Quiche with ham, leek, mushroom and cheese

In my recent quest to do relatively simple recipes that are favourite dishes but I’ve never made myself before, I decided upon quiche.  The timing worked quite well as we bought a replacement motor for our blender so this saved me some mixing of the pastry.

I found inspiration in one of my favourite cooking books; Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo.  She has a nice recipe for Quiche Lorraine which this was intended to be until I found I had no lardons or bacon in the fridge!  This item is a usual staple in our fridge so an indicator of time to go shopping!

I started the recipe by mixing 90g of butter with 1 teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of salt in the blender until it was quite creamy.

Then I added in 180g of plain flour followed by 2 eggs yolks and 2 tablespoons of ice cold water.

I blended this mixture some more until the dough came together.  I then took it out of the blender and rolled into a ball with my hands, wrapped in cling film and put in the fridge for about 1.5 hours (you can do this from 1 hour – overnight though).

Then, upon the discovery of the lack of lardons/bacon, I chopped some cheddar cheese and tore up the remaining piece of ham I had in the fridge.

I also softened a leek with a few mushrooms to supplement the ingredients.

I took the dough from the fridge and placed between two pieces of baking paper and rolled out as close to the size of the baking tray as I could (25cm).

For the remainder of the filling, I beat 4 eggs with 2 egg yolks, adding about 100ml of creme fraiche and 200ml of double cream and mixed together with a teaspoon of salt and a little bit of ground pepper.

I then lined the baking tin as best I could and used the remaining 2 egg whites to coat the pastry.  If I’d rolled the pastry for longer I suspect I could have filled the sides a little bit better (it is also quite a high baking tin!) but I was getting quite tired and my hope was that the filling would cover the sides well….

I then added my improvised ingredients before pouring the egg and cream mixture over the top and putting in the oven for 35 mins on 180 degrees.

Having just eaten a sample I can say the taste is good; nice and simple!  I like the combinations of ingredients and the thing I’m most pleased with is the pastry.  I hardly ever make it, it’s something that always scares me a little but it turned out well cooked and thin 🙂

I think if I would change one thing it would be to add more herbs or maybe some more black pepper to give it a bit more flavour.  Otherwise more cheese!  Everything tastes better with more cheese!!!