When I went grocery shopping on Monday (restocking after Paris!) not only did the savoy cabbage look good but so did the leeks. They were massive and fresh. I've always had problems with leeks. All the recipes that I know use the dark green part of the vegetable, but in Europe and the USA most of the dark leaf is cut off leaving light green leaves and a white stalk. But I was in the mood to buy what was cheap and fresh looking so I bought two huge stalks of leek.
Somehow I had in my mind that I wanted to make them into a quiche, it just felt right. So I went to my old friend (Google!) and asked him for a recipe. This is the one that I chose:
But you know how that goes, one has to modify the recipe a bit to accommodate ones specific situation! So I'll post my modified recipe here.
For all of you who just hate vegetarian food, this is for you. The final product tasted unbelievably as if it had some type of meat in it!
Feeds 4. Prep time 1 - 2 hours depending on how you do the pastry.
Ingredients:
| Pastry: | ||
| 6 oz | Four | |
| 3 oz | Butter, cold | |
| 1/4 tsp. | Salt | |
| Filling: | ||
| 2 tbsp. | Olive oil | |
| 500 g | Leeks (white and light green part) | |
| 2 tsp. | Fresh thyme leaves | |
| Salt and pepper to taste | ||
| 100 g | Gruyere, grated | |
| 3 | Eggs | |
| 125 ml | Whipping cream |
Method:
For the pastry follow this link http://vinitasfamilyblog.blogspot.de/2014/09/basic-pastry.html
So I made the pastry and then went out to the store to buy the Gruyere and the thyme. Here in Germany you usually buy herbs in a pot. I found this very weird in the beginning but I've figured out how to keep (at least!) my basil alive so I can reuse it over and over, so now I love it :)
Here is my thyme plant that now adorns my kitchen windowsill. Lets see how long it lasts!
Back at home I rolled out the pastry and put it in my favourite flan pan. It's an amazing non-stick pan that I bought many years ago. The pastry is always crisp and it never, ever sticks. And because it never sticks I can slide it right out of the form onto a plate so I never have to cut my quiches or flans while they are still inside and thus damaging the non-stick coating.
I pricked the base with a fork and then stuck it back in the fridge.
Then I cut up the leeks. First quartering them and then cutting them into slices around 1 cm thick.
Then I had to deal with the thyme leaves. Oh now that was a royal pain. Having first washed the thyme the tiny leaves kept sticking to my hands. But I painstakingly removed the leaves from the stalks until I had what looked like enough.
Then the fan oven went on at 180°C to pre-heat for the pastry shell. Into a large skillet went the olive oil and it was heated on medium-high heat. And then went in the leeks, thyme and salt & pepper to taste. The thyme smelt divine. The leeks need to be stirred every now and then because you want to caramelize them (i.e. make them brown) and not BURN them, which I very nearly did. You also want them to be evenly cooked (and caramelized) and stirring them will help you achieve this.
With the leeks cooking and the oven heating I took out my pie dish and coated it with aluminium foil and filled it with baking beans. Now for those of you who are looking for an alternative to those expensive artificial baking beans that you can buy in the store. I have the answer: mung beans! I first used mung beans because I wanted to roast some to make some mung kauwm (which is a yummy Sri Lankan sweet meat that requires roasted mung flour). I never got round to using the mung beans for anything other than baking beans. I've been using them for years and they work wonderfully.
By this time the oven was hot so in went the pie shell to bake for 20 minutes.
While the leeks were cooking I grated my cheese and mixed together my eggs and cream with more salt & pepper to taste. Now if you are wondering why I didn't follow the recipe here the answer is simple. It looked like I had too many leeks and the milk and extra egg would not have fit in my dish. Plus I really hate to waste egg white.
If you are short on cream I think that whole milk would work fine. I know my mum always made quiches with milk in Sri Lanka and they turned out delicious.
Once your leeks are caramelized they will look like this:
If you have time allow them to cool.
After 20 minutes take out the pie shell out of the oven, remove the baking beans and the foil and put the shell back in the oven to bake for a further 10 minutes or so.
Now the original recipe says you should let the pie shell cool before you fill it but I had to fill it immediately because I had to have the quiche cooked before I went to pick up my girls from their musical project. And if I let the shell cool, then the oven would have to be reheated again which is really a waste of electricity. And so I sprinkled half the cheese into the base of the hot pie shell, put the leeks on top of it spreading them out to fit in all the corners and then poured over the egg and cream mix. On top of that went the rest of the Gruyere and then in the oven for a total of 30 minutes.
Off went the oven, the door was propped open to let some, but not all, the heat and out of the front door I went. Off to perform my soccer mum duties!
