Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable & Cheese Quiche

Well, once again it's been an age since I've committed a recipe to the blog but this one was so good, it looked so pretty and was very successfully tasty that I've had lots of requests for the recipe.  So here we are!

I won't go into a long old rigmarole about the quiche, just suffice to say that I was looking to achieve a quiche that had to be tasty, I didn't want it to be too wet (the contents, that is!) and it had to be vegetarian.  For me, this creation ticked all those boxes but be aware that my hubby thought it was a little bit "squishy", so if you've got texture-centric diners it's probably worth subbing some other vegetable in for the courgette, as I suspect that was the culprit.

I managed to avoid most of the "squishiness" by oven roasting the majority of the vegetables, which dried them out nicely.  Take care to cut the sweet potato pieces into very small chunks to avoid it overpowering the contents.  It will spread out better as smaller pieces.

Ready for the oven

Hubby thought that perhaps the addition of some sweet corn would have been nice, so maybe I'll try that in the next version.  :)

As ever, if you try the recipe and have any problems or confusion with it do let me know and I'll do my best to iron those problems out for others!

ROASTED MEDITERRANEAN VEGETABLE & CHEESE QUICHE   (serves 4-8)

Ingredients :

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into small chunks
1 small red onion, peeled and cut into quarters
1 medium courgette, top & tailed, then cut into small chunks
8 button mushrooms, sliced finely
Frylight sunflower oil cooking spray
sea salt & black pepper
300g approx ready rolled shortcrust pastry (or you could make your own)
3 large eggs
1 tsp English mustard powder
100ml double cream
100ml semi skimmed milk
2 pieces of chargrilled red pepper from a jar (rinsed), cut into small pieces
3 sprigs of fresh basil, sliced fine
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
half a tsp dried oregano
30g Gruyere or Gouda cheese, grated finely
30g red Cheddar or red Leicester cheese, grated finely
50g mature Cheddar cheese, grated finely
50g Greek salad cheese (Feta-alike, so if you've got Feta, that would be fine) broken into small pieces
1 medium tomato, sliced
1 tbsp fresh chives, chopped.

Method :

Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/340degF/Gas 4.

Place the sweet potato, onion and courgette pieces onto a large baking tray and spread them out evenly.  Spray well with cooking spray and sprinkle with a little sea salt & black pepper.  Place into the oven to roast for 25-30 minutes or until the sweet potato is tender.  Ideally, the vegetables should have small areas of charring on them in order to get the best flavour.

With 10 minutes to go, sprinkle the vegetables with the sliced mushrooms, give a quick spray with the Frylight and replace into the oven until the rest of the veggies are done.  Remove from the oven and place to one side to cool until required.  Once cool, cut the onion quarters into smaller pieces.

While the veggies are cooking, prepare your pastry case by lining a loose bottomed 8 inch sandwich tin or quiche dish with pastry that has been rolled out thinly, making sure it is pressed into the corners of the tin and without any air bubbles underneath.  Cover the pastry with a layer of baking paper and fill with baking beans.  Once the vegetables are done and removed from the oven, place the pastry case in to part-bake for some 20-25 minutes.  Again, when the time is up, remove and leave to cool until required.

While the pastry is part baking, you can get on with making the filling.  Take a large bowl and break the eggs into it.  Give them a light whisk to break the yolks and combine with the white.  Add the cream, milk, some black pepper and the mustard powder and whisk to combine.

Add the sliced red peppers, basil, parsley, oregano and all the vegetables from the oven which should be fairly cool by now.  Add most of the grated cheeses but reserve a little to sprinkle over the top and give the whole lot a good, but gentle, stir so as not to break anything up.  Add the Greek salad cheese and give everything a light stir, just to combine.

When the filling is ready, take the part baked pastry case and carefully pour the filling in.  Gently encourage the contents to spread evenly across the pastry case to avoid any areas that are just egg mixture.  Sprinkle the surface with the reserved grated cheese and lay the tomato slices in an attractive pattern on the top.  Sprinkle the chives across the surface and give the tomato pieces a tiny sprinkle with black pepper.

