Smoked Ham and Cheddar Quiche

Miss Pantry's childcare was having their annual Christmas party for the children, and I volunteered to bring a quiche.

My lovely quiche, in all its goldeny glory.

The most time consuming part was making the pastry, my obsessive compulsiveness did not do well here. Trying to get the pastry the same thickness throughout and making sure I got a nice fluted edge was time consuming, not to mention complete insanity because I was just going to pour the filling over the top anyway!

Look! I spy a fluted edge!

Next time I might just buy some ready rolled shortcrust pastry to save time and spare my poor brain cells from self-combustion.

Parsley from my garden.

But don't let me put you off making the pastry for this scrumptious open-faced pie. Normally, I find kneading and rolling pastry quite therapeutic, but because I was making this for other people, I wanted to make a good impression (pun intended). The rest of the quiche was so easily assembled, a monkey could do it. Or your typical OCD Asian housewife like myself.


Recipe from Donna Hay Modern Classics Book 1.

Basic shortcrust pastry ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 145g butter
• 2-3 tablespoons iced water

Method:

1. Put flour and butter in food processor and whiz until mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
2. While motor is running, add enough iced water to form a smooth dough.
3. Knead lightly and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. When ready to use, roll on floured surface to 3 mm thick and line your quiche dish/tart dish. 

Quiche ingredients:

• 350g shortcrust pastry, above
• filling ingredients from here

Method:

1. Preheat oven 180 degrees C. Roll pastry as above.
2. Blind bake pastry shell (baking paper over shell, add weights, bake 10 minutes, then remove weights and bake another 5 minutes) and set aside to cool.
3. Reduce oven to 160 degrees C.
4. Sprinkle pastry shell with ham, cheese and parsley. Whisk together eggs, cream, mustard, salt and pepper.
5. Pour over filling and bake 40 minutes or until set.

Happy cooking!