In my experience, a quiche is one of those dishes that always taste better just as it comes out of the oven. It is a French, oven-baked dish made with eggs and milk or cream in a pastry crust. Unlike omelettes and frittatas, which don’t necessarily contain milk or cream in the egg mixture, quiche gets its wonderful richness from the addition of whole milk and cheese.
My first trial to bake a quiche was to surprise Annu, who was working pretty hard those days on some presentation, and I was pretty much successful in my attempt as he loved the Quiche and you should have seen him scarf it down.
I went through many quiche recipes but some changes to the recipes were in order. The most time consuming aspect of preparing the quiche, besides preparing the filling, is to make a pastry which is just right. The perfect pastry is light, very easy to cut into and has a slight crispy-flaky nature to it. Needless to say, you know you’ve got it right when you don’t really have to chew at it.
Pastry Ingredients
All purpose flour — 2 cups
Salted Butter (cold, cut into cubes) — 100 grams
Egg — 1
Sugar — 1 tsp
Cold Water — 3-4 tbsp
Making the Pastry
Sift the flour over a large bowl and add the tiny cubes of butter. Incorporate the butter to the flour with your finger tips till the dough starts feeling a bit coarse between your fingers. Push the flour and butter mix on the sides of the bowl and dig a hole in the center. Add the egg, beat it a little with a fork then incorporate the flour. Add the cold water little by little until the dough is mixed through. Knead the dough and form two balls of the same weight. Place the balls of dough in plastic wraps and let them rest in the fridge for at least an hour before using. Let the dough warm up a little before you start rolling it out.
The filling requires a lot of ingredients to be assembled. Once you get all your ingredients ready, you should be able to put this together in approximately an hour.
Filling Ingredients
Fresh Mushrooms – 500 gm
Spinach — 500 gm
Fresh American Corn Kernels (boiled) — 1 cup
Sausage (your choice of meat) — 1 cup (cut into small pieces)
Olive oil — 2 tbsp
Onions (thinly sliced) — 2 medium
Green Chilly (chopped) — 2
Salt and pepper to taste
Whole Milk — 1 cup
Eggs — 3 Large
Grated Cheese (I used a mix of Mozzarella and Cheddar cheese) — 1 cup
Making the Filling
Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet over high heat. Add the chopped onions and chilly and cook until the onions turns translucent. Add mushrooms and spinach along with salt and pepper. Cook and stir frequently, until the mushrooms start releasing water and shrink, and the spinach is cooked. Add boiled corn and sausage pieces and stir for 1 more minute. Take off the heat and allow it to cool.
Assembling the Quiche
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a circle which will cover your quiche tray. Fit into the greased quiche pan, pressing dough into corners and also lightly prick the bottom with a fork. Transfer to a freezer for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees (Celsius). Bake first for 15 minutes, remove from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes. Place the quiche pan on a tray to prevent any spills. Sprinkle half the cheese over the bottom of the crust and add the filling over the cheese.
Whisk together milk and eggs and season with salt, and pepper. Pour it over the filling and then top with remaining cheese.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Let it cool for about 10 minutes before sinking your teeth into it. Annu learnt it the hard way.
This is the ultimate dish for all meat and cheese lovers, and if you’ve got the time and patience for baking this genius of a dish, it’s definitely a must have..
No comments:
Post a Comment