Place into the oven to bake for 30-35 minutes. Check the quiche after 25 minutes and turn it if the surface is browning unevenly.  When cooked, the centre of the filling should feel fairly firm to the touch, but have a little spring in it and the whole thing should be a golden colour.

Remove the quiche from the oven and allow to cool for some 15-20 minutes.  In the case of a loose bottomed sandwich tin, gently remove the quiche from the tin and leave on a baking rack to cool completely.

Serve with chips or Jersey Royal new potatoes and salad.

Printable version

Lincolnshire sausage & sun dried tomato quiche - feeds a crowd!

If there's one thing that my menfolk are guaranteed to eat, it's a slice of quiche.  As I have now conquered my (stupid, as it turns out) tendency towards a soggy bottom (don't bake the tin on a baking tray - the two layers prevent the pastry from cooking properly.  So simple, but it took me years to work it out!) making quiche has become a regular occurrence in our house.

The good thing about quiche is that there are so many different variations of filling.  Yes, there's the good old bacon & cheese that always gets the thumbs up, but really you can put just about anything into a quiche so long as it's not wet, or will cook wetly.  (Courgette, I'm looking at you here).

In this instance, I was looking for something that would provide a man-pleasing filling.  Now my hubby has always loved Lincolnshire sausages, whereas I have been rather less than complimentary about them.  It's not as though I actively dislike them, it's just that there are other types of sausage that I find more appealing.  Stop giggling at the back!  I did think, though, that their herby character would go nicely in a quiche and tomato seemed a natural bedfellow for them.  Of course, it just isn't quiche if it doesn't have some cheese in and/or on it, so some mature cheddar was a given.  Now our son has a serious dislike of cooked tomato (he picks the tomato off the top of his quiche, strange child), which is where the sun dried tomato comes in.  Perfect.

The filling made up to be a good, deep fill with lots of character and substance, just what I was after.  You could certainly feed a crowd with this one, as mine very nicely cut into six decent sized portions, served with salad and chips for the menfolk.  I now have half a quiche (three portions) which should keep the wolf from the door for us all at lunchtime tomorrow, as well.

Oh and incidentally, as a means of making six sausages go adequately around three people, you can't beat it!

LINCOLNSHIRE SAUSAGE & SUN DRIED TOMATO QUICHE   (serves 6)

Ingredients :

400g Lincolnshire sausages, removed from their skins
approx. 300g shortcrust pastry (sufficient for an 8" sandwich or flan dish, approx. 1" deep)
3 extra large eggs
150ml soured cream
a half tsp of ground black pepper
a quarter tsp of sea salt
70g mature cheddar cheese, grated
6 pieces of sun-dried tomato (I used the ones in oil), sliced
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped fine
1 medium tomato, sliced finely into 5 slices.

Method :

Your first job is to cook the sausages.  Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4. Remove the sausage skins and pinch off small pieces of sausage meat, forming them into balls.  1 sausage will make around 5 balls.  Place onto a foil-lined tray and give them a light coat of cooking spray.  Place into the middle of your oven for around 20 minutes until cooked through and just beginning to brown.  Once cooked, set aside to cool a little.

Next, you need to part-bake the pastry case.  If you are using pre-rolled pastry, keep it on the baking paper and roll it out a little bit thinner than it arrives.  Cut a piece that is significantly bigger than the baking dish or tin you will be using.  Keeping the pastry on the baking paper, gently sink it into the tin making sure there are no bubbles under the pastry and it is pressed gently into the corners.  Carefully remove the baking paper and trim off the majority of the excess with a sharp knife, but leave a decent overhang to cope with any shrinkage.

Replace the baking paper and lightly smooth it across the base.  Pour in your baking beans in an even layer and place the tin centrally into the oven for 20 minutes.  You can use this time to make the filling.

Break each of the eggs into a cup and pour them into a large bowl.  Doing this ensures that if one of your eggs is off or even slightly dodgy, you don't lose the lot!  Add the soured cream and whisk together.  Next, add the black pepper, sea salt, two thirds of the grated cheese and the parsley and stir until everything is combined.

