New Years Quiche

             My first recipe on this blog was the last thing I experimented with and created for 2014 but was the first thing my family and I ate for 2015 - a New Years day Quiche. A crumbly and leafy pastry encased a creamy soft and delicious cheesy goodness.

Prepare the quiche filling first so it will cool while you are preparing the pastry dough.

Ingredients For Filling:

• 1 tin evaporated milk
• 1 cup Water
• 3 eggs
• 1 tbsp mustard
• 1 packet three cheese blend (a brand of your choice)
• 1 onion chopped
• ½ cup celery
• ¼ cup red sweet pepper chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste
• ½ packet cream cheese
• 1 cup finely chopped turkey bacon (or bacon of your choice)
• 1 cup finely chopped chicken ham (or ham of your choice)
• I cup finely chopped turkey sausage (or sausage of your choice)
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• Fresh herbs; parsley, oregano and basil.

 Method For Filling

Place the unsalted butter in a pan on the stove on medium heat.

Add the chopped onion fry for until tender, add the sweet pepper and celery and fry a little more

Add the bacon, ham and sausage and fresh herbs and let it sauté in the pan for a few minutes so flavours will combine.

Take off heat and let cool.

In a big bowl beat cream cheese until it is creamy, add eggs, milk, mustard and salt and pepper and beat on low speed with a handheld mixer or by hand with a whisk. Mixture will be a little lumpy, set aside.

 And make the pastry dough.


Ingredients For Pastry

• 4 cups flour
• 1 cup margarine
• 1/2 cup lard / vegetable shortening
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 tsps. lemon juice
• 1 cup water

Method For Pastry

1.   Combine the margarine and vegetable shortening on a plate and divide into four equal pieces. Place it in the refrigerator to cool.
 

2.   Sieve the flour and salt in a big bowl and rub in one quarter the fat mixture until evenly distributed.
 

3.   Cut the remaining fat mixture into small pieces and using a wooden spoon mix into the flour mixture.
 

4.   Add the liquid (water and lemon juice) all at once and mix to a dough that will be lumpy due to the pieces of fat. Do not over knead this dough. After mixing throw it out onto a floured surface and used your hands to bring the dough together and form a ball for rolling, less kneading is better.
 

5.   Roll out dough into a rectangle and mark the pastry into three equal parts.
 

6.   Fold the bottom third of the rectangle to the middle and the top third to the bottom to create an envelope shape. Seal the edges with your fingers and place in the refrigerator for five minutes to harden fat.
 

7.   Remove from the refrigerator and repeat step 5 and 6 twice.
 

8.   Roll out and place in an 8 inch pie dish or a spring foam pan.

 Putting together the Quiche

Heat oven to 350°F or 200°C.

Place the pastry dough in the pie dish so that it covers the bottom and sides of the dish and level off it at the top. Make the pastry dough thin but make sure it isn’t too thin so that the mixture will seep out.

Add half packet of the cheese at the bottom of the pie dish lining the pastry dough. Spoon in the entire breakfast meat mixture and then place the half packet of cheese on top covering the meat mixture.

Pour the egg and milk mixture into the pastry casing making sure it is evenly distributed.

Bake in a moderate oven for 40 minutes or until the quiche is set.

Garnish with parsley or sweet pepper slices.

 

N.B.

The dough is chilled to keep the fat from melting in the room temperature. Melting fat will make the dough harder to work with and will also take away from the flakiness of the pastry.

The dough is folded and worked like that to create layers.