Growing up, we always ate dinner together at the table. This was a non-negotiable—no matter how busy the day or how plentiful the homework waiting or how foul the moods among us, we sat down together. One of us might be sulking: refusing to pass the Jane’s salt and staring down at our plate, but we’d never dare not join in.
With four girls, all two years apart, the nights were (pleasantly) chaotic. The sky outside would be dark; the lights in the kitchen bright and inviting. Pots on the stove would be bubbling merrily away, the smell of chicken stock and melting cheese hanging in the air. Unzipped backpacks would be slung on the stools lined up against the kitchen island; notebooks and textbooks open on the counter, uncapped pens and a scientific calculator stacked haphazardly next to them.
One of us would be rushing down the stairs, hair wet from a shower and arms full of dirty laundry. I’d be leaning against a wall, bending down to peel off my sweaty shin guards, still wearing my damp red-and-white striped soccer jersey from the afternoon’s game. My little sister would be curled in an armchair, tugging on one of her long braids, her red shorts peeking out from under the royal blue jumper that was her uniform as a lower schooler.
And then my mom would call to us and we’d convene from all corners of the house. One of us would set the table with forks and plates and knifes. One of us would bring glasses, another a pitcher of milk from the refrigerator. We’d sit down and then sing grace—not being a terribly religious family, our version was an rowdy old camp song with a jaunty, upbeat tune and only four lines of free-spirited lyrics, including one about “the sun and the rain and the apple seeds”. We sang quickly, a habit we never missed, one that never seemed quirky until I got older and would have friends over for dinner, feeling terribly self-conscious when we still sang no matter the company.
In college I ate dinner in a dining hall, usually in a hasty rush to get somewhere else: a party, a stack of work waiting for me, someone’s dorm room to pile on the couch together and watch Grey’s Anatomy. After graduating, I moved into an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with my older sister. We cooked most nights, but cooking was often a loose term to mean meals comprised of cottage cheese piled on Wasa crackers and Magnolia Bakery banana pudding or big salads with homemade croutons followed by literal mugs of milk chocolate chips.
We’d eat side-by-side on our slouchy couch, watching old episodes of Friends on our tiny DVD player. (We didn’t even have internet, because we were skint and saving our money for truly important things, like splurging on a pair of bottle green Hunter rain boots or buying warm pretzel croissants at City Bakery.)
I distinctly remember the first time a boyfriend cooked me dinner. It was the summer between my junior and senior years of college—he’d already graduated, and was living in Harlem in a rambling, elegant brownstone with four other guys. The inside looked like a frat house with clothes piled everywhere and squash racquets flung on the floor and a huge flat-screen TV taking up most of the real estate in the pretty railroad-style living room. The kitchen was a mess, full of greasy pizza boxes and empty containers of Chinese take-out. The fridge held nothing but Pillsbury biscuit dough and a dozen jars of hot sauce and a single carton of eggs. You’d be hard pressed to find a fresh vegetable or piece of fruit, save for limes for cocktails.
He invited me over on a Friday, telling me he’d cook. My expectations were low-to-nonexistent, to put it mildly. I sat at a bar stool at the kitchen island and watched him step out onto the terrace to open the grill, checking on toasted slices of ciabatta and two steaks, and then come back inside to pull two white ramekins out of the refrigerator. He flipped them over onto a plate and carefully removed the ramekins, revealing a beautifully layered terrine of vegetables: paper thin slices of bell peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and herbs all drizzled with balsamic and pressed overnight with a heavy weight on top, so the layers compacted into a firm, sliceable cake.
The next day, I called my mom as I snuck away from my desk, standing in line at Duane Reade waiting to pay for a pack of gum. "He’s such an adult!” I whispered, awestruck. (I was used to college boys, amongst whom the height of chivalry meant offering you their sticky plastic half-drunk cup of beer or making brief eye contact with you on the way to a history lecture after kissing you the night before on the dark path outside of the architecture library. No one ever took you out to dinner, let alone cooked. As far as I could take, most college boys could barely pile cereal into a bowl and subsisted happily on cheesesteak hoagies and boxes of parmesan Goldfish.)
Dinner wasn’t the anchor of the day anymore once I left home, but slowly it’s becoming that way again. More and more it’s ballast against the rockiness of the world, offering a reliably calm and peaceful slice of togetherness.
In so many ways, I return to how we did things growing up, because they’re familiar but also because they feel right. I like to make dinners that we used to eat—I love them for the nostalgia, yes, but also I trust that my mom honed these recipes because they made sense to cook while taking care of a slew of wild young things.
Quiche was a regular in the dinner rotation. It’s easy to pack full of good, nourishing things (eggs and cheese and tons of vegetables); it’s easy to make ahead (either just the crust or the entire thing); it’s very appealing to people of all ages (if you don’t love flaky pastry crust then get out of here).