Remove the pastry case from the oven and gently lift out the baking beans by holding the greaseproof paper.  Set the baking beans aside to cool down.

Tip the sausage balls into the pastry case and sprinkle over the pieces of sun dried tomato.  Pour in the egg/cream mixture and sprinkle over the remaining grated cheese.  Add the five tomato slices in an attractive pattern.

Gently place the quiche into the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes, until the filling has risen, turned golden and feels fairly firm when pressed in the middle.

Remove from the oven and place onto a cooling rack for 5-10 minutes.  You can now trim back the overhanging spare pastry and if you are using a loose bottomed tin, remove the quiche from the tin and place it back onto the cooling rack.  Serve whilst still a little warm or at room temperature, with a crunchy garden salad.

Printable version

"Woodsy Quiche" - a creation for hubby's birthday

It was dear hubby's birthday this last weekend and he'd agonised for weeks - literally - over what to have for his birthday dinner.  Finally, the night before we went shopping for it and in what amounted to something of a desperate moment of being backed into a corner over the whole thing, he decided upon a quiche.

Not just any old quiche though.  He wanted a quiche that contained tiny sausage meat meatballs, along with chestnuts and a British white cheese.  Something of an artisan quiche, it seemed like!

Now I'm not exactly a dab hand with quiches, but I have made some creditable attempts at them in the past.  So I had a good idea of what to put with these ingredients to make a proper quiche-like texture and the additions of some curd cheese (bought from our local Polish shop), creme fraiche, a shallot and chives seemed to me to have the potential of doing the job.

We debated over adding mushroom, but didn't want the filling to become squishy.  Mushrooms are such a high percentage of water, this seemed highly likely unless they were fried off first and with the sausage meat, we were a bit leery of everything becoming too fatty.  Mind you, the sausage meat was 90% pork - so not much room for fat there.  As it turned out, I had a last minute good idea and added a couple of mushrooms as decoration - which because they were on top of the filling mix, were able to dry out under the fan of the cooker and so not cause any soggy problems.

Cooking and combining the ingredients for the filling was a simple matter of a bit of cutting and a-chopping, a little bit of rolling and frying and a lot of mixing - so no great difficulty there.  For some reason, the pastry had turned to concrete in our fridge (I think it may be turned up a little too cold) and it took a good few minutes of heaving and grunting over the rolling pin before it succumbed (warmed up, more like) and rolled out.  I was using a large quiche dish and had literally just enough pastry to line it, rolled really thin.  However, the thin pastry was a good thing, as it gave the filling lots of room to shine without having a mouthful of thick shortcrust pastry to contend with.

The flavours matched up really well.  The sausage meat loved the chestnuts, the chestnuts loved the cheese and the cheese loved the well seasoned egg mixture.

I don't recommend eating the quiche when it has just come out of the oven, as it is too bubbly then.  Allow it to calm down and cool to warm before you serve and it will be a lot more agreeable.  In fact, I ate the remainder for lunch today - cold - and it was excellent, so I can see the recipe would be well suited to a picnic or as a pot luck contribution, too.

I served ours with hubby's choice of vegetables; minted new potatoes, buttered asparagus and mange tout and it ate very well.  Cold, it would be just as nice with a potato salad and any number of green leafy or garden salads.

Summer is just around the corner, so why not tuck this recipe behind your ear for then!

I'm happy to announce that this recipe was "Recipe of the Day" for 1st April 2015 with eRecipe.com - and as such we have a badge to prove it!  Yay!



WOODSY QUICHE    (serves 5-6)

Ingredients :

Pastry

165g plain flour
pinch of salt
75g butter (if you're using salted butter, leave the pinch of salt out), at room temperature
100ml or so of cold water.

Filling

3 eggs
100g curd or cottage cheese
100g creme fraiche
pinch of sea salt
half a tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp olive oil
1 small shallot, chopped finely
100g chestnuts, halved
250g (4 sausages) of 90% pork sausage meat
100g good Wensleydale cheese, crumbled into pieces
10g chives, chopped
2 mushrooms, sliced, to decorate.

