Once every five years or so I get the urge to make quiche, and making quiche always takes me back to when I worked at Hidden Valley Ranch outside Cody, Wyoming (then a dude ranch, now a private ranch with a new name). My job was with the horses, but on the cook's day off, if I wasn't on a pack trip or hauling supplies 12 miles into an elk hunting camp in the Washakie Wilderness, I would cook.
Quiche is incredibly easy (especially if you buy the crust, which you can pre-bake for 10 minutes, or not). Just pile whatever fillings you want into the crust then mix some eggs and cream (3 or 4 eggs and a cup or so of cream, or cream mixed with milk or half-and-half; you can also replace part of the cream with ricotta), and add salt, pepper, nutmeg. Pour the custard over the fillings and bake at 375 for 45 minutes or so, til it’s not jiggly in the middle.
Quiche is a great way to feed a crowd because it's easy to make multiples in almost no additional time. But because this was in the ‘80s, a few years after the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" became a bestseller, I always wondered if I'd get pushback when I served it. After all, the guys on our ranch staff had snuff in the back pockets of their Wranglers, and on their days off they shot and skinned rattlesnakes to make into belts.
But they ate it and they seemed to enjoy it. We even served salad with it. We just avoided using the word 'quiche' ‘til after they'd eaten it.
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