are as rich as you get.   And while you can use any type of a sausage I highly, highly, highly recommend Premio Sweet & Hot Italian Sausage.

It is the perfectly seasoned and they sell their sausage without the casings.  I substitute Premio Italian sausage in so many recipes that call for ground beef from bolognese, to meatballs, to meatloaf.  I particularly love this Italian sausage mix.  It is the perfect ratio of sweet with a little heat. And if you are thinking that Premio sponsored this post they did not.  No one did.  But Premio, if you want to sponsor any future posts call me!

Now that I'm thinking about it I realize that most of my favorite dishes are either vegetarian or involve pork of some sort.  I mean sausage, pepperoni, bacon, pork chops, ham...  Can you be a porkatarian?  Click here for my other pork based quiche recipe.

While this is my recipe and my preferences, feel free to substitute ingredients based on your preferences.  That's the beauty of cooking.  And leave me a comment if you enjoyed this recipe. 

Italian Sausage, Pepper, Green Onion and Cheddar Quiche

Ingredients:

• 2 green onions chopped (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 cup diced orange bell pepper (about 1/2 of large pepper) 
• 1 lb Italian sausage (mix of 2 hot links and 4 sweet links)
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided in half
• 5 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 frozen deep dish pie crust

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and place pie crust on baking sheet
2. Remove sausage from casings.  Brown sausage (without oil, butter, or  cooking spray) in a large pan over medium high heat.  While browning sausage break into bite sized pieces

3. Once browned transfer sausage with a slotted spatula / spoon to paper towel lined bowl.  Make sure to keep the left over grease in the pan for sauteing the veggies

Yep, Rocky was waiting for a sausage sample.  How could I say no to that face?

4. In the same pan used to cooked the sausage, saute peppers and onions in sausage grease over medium heat until soft, about 5 minutes
5. Remove paper towel from bowl with sausage.  Add cooked peppers and onions to bowl with sausage and mix to combine ingredients

Be careful, your family might try to eat the filling when you're not looking 

6. Whisk together eggs and milk until incorporated and season with salt and pepper to taste

7. Fill pie crust with half of the sausage mixture

8. Top sausage filling with 1 cup cheese

9. Add remaining sausage mixture over cheese

10. Pour egg mixture over sausage filling

11. Top with remaining 1 cup of cheese

12. Bake quiche at 350 degrees preheated oven for 50-55 minutes until eggs are set (a toothpick inserted should come out clean) and cheese is browned
13.  Allow quiche to rest for 20-30 minutes before serving
 
Or if you made the quiche the day before like I did, allow it to come to room temperature.  I know some people like cold quiche, but I'm not some people.  I personally cut a slice and let it warm in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes, but my husband and son like it room temperature.  What's your quiche temperature preference?  Are you a warm, room temperature, or "some people" cold type?

Steak Salad

Day 2 and more veggies consumed.

LUNCH

For lunch I ate last night's leftovers.  Wasn't really craving fajita filling, but I hate throwing food away and the whole point of this week is to eat all the items in my CSA box, not waste.  More about my week's goal here.

Thus I took one for the team. 

DINNER

Starting around the third trimester I started craving red meat, which is not my norm.  My husband is in heaven.  We eat a lot of steak salad because it is quick, easy, and relatively healthy.  Plus we get a lot of different lettuce types since getting our first CSA box and the lettuce is delicious.  It tastes so much better than the packaged (and washed) lettuce you buy at the grocery store.  The only thing I dislike about the lettuce is it is not washed so I have to make an extra effort to get rid of the dirt and creepy crawlies.  Easiest way to clean lettuce is to submerge it in cold water.  

 

I repeat this a number of times until the dirt and bugs settle to the bottom of the bowl before I transfer the lettuce to a salad spinner.

 

 

We generally don't finish a bag of lettuce in one sitting so I make sure to spin, spin, spin the lettuce in the salad spinner, dump out the water, and then spin, spin, spin the lettuce again.  And dump out more water repeating this process until I get the lettuce as dry as possible.  If you thoroughly dry your lettuce it will stay crisp in an airtight container for up to a week.  You're welcome.   

So dinner was delicious.  We made DIY salads using the fresh Jersey corn in our box warm off the grill, mini heirloom tomatoes, filet mignon, and red onions and feta for me and blue cheese for him.

Happy Campers!  Now since we ate "low carb" we theoretically should be able to have dessert right?  Let's be real, we would have had dessert either way.

Remaining veggies:

- A few mixed greens leftover from tonight
- Yellow squash and 2 zucchini
- Some purple onion
- Bag of Swiss chard / spinach (not sure yet what it is)
- Bag of basil
- 2 cobs of corn

Eat your veggies

I get a CSA box every Sunday because I firmly believe in supporting local farmers.  Plus, my mom treated us to this box for the second time because organic ain't cheap!  My husband and I try to meal prep on Sunday's to make sure we utilize everything in our box.  Emphasis on try.  We generally start the week out strong cooking what we planned to make and eating lots of veggies.  However, by the end of the week we are both tired and end up ordering take out and what's left of the box goes in the trash (sorry cilantro... we're not huge fans) or gets chopped up and frozen to use later (onions from last week).  Not this week!

My goal is to try and eat all the vegetables in the CSA box without having to toss a single item.  To be accountable I am documenting how I eat the box veggies along the way.

This week we got:
- Bag of mixed greens
- Yellow squash and 2 zucchini
- 3 purple onions
- Bag of Swiss chard / spinach (not sure yet what it is)
- Bag of basil
- 2 bell peppers
- 4 corn

LUNCH

Lunch we utilized a few basil leaves after stopping by the deli to get fresh Italian bread, store made mozzarella, and garlic marinated sundried tomatoes. 

And because this fresh sandwich was so good topped with imported balsamic I decided to have another.

And I would have had another, but we ran out of bread. 

DINNER

For dinner I racked my brain on what to make that incorporated both bell peppers and onions and the husband picked fajitas.

You can make fajitas fancy or you can make them super easy.  I chose the later.  I like to make fajitas on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper because I can season the veggies and meat without dirtying a bowl and clean up is as easy as grab parchment paper and drop in trash.  BOOM.  

Pan Chicken Fajitas

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients:
1 lb chicken breast
2 bell peppers
2 small onions
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoon olive oil
Seasoning (I make my own, see below)

Seasoning recommendation:
1-2 teaspoons Adobo (depending on my mood...I love salt)
1.5 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon (Spanish) paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
Pinch of red pepper flakes

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Cut chicken into small strips (I recommend about 1/2 inch by 3-4 inches)
3. Thinly slice bell pepper and onions.  Chop garlic
4. Combine chicken, peppers, onions, and garlic on parchment lined cooking sheet
5. Top chicken and veggies with seasoning and olive oil

6.  Mix, mix, mix until evenly coated

7.  Spread chicken and veggies out making sure that chicken is not overlapping

 
8.  Bake for 25 minutes flipping the mixture halfway through
9.  Serve with warmed tortillas, lime juice, and the condiments of your choosing

 

Remaining veggies:

- Bag of mixed greens
- Yellow squash and 2 zucchini
- 1 purple onion
- Bag of Swiss chard / spinach (not sure yet what it is)
- Bag of basil
- 4 corn