Last night we used some of our home made bacon cut into lardons to make a quiche. It makes a great supper or lunch dish on it’s own but it’s also nice served in slices with vegetables and a few potatoes as a main meal.
This feeds 4 people for dinner (or two hungry people as we were)
Make up some short crust pastry first
Pastry
200 grams of plain flour
Quarter teaspoon of salt
50 grams lard+50 grams block margarine or 100 grams block margarine (needs to be 100 grams fat in total)
A glass of cold water
Filling
1 onion
Some bacon, lardons or ham ( a couple of ounces (50 grams) should do but up to about six ounces (150 grams ) is fine. You can replace this with left over meat from a roast as well; chicken, pork or turkey work well. I’ve never tried it with beef however. If you like a veggie version you can also use up bits of cooked broccoli, asparagus, sweet corn and/or a few fine green beans work well. Or make up your own combinations of meat and veg.
3 medium or large eggs
Milk or cream (about half a 125 ml wine glass)
100 grams cheddar, choose the strength you like to eat
Salt and pepper
A tomato
Sieve the flour into a bowl and then add the fat. Cut the fat into small pieces and drop it into the flour so it gets a fresh coating of flour as each cube is dropped into the bowl.
Then rub the fat into the flour with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Sprinkle in three tablespoons of the cold water and then start to bring the pastry together with your hands. If it feels at all crumbly when it is nearly all combined add another table spoon of water.
The experts say it is better to have a slightly dry mix but I would say it is better to have a slightly sticky mix if in doubt as when you roll it out you will be adding more flour to it.
Pop it into a bag or roll in cling film and put into the fridge for at least 20 minutes.
Whilst the pastry is resting peel, then dice up an onion. Put a frying pan on a medium heat and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and/or a knob of butter, drop in a piece of onion and when this starts to sizzle add the rest. Put this onto a medium to low heat it needs to be cooking, but gently.
Chop up some bacon, ham or lardons and add that to the onions, give it a good mix round and leave to cook for about 10 minutes, then turn off and put to one side
Grate about 100grams of cheese and set aside. Crack your eggs into a bowl or jug and give them a good whisk. Add some seasoning to the egg, I like to do about 20 twists of black pepper or a really good pinch. If you are using home made bacon or suspect your meat to be very salty then be careful not to add salt to the dish. If it is the veggie version or your meat is not very salty then add a sprinkle of salt to the egg. Pour in the milk or cream and whisk again.
The pastry will cover an 8inch or 20 cm pie or flan dish easily. On a nice large clean surface sprinkle some flour and roll out the pastry. Make sure it is bigger than your cooking dish so you can trim up the edges. Grease the pie dish and then gently lower the pastry over, settle it in position and pop into the freezer for 5/10 minutes. You can do the pastry earlier on and just leave it like this in the fridge for the day, cooling the pastry case helps to stop it shrinking quite so much. You can trim it now
Now assemble the quiche.
Put the onion and bacon or veggie mix in the bottom, sprinkle over the cheddar and then pour on the egg mixture. Cut up the tomato into slices and lay the slices across the top
Cook for about 40 minutes in the middle of the oven. It’s ready when the top is firm to the touch and a bit browned, the pastry edges should be crispy.
Glanbrydan The Cottage Bake-House 