We alternated between two kinds: Swiss chard with Jarlsberg cheese or broccoli with cheddar. My three sisters all preferred the chard, which we had much more often as our garden was full of chard every year. I, however, loved broccoli quiche the best. Whenever we had it, I felt a private thrill, as if it had been made especially for me.
The French know well that quiche and a simple green salad make a rather exceptional meal, and I recommend following their lead. Even now, when I’m home with my parents, we often have quiche with a big salad, and that’s dinner.
If you, like me, are not cooking for a family of six, or if some of your household are not fans of quiche (or if your husband is “trying out veganism”), then you can absolutely cut up large slices of the quiche and freeze it. The best way to reheat it from frozen is in a low oven on a baking sheet—I often set a cooling rack on top of a baking sheet for maximum air circulation.
If you don’t want to freeze it, but won’t finish it all in a day or two, do as my mom does and reheat slices in a cast iron pan. They’ll get crispy and golden on the edges, which is glorious.
My mom’s recipe is…loose. She’s made quiche thousands of times, and it’s a matter of muscle memory for her. When I ask her to write down the recipe to make sure I’m replicating it as best I can, she sends me the following:
If parenthetical references like “(about)” and qualifiers like “enough to get the right consistency” don’t quite do it for you, see below for a slightly more detailed approach. (But between you and me, her description is perfect as is.)
A word on quiche: the most important part of the recipe is the crust. Do not be afraid of pie crust! It’s really not as scary as it sounds. My mom makes it in the food processor, but I’ve done it plenty by hand, and either way works beautifully. This recipe yields an extremely flaky but also sturdy crust. When you roll it out, be sure to get it as thin as you can without coming anywhere close to tearing a hole—that will lead to weak spots and/or leakage, which is no good.
If you do tear a hole, just grab a bit from the edges (the crust will have ample scraps once you trim the edges) and patch it up.
This version is for a broccoli and cheddar quiche, my favorite, but you can switch up the fillings very easily. Just aim for roughly the same quantity of filling, as that will keep the ratio balanced with the eggs and milk.
If you use kale or chard, it’s best to cook it a bit beforehand, as I do with the broccoli. If you use something more delicate, like baby spinach, you can add that in raw. Sturdy vegetables like butternut squash or parsnips or asparagus or bell peppers or mushrooms are best roasted beforehand (or sautéed).
You could add meat (crispy bacon or pancetta or sausage), and try any manner of cheese, from Gruyere to smoked Gouda.
*Note: My mom never fusses about with making the edges beautifully crimped in a photo-worthy fashion, and so I don’t either. But feel free to make it more elegant if you’re into that!
Broccoli and Cheese Quiche
Makes one 9” quiche
For the crust
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (226g) unsalted butter, cold
4 to 5 tablespoons ice water
For the filling
1 head broccoli, chopped roughly
1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese (or Swiss)
4 eggs
1 cup milk (or half milk and half cream)
1/2 teaspoon salt (adjust depending on how salty your cheese is)
To make the crust: Whisk together the flour and salt. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, a fork, or your fingertips until the butter is in small pea-sized chunks, with some smaller bits. You can also do this by pulsing it all together in the food processor.
Add the water, one tablespoon at a time, kneading/folding the dough gently until it comes together in a ball. Don’t overwork the dough—you don’t want it to become homogenous. If you’re using a food processor, pulse the dough with the water until it gathers into a ball.
Press the dough into a fat disk and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Chill for at least 3 hours, or you can freeze it (it’ll keep for a few months in the freezer).
When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Remove the dough from the refrigerator (if you’ve frozen it, let it thaw at room temperature until pliable but still very cold). Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a circle about 12 or 13” in diameter—you want to try to get it pretty thin but it shouldn’t be anywhere close to tearing.
Transfer the dough to a standard pie or quiche pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork, then line it with tin foil and fill it with pie weights or dried beans. Trim the edges and crimp them in any style you like; I use my fingers to pinch it in a semi-decorative way but I don’t worry about it too much. I actually love when some parts of the crust edges are thicker than others!
Bake the crust for about 10 minutes, or until a very pale golden. Remove from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes before removing the weights and foil.
While the crust cools, make the filling: Cook the broccoli in a bit of olive oil in a cast iron pan or large skillet. You only want to cook it for maybe 4 or 5 minutes—enough to slightly soften the broccoli but still retain plenty of crunch.
Scoop the broccoli into the crust and add the cheese, reserving a small handful for topping.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk with the salt. Pour the liquid over the filling, then top with the reserved cheese.
Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes, or until the crust is a deep golden brown and the top of the quiche is just barely puffed and set.
Remove from the oven and let cool slightly before slicing and serving.