Mushroom Quiche with Phyllo Crust & Wine Pairing Party

My usual Saturday consists of morning yoga, a chai latte, some sort of baking/crafting in the afternoon, and hopefully an evening outing. A few Saturdays ago was no different (well, plus a haircut). My friends Jesse and Lisa, who are fellow lovers of cooking and baking, were hosting a wine pairing party. The basis was that we would have several different courses and each dish was paired with a particular wine that complements the dish. Wine and delicious food? My kind of Saturday night.

I was assigned to bring an appetizer. I had extra cream and phyllo dough in my fridge and I was bound and determined to do something with those two things. After much recipe searching, I decided on mushroom quiche with a phyllo dough crust. I didn’t realize the work that I cut out for myself but thankfully, I was pleased with the end result.

Mushroom Quiche with Phyllo Crust

Recipe Adapted from Thomas Keller’s Over-the-Top Mushroom Quiche

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• ¼  pound oyster mushrooms, diced
• ¾ pound white mushrooms, diced
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 small shallot, minced
• 1 teaspoon thyme, finely chopped
• ½ cup Comte or Emmental Cheese, shredded
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 eggs
• Fresh or ground nutmeg

For Crust:

• 1 package phyllo dough
• ½ cup butter

Start by sautéing the mushrooms in the olive oil until they start to soften, for about 5 minutes. Add in the shallots, thyme, a dash of salt and pepper and cook for about 5 more minutes.

In a blender, mix the milk, cream, eggs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, and a dash of nutmeg for about two minutes or until frothy.

For the phyllo crust, you will need to start by melting your butter. Put your first layer on your cutting board, and brush a layer of butter on top of the sheet with a brush.

Put another sheet on top and brush on another layer of butter. Repeat once more. Put your last sheet on top of the three layers. Now cut squares for your crust.

I made some different sizes of the quiche with the mini and regular muffin tins. About 2×2 inches for the mini and about 3×3 inches for the regular size.

Now for the assembly. First, I highly advise you to spray your muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray. I missed that part and quickly got tired of trying to pry those suckers out. Place the phyllo dough in the muffin tins and form them to the sides. Put a small spoonful of mushroom mixture and a little bit of cheese on top.

Now pour in the cream mixture until it reaches the top of the muffin tin. Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees , or until golden brown.

The food at the party was better than expected (and I already had high expectations) and all paired well with the wine. Well, who am I kidding; I still have no palette for how wine goes with food, but one thing I do know is that the wine tasted good to me.  Let me give you a little preview of the copious amounts of food we had:

Fig and Goat Cheese Muffins

Chicken Satay Skewers with Peanut Sauce

Homemade Ravioli

Strawberry Shortcakes

Poached Pear with Almond Crust Tarts

Wonton Wrapped Bananas with Chocolate Sauce

and Chocolate Truffles

All this food led to some happy, but stuffed party goers…

which meant it was time to dance it off!

And off to Fiddler’s we went…