Method :

1.  Begin by mixing up the pastry.  I use a food processor for this, but you can do the entire process by hand if you wish, in which case rub the butter into the flour until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.  If using a food processor, add the flour, salt (if using) and butter and process for as short a time as possible, or until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.

2.  Add the water little by little, mixing it through or by pulsing the processor and adding water in between pulses, until the dough has come together in a fairly dry, sandy, ball.

3.  Wrap the pastry in cling film and place into the fridge to rest for 20 mins minimum.

4.  In the meantime, mix up the filling.  Begin by rolling the sausage meat into tiny meatballs the size of your thumbnail.

5.  Then, pour the olive oil into a small pan and add the shallot.  Cook on a gentle heat until the shallot is beginning to soften, then remove it with a slotted spoon and reserve.

6.  Add the sausage meatballs and increase the heat a little.  Cook until the outer surface has turned golden on at least two sides.  There is no need to ensure the balls are cooked through.  Remove them and reserve to cool.

7.  Roll the pastry out and line your quiche dish.  Cover the pastry with some baking parchment cut to fit and pour in some baking beans or rice.  Place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas4 for 20 minutes or until the pastry has turned a light golden sandy brown.

8.  Remove the baking parchment and set the baking beans or rice aside to cool before going back into storage.

9.  Break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk to combine.

10.  Whisk in the curd cheese, creme fraiche, shallot, chopped chives and seasoning.

11.  Add the chestnuts, sausage meatballs and crumbled cheese to the mixture and stir to combine.

12.  Pour the filling mixture into the casing and gently spread everything around evenly.

13.  Add the sliced mushroom in a decorative pattern atop the mixture and press lightly into the mix.

14.  Place into the oven (still at 180degC/350degF/Gas4) for some 30-40 minutes or until golden in colour on top and, when pressed, the surface feels firm.

15.  Set aside to cool slightly and serve warm, not directly from the oven.

Printable version

Menu Planning - determined to recapture my cooking muse!

If you see a short, stout, elderly cooking muse trotting past your house, would you catch her and send her back to me?  I'd be most appreciative.

This week, I am determined to recapture some of my old confidence.  So I've taken a bit of a step back and have booked in meals for this week that (I hope) will help bolster my wilting lettuce of an ego.

I'm not expecting to be immediately successful - but some small steps towards success would be nice.  (Are you listening, cooking muse?  Yes?  Good).

So let's have a look at what I've chosen for this week :

Tues : Cheese stuffed meat loaf with salad and crusty rolls

Wed : Cheese, leek & potato pie, with bacon & peas

Thurs : Salmon & Asparagus Quiche with tomato salad

Fri : Pork Schnitzel with potato wedges and salad

Sat : Wine & Garlic Pork Chops with jacket potatoes & green veg.

Sun : Roast Chicken, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots & swede, peas & Yorkshire puddings

Mon : Coconut chilli chicken with rice.

What do you reckon?  Do-able?  Well, dear hubby has volunteered to cook the Pork Schnitzel and the Roast Chicken, which leaves the remainder for me to trash, sorry, cook.

We had the meat loaf last night.  Considering we always have an issue with meat loaves, in that they seem to resemble meat porridge held together with a crusty edge, some might see it as a bit of a risky move.  However, I'd got confidence in it.  I'd been talking (via the comments box - nothing so exciting as a phone conversation!) on her blog with Gail Kruger Snyder who runs Good Deal Meals, which is where I'd found the recipe, about various methods of cooking meat loaf.  We'd come up with a plan - and that plan worked, although I suspect I could have taken the meat loaf out of the oven a good ten minutes before I did, just to save the slightly overcooked edge.  However, it was a successful recipe and I'll be blogging it in due course.


Tonight's Cheese Leek & Potato Pie is all Suzi on Facebook's fault.  She posted up a photograph of her version of the pie (using onion, in that instance) and it immediately made my mouth water in a way which said "make that - and make that soon".  In fact, the original recipe comes from The Happy Housewife blog and it doesn't look any the less inviting there.  It's an easy mix of mashed potato, leeks and cheese that you serve with grilled bacon rashers and peas.  Surely I can't get this one wrong?

