Leftover Cheeseboard Quiche

Part of a gastronomic lifestyle is making sure that food leftovers don’t go to waste. This is tough in modern society, with busy lifestyles meaning that while you cook one night, you might not be in for a few nights in time to eat the leftovers. Similarly, cooked food can simply go into the fridge, but it often doesn’t come out again until it goes into the bin. If you are cooking for several people, it can be hard to know what to do with a single portion, since it won’t feed four. Managing leftovers for students is particularly important- financially it makes a fair difference.

But the main reason for having as much food waste as we do, I think, is that leftovers aren’t very exciting. Eating the same thing you ate last night, or the cold mince in the fridge, doesn’t sound fun, and so with meals quickly available, it is easy to just get something else. So here’s my attempt at making leftovers exciting- and getting a few more meals out of it. I had a dinner party a while ago, and bought some cheese for a cheeseboard at the end. People were full from dinner, so I was left with a lot of cheese. Now I don’t want to eat all of the cheese myself (as fun as this sounds), so I thought about ways I could use the cheese to make more food. But whatever you have leftover- cheese, meat, vegetables… a quiche is a good way to use them up in a creative, delicious way.

Quiche is surprisingly easy to make, at least once you have the pastry. There is a lot of contrast between bought and made quiches, in my experience: the store-bought versions can often be pastry heavy, thick, fatty mouthfuls, but a home-made quiche will be light, flaky and smooth. But what I really like about quiches is their versatility- once you have learn’t to make the basic recipe one quiche, every other quiche is essentially the same, just with different main ingredients: goats’ cheese and red pepper quiche, broccoli and stilton quiche, bacon and red onion quiche… the ‘quiche’ part is still the same. They work cold for lunch, warm for dinner (and I even like it for breakfast). Quiches are a great thing to bring to a picnic or bring-and-share lunch, or if you are having a family weekend. Really something worth learning, I think, the skill can go a long way.

Leftover Cheeseboard Quiche

You’ll need a flan tin for this, but you can pick one up in a big supermarket or other store for a few pounds. Also you’ll need a pastry brush and some ‘baking beans’; these are for keeping the pastry to shape when you pre-bake it. You can buy them, but I bought a large bag of lentils and set some aside for baking. Dried pasta also can work as well.

This recipe makes a very ‘wet’ pastry, which is great if you haven’t made pastry before. In the rolling stage, you can add a fair amount of flour, to make it easy to handle and prevent sticking, before the pastry will become leathery and start to crack.

280g plain flour, with extra for rolling the pastry
140g cold butter, cut into pieces
8tbsp cold water
5 eggs
284ml pot double cream
1 tub (200g) cherry tomatoes
leftover cheeses (I used goats’ cheese, a little brie, and halloumi)
leftover vegetables (I had asparagus leftover)
herbs or spices (I like basil here)

1. Prepare the pastry. In an electric mixer (or blender on pulse), mix together the flour and butter until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Slowly add the water, mixing together until you have a smooth dough. Put the mixture in the fridge for half an hour.
2. Bake the pastry and the tomatoes. Take the pastry from the fridge and pre-heat the oven to 180°. Spead flour on a large clean surface and on a rolling pin, and roll out the pastry until it is larger than the flan tin you want to use. Keep flipping, rotating, and re-flouring the pastry to keep it from sticking. Using the rolling pin to help pick up the pastry, drape it over the flan tin. Tease the pastry into the flan tin using a small ball over leftover pastry. Cover with baking paper, and pour in the baking beans. Put the tomatoes on a baking tray, spray on a little oil, and place in the oven. Put the pastry the oven for 20 minutes, then remove baking beans and baking paper, then cook for another five minutes. Take everything out of the oven, and trim the edges of the pastry.
3. Make the quiche mix and assemble the quiche. Crack four of the eggs into a mixing jug, beat them, and mix in the cream. Add some salt and pepper, and the cooked tomatoes. Meanwhile, beat the last egg and, using a pastry brush, brush the egg on the warm pastry case (this helps seal the pastry to keep it dry). Place any cheese and vegetables in the pastry, and pour in the quiche mixture.
4. Cook the quiche. Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and set. Leave to cool for a few minutes, then either eat warm, or leave to cool for later.


1 Comment (+add yours?)

  1. Trackback: Pizza Baguettes « oxfood

Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: