Making Quiche / Flans on the Fly

Making quiche is easy.  It takes very little time, and you have a cracking meal very quickly.  

 I am one of these cooks who tends only to weigh what she has to.

  I weigh for doughs, bread and cakes, but I rarely weigh for things like pie fillings, pastas, rice, quiche, risottos, currys, stir frys etc etc. 

For those dishes, I reserve a remedy called

“chuck it in and hope for the best.”

Usually my chuck it in dishes turn out perfectly.  Not always, and one day I will post some of them.   Today is all about how I make quiche, or flan.

I have to thank @superamazingmum on twitter for the outline of how to make a flan, as I had no idea how easy it was until she posted it to me in three tweets.  I have made about a dozen of them since, and they ALL come out fabulous.

PASTRY

Making shortcrust pastry is easy, especially if you have a food mixer.  I really would recommend having one if you are planning to so any serious cooking for any length of time, as the pain it saves in your arms from all the mixing if you home cook a lot, is a true blessing.

250g  plain flour
110g  butter
Two pinches salt
Some water

This is easy.  Put flour and butter into a bowl and either rub the butter into the flour, or mix it in the food processor until it is a breadcrumb consistency.  Make sure that all the lumps of butter are rubbed in.

Add a couple of pinches of salt and mis in with your breadcrumb consistency.

Add a little water at a time and either mix by hand, or in the mixer / processor until the dough forms a ball.   Stop when the dough has bound together. 

Wrap the dough up with clingfilm and refridgerate for approximtely half an hour before using it. 

QUICHE

The dough mixed above, gives me enough dough for one large flan dish which is 8″ diameter, and two smaller ones approx 4″ diameter.

Taking the dough out of the fridge, flour a surface so that you can roll out the dough to the shape you need.  I use my rolling pin to roll the dough to a larger size than I need for my biggest flan dish.  I used to butter the dish before putting my pastry in, but now I have more professional baking tins, the ones I use for my flans (which came from tesco) don’t need greased before cooking.  I plop my rolled out piece of dough in the flan dish, press around the botton and the top, which takes the excess dough off the tin, and  repeat for the smaller flan trays.  Easy as 1, 2 3

All I need to do next is decide on a filling.  This week I have made cheese and tomato with chicken, and cheese and herb with garlic.  The world is your oyster.  Put in your flan whatever you want to.    Do not use raw meat in a quiche or flan as quiche is not cooked long enough or hot enough to cook the meat thoroughly. 

The egg and milk mix is the glue that holds the quiche / flan together.  To make one 8″ and 2 x 4″ flans, I need to crack open about 6 – 8 eggs and using a fork, whisk them for a minute.  I  then add 250 –  300ml of milk for each 4 eggs, or until I judge by eye that I have enough.

•  To add a cheese and tomato with chicken, I would line the botton of the flan dish with a thick layer of grated cheese (usually mozarella in this  house).
• Add chicken and sprinkle across the top of the cheese around the flan dish.
• Place tomatoes, herbs and anything else you want to add on the top.
• Fill up the empty space with the egg and milk mixture.
• Bake for between 20 – 40 minutes at 160 – 170 degrees until all the egg is solidified.

The time to bake will depend on your flan size.  When you take it out of the oven, let it lie for five minutes for the egg to settle.