Bacon, leek and mushroom quiche

It seemed to me it was about time we had another savoury here. And as I was off to writer's workshop where I had to take my own food, I thought what would be better than a quiche. 

Ingredients:

100gms mushrooms, sliced

1 leek (about 75gms) sliced

100g bacon

A little butter for frying

150gms olive oil based spread

200gms spelt flour

100gms einkorn flour

4 eggs

Splash of milk

50gms mature cheddar, coarsely grated

Ice cold water

Strawberry jam

1.      Preheat the oven to 200C (fan) or 220C conventional.

2.      Place a knob of butter in a small frying pan or skillet and melt over a medium heat.

3.      Slice the bacon into strips about half a centimetre wide and add to the pan. Start to fry, stirring intermittently to ensure the bacon strips don’t stick.

4.      Add the leeks and mushrooms a little at a time. They will reduce in volume as they cook and you want everything to fit in the pan snugly so that the vegetables sweat rather than fry.

5.      While this is cooking, break 4 eggs into a bowl and whisk together with a splash of milk.

6.      Once the bacon-veggies mix is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool a little.

7.      Now tackle the pastry base. Rub the fat into the flour with fingers until there is no loose flour or globs of spread left.

8.      Dribble in ice cold water and knead with your free hand until you have a soft pliable but non-sticky paste.

9.      Knead the dough into a ball and then flatten between your hands..

10.  Roll out on a floured surface - I use spelt flour for this - until it is large enough to cover a 25cm diameter quiche dish.

11.  Lay the dough over the dish and so that it is not stretched and trim around the edges. Set aside to rest for a few minutes.

12.  This is where the strawberry jam comes in! Roll out the left over dough and using pastry-cutters cut out a number of jam tart sized rounds. Continue gathering up left over dough, rolling out and cutting until you have used up as much of the dough as you can. After all, waste not, want not!

13.  Place the pastry round in a fairy cake tray and put a teaspoon of jam in each tart. Pop these in the over for ten to fifteen minutes until the pastry is a golden brown.

14.  Now have a short break while the tarts cook before assembling the quiche.

15.  Place the now cooled bacon and vegetable mix onto the pastry base in the quiche dish, being careful not to damage the soft pastry and to spread the filling out evenly.

16.  Give the egg a last little whisk and pour over the filling.

17.  Sprinkle grate cheese over the top.

18.  Pop in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes, until the pastry is pale gold and the filling has risen in a dome.

19.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

This quiche looks spectacular when it first comes out of the oven – a bit like a soufflé – but the centre sags a bit as it cools, which gives the surface a lovely textured look.  The filling itself is relatively thin, but it’s very rich and if it were thicker you wouldn’t be able to taste the nutty flavour the einkorn flour gives the pastry.

And to prove that I do get out of the kitchen occasionally and do writerly things. Here’s a shot of Virginia Wolf’s famous writing shed in the garden of Monk’s House in Rodmell, East Sussex. That writers workshop I mentioned was there, though in the village hall rather than the shed....