Cockadoodledoo: Saturday Brunch Petite Crustless Quiches with Fines Herbes and Chèvre

This post is a submission for the NYC Eggland’s Best Recipe Contest!

There have been a lot of comings and goings lately. I commute back and forth between New York and South Florida every week now, working at Penguin two days a week, and writing the other 5. I feel like a chicken without a head, and it’s a blessed morning when I wake up knowing exactly where I am, and where I’m supposed to be an hour later.

So when a bunch of my Princeton girlfriends announced they’d be dropping in on me and Jamie (my best friend from Princeton who also happens to have grown up next door) for the weekend, I quivered with happiness, and then shivered in panic. Our sorority told us to “put away childish things,” but I decided to put away the grownup ones. I was taking this weekend off.

The girls, specifically Jamie, Jessie, Franny, and Katie (hi!), have been so supportive with my food career that I wanted to cook for them. After all, the way to anyone’s heart is through her stomach. When they got in late Friday night, I decided Saturday brunch, our traditional New York meeting time, was in order.

The menu read as follows:

  • Watermelon and Raspberry Salad
  • Brioche, Baguette, and Croissants with Confiture and Nutella
  • Sunday Brunch Soda, with Freshly Squeezed Florida Orange Juice, Orange Flower Water, and Perrier
  • And, the pièce de résistance, Petite Crustless Quiches with Fines Herbes and Chèvre

As it turns out, even a headless chicken can lay a couple of eggs.

Petite Crustless Quiches with Fines Herbes and Chèvre are perfect brunch finger food. Eggs and milk are whipped together to an ecstasy of fluffy bubbles, and flavored with salty, nutty Parmesan cheese. In go the fines herbes, a traditional French herb blend of tarragon, parsley, chervil, and chives. They just all go so perfectly with eggs—the anise of the tarragon, the grassiness of the parsley, the delicate verdure of the chervil, and the springtime snap of the chives. The quiche batter is spooned into muffin tins, and then great dollops of goat cheese, that will melt in pockets into the quiches, are tumbled in. Bake, and serve. That’s all you have to do.

These quiches come out of the oven puffed as a soufflé, fluffy as an omelet, and hearty as a frittata. Peppered with green confetti, they look like a garden party, and the tangy, melting cream of the goat cheese fills your mouth with a distinctive bite. And all of that without having to worry about the crust.

After all the wine, hard work, late nights, and twenty-somethings’ troubles, my friends smiled with gratitude. I suppose I am Mother Hen after all.

Petite Crustless Quiches with Fines Herbes and Chèvre

8 eggs

½ cup whole milk

Salt and pepper

¼ cup grated Parmesan or Pecorino

1 tablespoon freshly chopped flat leaf parsley

1 tablespoon freshly chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon freshly chopped chervil

1 tablespoon freshly snipped chives

2 ounces chèvre (soft fresh goat cheese)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk until they are well combined.

3. Season the egg and milk mixture liberally with salt and pepper, and beat in the Parmesan or Percorino cheese and the fines herbes (parsley, tarragon, chervil, and chives).

4. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin with non-stick spray. You want to make sure and spray each muffin cup very thoroughly, and use a non-stick muffin if you have one. You don’t want to spend your afternoon scraping baked egg out of muffin tins.

5. Pour a scant 1/4 cup of the egg mixture into each cup, dividing the eggs equally between the 12 muffin cups. Scatter bits of the goat cheese equally across the 12 quiches, dropping the dollops in the center of each eggy “muffin.”

6. Set the filled muffin tin on a baking sheet to catch any spills, and bake for 20-23 minutes, until all the quiches have puffed up and appear firm throughout.

7. Allow the quiches to cool slightly in the muffin tins. They will deflate, but this step is essential in keeping the quiches intact as you remove them from the tin. Use a butter knife to loosen them out of their cups, and serve warm or room temperature.

A note on Eggland’s Best: When I received the invitation to enter the NYC Eggland’s Best Recipe Contest, I grinned. I had just run out and bought a carton of Eggland’s Best the day before. I was happy to support the company, because they support us bloggers, and because they sell cage-free eggs in the regular supermarket, and I always try to buy cage-free when I can. So thank you, Eggland’s, for the support and the invitation, and for setting the right example. I hope you have enjoyed this recipe.

Bon App!

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13 Responses to Cockadoodledoo: Saturday Brunch Petite Crustless Quiches with Fines Herbes and Chèvre

  1. Anonymous says:

    Kerry
    This recipe is beautiful and I am going to make it for breakfast on Sunday morning! Thank you so much for giving it to us. I just found your blog and I love it. I expect to see you on Food TV soon. By the way I always by Eggland so thanks to them as well!

  2. Anonymous says:

    Linda,

    I am so glad you found my blog! Welcome, and I hope you enjoy the little quiches. Haha, I would love to be on Food TV…I hope you have a lovely Sunday breakfast.

  3. Anonymous says:

    As someone who is intimidated by cooking, I would normally not even attempt this dish, however, your directions are easy to follow and entertaining as well! Thanks for sharing your stories and recipes!

  4. Anonymous says:

    Kerr,

    Like everything else at brunch, this was beyond delicious! Thanks so much for being such a great hostess-

    xx katie

  5. Anonymous says:

    Hello Kerry,
    I like your blog very much.
    I tried your crustless quiches, they are wonderful, my husband could not stop eating them.
    This was easy, impressive, and delicious. thank you for sharing.
    looking forward to next week.
    vero.

  6. Anonymous says:

    Hi Kerry,

    My wife made your little quiches,they were so tasty!!!!!
    I do the food shopping and i always get Eggland eggs.
    Keep those wonderful recipes coming.
    thks Alain

  7. Anonymous says:

    I had a brunch for 25 ladies yesterday and copied your menu. I was overwhelmed by compliments and kept my dirty little secret that the entire meal was prepared in under an hour. You are truly gifted and I thank you for sharing your skills with the rest of us.

    F

  8. Anonymous says:

    these look awesome.. they’re making me hungry!

  9. Anonymous says:

    Hi Kerry,
    I love fines herbes. This looks like a wonderful brunch dish and very hassle free.

  10. Anonymous says:

    KerBear – young Frances served the cute little quiches at her house in Nonquitt a few weekends ago, and we loved it so much that I'm planning to make this for a large group of colleagues this weekend! Your recipes are deliciously contagious! XXXOOO Maggie

  11. Anonymous says:

    PS: BIG CONGRATS on winning the Eggland's Best recipe contest! Well deserved! miss you 🙂

  12. Anonymous says:

    Absolutely love your recipes and your very creative and fresh approach to cooking! But wondering if it is possible to provide a link that places them in a "printer-friendly" format?

  13. Anonymous says:

    Thank you so much! Unfortunately, not yet on the printer-friendly formatting. I'm hoping to update the website and make it more user friendly in the near future, so check back!

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