Quiche 2

I made a quiche tonight. It was what I'll call "not the best". But it was from scratch, and edible, and Theo liked it. I modified this pastry recipe and tried to remember how it was made at the cooking group I went to ages ago, rather unsuccessfully. I also used this recipe for reference.

In a food processor put 2 cups of flour, 150 grams of cold butter cut into cubes and blend until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add an egg and blend again, adding 1-2 Tbsp cold water as needed to bring the dough together into a ball. Turn out and lightly knead a few times to bind the dough together. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. (I decided to use wholemeal flour to try and be healthy)

Roll out the pastry then lift and press in to a greased quiche pan. Bake blind at 180-200 degrees C for around 20 minutes maybe longer. (This is one of those times that you really do need to weight down your pastry.)

Cook chopped onion and ham (and any other ingredients that need to be cooked eg. bacon, garlic, shallots, mushrooms) in butter, then add flour and milk to make a roux sauce. (This roux sauce turned out to be too thick! So try for a bit more milk in yours. Then again it might have acted as it did because I used wholemeal flour instead of white)

Prick the bottom of the pastry all over with a fork (I forgot to do this) then spoon the roux evenly in.

Lay out sliced tomato (or any other ingredient that needs to be laid out eg. spinach leaves, sliced rather than chopped mushrooms)

Whisk 5 small eggs (or 4 large), 3/4 cup milk, salt and pepper to taste and nutmeg (optional. I didn't use it). Pour over tomatoes. (It would probably be good to add some grated cheese in to the egg mix I reckon. Just a bit.)

Cover with grated cheese and cook at 180-200 degrees Celcius until the centre is just set. (Mine took an hour since it was so tall)

Realise just after you've put the quiche in the oven that you forgot to put the brocolli that you chopped and cooked into the egg mixture.

As you can tell from that last photo, this wasn't a winning recipe. So don't follow it without making MAJOR alterations.

Mistakes I made that you can now avoid:

- Don't just substitute in wholemeal flour as you please. It really acts differently to white flour. If you want to make your own wholemeal pastry find a proper wholemeal recipe. You could possibly do half wholemeal in a white flour recipe but I'm making no promises that it will work out.

- Weight your crust when you blind bake it. Mine caved in because the wholemeal flour doesn't hold the same way white does. I had to re-press it with a spoon, luckily I caught it before it had cooked enough to harden. I've seen the white crust bubble up in the middle but that didn't seem to be a lasting issue, once the filling was on it all came right. But to be on the safe side, weight it.

- Don't use a straight sided, tall tin. The pasty can't grip those tall, straight sides very well.

- Don't use the whole pastry recipe. Unless you have a very large pan, this pastry recipe is just too much. I used the whole recipe and it was much too thick. Use 3/4 of the recipe rolled thinly, and use the reserved pastry in muffin tins to make mini quiches for lunches.

- Don't make your roux sauce too thick. In the quiche that I had at my cooking group, the roux was what really made it taste like quiche instead of omelette. But my roux was totally separate from the egg mixture because it was too thick. Another time that wholemeal flour doesn't act as white.

- Put a tray on the next shelf underneath your quiche to catch any overflow. It's so much easier than cleaning the oven!