RUSTIC CHEESE AND RED ONION QUICHE

A simple cheese and red onion rustic quiche, ready in under 30 minutes with a little help from my prep ahead stock.  

When ever I am making pastry I always make a 1kg batch this I then portion in to 6 or 8 portions and vacuum pack and store in the freezer so that when I have a glut of eggs building up from the hens in the garden I just pull out a portion, leave to defrost in the fridge overnight or if using on the same day on the side at room temperature for one hour until just defrosted but still cold, then I’m good to go, just pre heat my oven roll out the pastry, I roll out on parchment paper when in a hurry as thar means there is no clean up after, then I line the tin with the pastry and fill with eggs, cream, grated cheeses and sliced red onions, bake for 20 minutes and that’s it a gorgeous rustic tart for lunch done.

Ingredients 

(serves 4-6)

1 kg Prep Ahead Pastry

900g plain flour

220g lard roughly chopped

200g cold butter grated

360ml cold water

1 tbsp Himalayan sea salt 

Quiche 

5 eggs beaten

100ml double cream

1 red onion finely sliced

200g mature cheddar grated

75g gyuere grated

75g emmental grated

Himalayan sea salt 

Fresh ground black pepper

Place the flour in a large mixing bowl, add the butter, lard and salt then cut through with a knife to loosely combine, add the water and just bring together to form a ball, don’t work the pastry to hard.  Divide in to 6 and wrap and place 5 in the freezer for next time.  The remaining pastry wrap and leave to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, pastry likes to be cold, warm pastry is not fun to work with.

Pre heat your oven to 190 C / 374 F.  Roll out your pastry to fit your quiche tin, I used a 10” tin, line the tin with your pastry, push the pastry into the fluted sides of the tin and squeeze the pastry up the sides so that the pastry is slightly above the rim, this is to compensate for pastry shrinkage during cooking, this just keeps the pastry higher than the filling and gives a lovely homely rustic finish to the quiche.

Mix all the quiche ingredients together and pour into the pastry case, pop in the oven to bake for 20 minutes, check for a wobbly in the centre, you want just a wobble, just set, not a loose wobble, if your wobble is still loose bake for a further 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and serve with a great green salad.