Tomorrow's dinner will be a little bit more ambitious, but I'm hoping that as I really enjoy making tarts and quiches, that might help a bit.  I found the recipe on the BBC's food section of their website and it's a Simon Rimmer recipe (which ordinarily makes it a bit dubious - sorry Simon - but I'm hopeful).  I love the combination of salmon and asparagus, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Friday is hubby's pork schnitzel, which should cater to both our yearnings to panné something.  Isn't it funny, how you get a fancy for doing a certain technique, or making a certain type of food?  We've, both of us, had a real yen to do "something in breadcrumbs" for some time and hubby decided to take the bull by the horns and start off with something relatively easy, like the pork schnitzel.  Of course, after making his Beef Olives at the weekend, we now have a meat mallet and maybe he just wants to spend time bashing something.  Well, better some pork fillet than my head, eh?

Couldn't you just? I know I would!

Saturday's Wine & Garlic Pork Chops enticed me purely because of its pictures (and the fact that it's a pork chop recipe - I'm a total sucker for a pork chop!).  I found it on the Tasty Kitchen website, but as it turns out, it is a recipe by The Pioneer Woman - who is about as famous as any food blogger gets, these days.  For all that I'm sensitive to garlic, I shall have to be brave with regard to the amount of garlic involved here.  I'm not too sensitive if the garlic is thoroughly cooked out - so I have warned myself and will only have myself to blame if I'm itching like a hedgehog with fleas, later on that night.

Sunday's roast chicken is going to be delicious, if hubby's description is anything to go by.  I won't spoil the gorgeous Sunday lunch surprise here - you'll just have to wait for the blog post!

Monday's dinner is a return to our well loved spicy chicken dishes.  It's not a curry, but it has lots of curry influences.  I particularly liked the spice combinations and the intent within the recipe of not winding up with hubby's hated "pond water" for a sauce.  The recipe uses a combination of coconut milk with a little flour added as a final note to thicken the sauce.  Now that's a method that's new to me and I'm keen to see how it works, as it could be used in other dishes where the sauce is coming up too thin.  A learning experience, that's what it is!

Well, there we are.  I have every intention of making another Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie, now that Ruby Rhubarb is bursting out of her planter again.  I'll probably pair that with the Roast Chicken, as pork and strawberries have been proven to be an unwise pairing for me, in the past!  As hubby is cooking the dinner, I can make the pie in the morning without getting in anyone's way and without wearing myself out, having to make dinner as well.

I can well remember, in my incarnation as a horseriding instructor, telling pupils that the best thing to do when you've come off your horse, is to get right back on again and carry on.  So, that's what I'm doing.  C'mon neddy - we're off!

.

Making a little go a long way - or trying to! Meal Plan for week beginning 30 August 11

There are a couple of things going on with our income this week that mean it would be good if we could try to just tighten our belts a little.  Hence, I'm afraid you won't be finding expensive cuts of meat, or fancy fish (well, apart from Scampi - but that's our one indulgence for this week!) on the menu list.

However, you will find a great deal of involvement with the wonderful thing that is mince.  Beef mince, turkey mince, pork mince - it's all there, in various incarnations.  That and the wonderful bacon we get from our local butcher.  It's not only cheaper than the supermarkets and so unbelievably good, but you get almost twice the amount in rasher size, too!

So.  Here's how this week of semi-frugality is shaping up :

Tuesday : Son - Lasagne, Adults - Pork Noodle Stir-fry

Wednesday : Tenderstem broccoli & bacon quiche, lemony new potatoes and salad

Thursday : Scampi and salad

Friday : Pasta with bacon, peas and mint

Saturday : Turkey meatball & sweetcorn curry, rice & naan bread

Sunday : Cornish Pasties and salad

Monday : Chilli con carne with rice.

