On Monday, March 1st, our 10 hens (who, having been born on May 1st, 2009, are exactly 10 months old), laid 10 eggs. So I declare March to be Egg Month, and will be posting an egg recipe once a week this month, starting with:
Gluten-free Quiche, or Egg Casserole
This is basically a quiche with a rice-based crust, baked in a casserole or lasagna dish. You can also bake it in a regular pie plate, make mini-quiches using a muffin pan, or make an egg casserole loaf in a loaf tin, and slice it warm or cold. The rice-based crust comes from a book called Frozen Assets: Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month by Deborah Taylor-Hough, and it’s a great way to use up left-over cooked rice.
Ingredients
- 1 cup cooked rice (white or brown)
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce (gluten free, if necessary)
- approximately 12 small-to-medium, 10 large, or 8 extra large-to-jumbo eggs
- approximately 100 grams swiss cheese, grated
- 1 package of mushrooms
- 1 package of spinach (fresh or frozen)
- 1 small onion
- salt and pepper to taste
Other optional ingredients include: ham, cubed or shredded, other vegetables such as corn niblets, broccoli, or asparagus. You can also treat this as a “clear out the leftovers in the fridge” recipe, and toss just about any kind of protein (chicken or turkey, tofu, etc.) or vegetable into the mix.
- Mix the cooked rice with the soy sauce and 1 beaten egg.
- Grease the dish well with butter or other cooking oil.
Press the rice mixture into the bottom of the dish firmly.- Bake the rice in the dish for 10 mins. at 400°F
- While the rice is baking, saute the onions (and garlic, if you like), in a little butter or oil. Add any spices of fresh chopped herbs.
- Crack your eggs into a large bowl. Beat well.
- Add all the other ingredients to the bowl and stir well.
- When the rice has baked, take the dish out of the oven, pour the egg mixture onto it, and then put it back in the oven at 350°F for about 40 minutes, or until firm.
This casserole refrigerates well, and since quiche freezes well, I would guess this does too, but I haven’t tried yet. And here’s a fairly recent picture of our chickens, up on their roosts for the night:
out here 
Mmm, that looks wonderful. I made quiche pastry last night with all whole wheat flour, since I was out of white, and it kind of failed; it was hard and crumbly. I continually forget that whole wheat does not behave the same way white flour does.
And the quiche may also have been disappointing because all I had on hand was very mild 50%-less-fat cheddar (a purchasing mistake; HRH thought he was buying mozzarella), so I couldn’t taste the cheese at all. I usually default to old cheddar, as it’s what I have on hand when I’m struck by the quiche bug, although if I plan it in advance I buy emmenthal or swiss.