Asparagus Swiss Quiche

Easter week, and the house is full of the preparations that make this holiday feel like the rehearsal for something larger — a resurrection of routine, a return to the rituals that the winter interrupts and the spring restores. I hard-boiled eggs with Mama on Monday. She colored them with the concentration of a woman who has colored Easter eggs every year since 1969 and who brings to the task the artistic seriousness that Joy brings to her paintings: total commitment, no concern for convention, colors applied with the certainty of someone who knows that blue and pink and green are the correct colors for eggs and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.

The Easter service was at St. Michael's — not Tabernacle Baptist, which is in Beaufort, but the church we have attended in Charleston since we married. Mama was confused by the church — the pews wrong, the hymns unfamiliar, the preacher not her husband — and she sat through the service with the patient bewilderment of a tourist in a country she recognizes but cannot quite place. I held her hand. Robert held the hymnal. James sang. Carrie followed along with the polite engagement of a seventeen-year-old who is respectful of tradition without being claimed by it.

The Easter dinner was a success measured by the standards that matter in this house: everyone ate, everyone talked, no one cried at the table (the crying was reserved for the kitchen, later, when I was washing the serving platters and thinking about the Easter dinners in Beaufort where Daddy said the blessing and Mama served the ham and Joy wore a new dress and the world was whole in a way that it will never be whole again). The ham was glazed with brown sugar and mustard. The deviled eggs were perfect. The coconut cake was three layers of love and butter and the understanding that Easter is the holiday of return, and what returns in this house is the food, and the food is the faith.

Joy came for dinner. She wore a purple dress and ate ham with her hands and laughed at something that nobody else found funny and the laughing was the most Easter thing in the room — the purest expression of joy on a day that celebrates the defeat of death, which Joy has never understood theologically but which she lives experientially every day, defeating the expectations that the world set for her when she was eleven years old on a bicycle on Route 21.

I made the Easter ham — Mama's recipe, brown sugar and Dijon glaze, studded with cloves. The ham sat on the table like a crown, and the table sat in the house like a throne, and the house held us the way Easter holds the story: with the understanding that something has been lost and something has been found and the finding does not undo the loss but transforms it into something you can live inside.

The Easter table in this house is built on Mama’s ham and the coconut cake and the deviled eggs that Joy eats three of before anyone sits down — but the dish I keep returning to in the days after, when the leftover ham is gone and the week resumes its ordinary shape, is this quiche. Asparagus comes up in the spring the way hope comes up: quietly, without announcement, insisting on itself. I make this for the Saturday before Easter now, for the quieter meal before the loud one, because a dish this simple and this good deserves a table where everyone can actually taste it.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 unbaked 9-inch deep-dish pie crust
1 lb fresh asparagus, tough ends trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups shredded Swiss cheese, divided
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/4 teaspoon dried)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 375°F. Place the unbaked pie crust in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate and crimp the edges. Line with parchment and pie weights or dried beans and blind bake for 10 minutes. Remove weights and bake 5 minutes more, until just set. Set aside.
Saute the vegetables. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and asparagus pieces and cook, stirring occasionally, until asparagus is bright green and just tender, about 4–5 minutes. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Layer the filling. Scatter 1 cup of the shredded Swiss cheese evenly across the bottom of the par-baked crust. Spread the asparagus and onion mixture over the cheese in an even layer.
Make the custard. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, half-and-half, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and thyme until fully combined and smooth. Pour the custard slowly over the asparagus and cheese filling.
Top and bake. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of Swiss cheese evenly over the top of the quiche. Bake at 375°F for 38–45 minutes, until the custard is set in the center (a knife inserted 1 inch from the center should come out clean) and the top is lightly golden.
Rest before slicing. Remove from the oven and let the quiche rest on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before slicing. This allows the custard to fully set and makes for clean, beautiful slices. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Asparagus Swiss Quiche — The Table That Holds Us