I'm still not quite back firing on all four cylinders as I was prior to contracting Shingles, plus my right knee seems to have a life of its own in that it suddenly decides to not have anything to do with what we're trying to achieve.  It has brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion, just lately.  I have resolved to deep breathe and carry on, once it has decided to let me.  Oh the trials of arthritis!  As such, I've kept my recipes to things that are easily achieved and don't require much time spent in the kitchen - or much walking to and fro.

We opted to utilise "Pizza Tuesday" at the beginning of the week and indulged in a Stir Fry.  We had already put aside a Lasagne in the freezer for Son & heir for just such an occasion, which when he came to the kitchen to ask what was for dinner, he was heartily relieved to learn was headed in his direction.  He'd been looking very dubiously at the stir fry out of the corner of his eye, with a distinct air of consternation in the enquiry.

The Pork Noodle Stir Fry wasn't a resounding success, regrettably, as hubby found the sprinkling of fresh mint to be a challenging flavour too many.  Everything else he was relatively happy with - even the dressing of lime juice, soy sauce, wine vinegar and honey.  The recipe used pork mince and I took a short cut and bought a fresh stir fry mix (with bamboo shoots and water chestnuts - yum!) to take the place of the vegetables.  I was enjoying the meal to begin with, but found I quickly got bored with the flavours.  So, we won't be indulging in this one again - not when there are much nicer stir fry recipes out there!

This evening, we've just had a lovely Tenderstem Broccoli & Bacon Quiche (see the original recipe here on the Tenderstem website) accompanied with Lemony new potatoes and salad.

You know, hubby said it and I completely agree with him - Tenderstem Broccoli is almost as nice as Asparagus.  I won't go into raptures here over it, as I'm intending to do a blog post specifically for both the quiche and the potato recipe, as they went together so well.  Plus, if ever the Tenderstem website disappears at least I'll have the recipe on my blog!

I'll be at work on Thursday and we had been wracking our brains to try to think of something easy for hubby to cook that evening.  Suddenly a shaft of inspiration came down from on high (or from somewhere, anyway!) and hubby exclaimed "scampi!".  So, scampi it is - with salad and lovely crusty bloomer bread.  Yummy!

Last Sunday I had been reading other folks' blogs and came across "Senses in the kitchen".  Detailed thereon, was an intriguing and deliciously simple recipe for Pasta with Bacon, Peas and mint.  You can find the recipe here if you're curious.  Now I won't deny that following on from hubby's problem with the mint in the stir fry, I'm not as confident as I was.  However, this is a much simpler mix of flavours which are all compatible, so I've got my fingers firmly crossed!  As for son & heir, well, he's a different matter - there is no saying whether he'll like it or not, so I'll carry on and hope for the best.

Saturday's Turkey Meatball & Sweetcorn Curry has been trying to be made for the last couple of weeks, without success.  Turkey mince is so economical and the meatballs stay together most beautifully when they are cooked, so they are perfect ammunition for a curry.  I suspect I'll add a few curry spices to the meatballs, just to get them headed in the right direction.  As for the inclusion of sweetcorn - well, there's so much of it about and it is so deliciously sweet, it seemed a perfect accompaniment to the gentle flavour of the meatballs.

The Cornish Pasties are a request from hubby.  Again, they are relatively easy to make - I'll have to get hubby to do the rolling out of the pastry this time, as it nearly did for me the last time!  With the addition of the mandolin which makes slicing so easy, it should be a fairly easy job.  Fingers crossed!  (If I've any left, having used the mandolin!).

Last, but far from least, we've booked in a Chilli Con Carne for Monday.  The advantages of having a chilli on a Monday are that we won't be needing to try to keep any vegetables fresh for use in it (other than an onion!) and hubby can make chilli with one hand tied behind his back - and a cracking good chilli, at that.

We'll have it with your standard boiled rice, but Son & heir and myself like to sprinkle our chilli with grated cheddar cheese and, um, weasels.  Yes, you read that right - weasels.  When Son & heir was just a little 'un, he couldn't pronounce sultanas - and for some unknown reason, they wound up being "weasels".  So - chilli with weasels and cheese, anyone?

.