Une quiche lorraine... quelque part

More and more often, I read (or hear people on TV cooking and food shows) that "the real" quiche lorraine does not have cheese in it. The savory pie is filled with a mixture called a migaine that's composed of eggs, cream, milk, and cooked pork lardons. It's seasoned with black pepper as well as, optionally, a grating or pinch of nutmeg. But no cheese.

As you can see, I put cheese in the quiche we made for lunch yesterday. In reading different quiche recipes, I learned something I didn't know before. A quiche lorraine that includes grated cheese in the migaine is more properly known as a « quiche vosgienne » [keesh voh-zhee-ehn]. Imagine! I've been making quiches vosgiennes for years and didn't even know it!

Technically, a cheesy quiche is still a quiche lorraine, because the Vosges [vauzh] are a mountain range in the southeastern part of the old Lorraine province. On the eastern flank of the Vosges mountains is the historical province of Alsace. Alsace has its own quiche, by the way. It's called a quiche alsacienne, and it's like a quiche lorraine in that it is cheeseless, but sauteed onions are put into the migaine along with the lardons to flavor it.

Here's the recipe for the quiche vosgienne.

Quiche vosgienne

1 standard pie crust (pâte brisée), blind-baked if possible

4 large eggs

200 milliliters (7 fl. oz.) of heavy cream

200 milliliters of milk (or less)

a pinch of black pepper
a grating of nutmeg

about a cup of grated Swiss cheese

200 grams (about 7 oz.) of pork lardons, smoked or salt-cured

Mix the eggs, cream, and milk together in a bowl to make the migaine (a custard). Season with black pepper and nutmeg.

Line a pie plate with the pâte brisée crust. Optionally, line it with parchment paper and fill it with pie weights, raw rice, or raw dried beans and bake it in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes until browned. Let it cool. Remove the paper and weights.

Sauté the pork lardons separately and drain on paper towels. Drain and reserve.

Scatter about half the grated cheese on the bottom of the pie shell. Scatter lardons over the cheese. Pour the egg and cream mixture into the pie shell. Scatter the remaining cheese over the top of the migaine.

Bake the quiche in the oven at 350ºF (180ºC) for 45 minutes or until it sets up and is browned on top. If the quiche seems to be browning too fast, keep turning down the heat until it's done the way you like it.

As for all these distinctions between different varieties of quiches, here's what the latest (2007) edition of the Larousse Gastronomique food and cooking encyclopedia says: « Aujourd'hui, on prépare des quiches avec des garnitures très variées. » The older LG (1967) gives a recipe for quiche lorraine that contains neither lardons nor cheese, and its made in a bread dough crust rather than a pâte brisée shell. It also says: « Il est plusieurs sortes de quiches. Chaque région de Lorraine ou d'Alsace a la sienne et prétend que seule sa quiche est la véritable. »

P.S. Did any of you have a mysterious Google and Blogger outage this morning starting at about 6:30 a.m. French time (12:30 a.m. Eastern, 9:30 p.m. Pacific) and lasting maybe 90 minutes? We were completely unable to connect to Google, Youtube, Gmail, or Blogger during that time, though sites like CNN, the NYT, the Washington Post, and others were coming up normally. Very strange.