à la française: Home-Cooked French Cuisine - Week 3

Amazingly enough, I'm still going strong with this little weekly French dish project of mine. ;p Though I definitely feel myself gradually facing an uphill challenge because a lot of the ingredients for the quintessentially French dishes in Rachel Khoo's cookbook aren't readily available here. Either they are nowhere to be found, or if I do chance upon them in a more upscale grocery store, it's probably going to be pretty darn expensive. As a result, I've tended to pick more of the recipes for baked dishes (desserts/tarts/cakes etc) since they're much more manageable for me. 

So there were a number of reasons that led me to try the recipe for this Quiche Lorraine (Bacon and Egg tart). Firstly, earlier in the week, I had really wanted to bake a lemon tart in order to use up ALL THAT LEMON CURD which I had made for the Madeleines. (The actual amount of lemon curd used to decorate the Madeleines in that recipe was miniscule. I still, in fact, have a good jar and a half worth of lemon curd in the fridge up till now.) So I turned to this recipe of Jamie Oliver's for a nice tart base over which I figured I could simply pour my lemon curd onto. The tart came out fantastic. In fact, I had so much tart batter that I ended up making some of these mini lemon tarts late one night. :D 

(Recipe for the tart is the Jamie Oliver one. Recipe for lemon curd is the one in Rachel Khoo's recipe for her Madeleines)

These turned out well and were completely unplanned! Only problem was, my mum (who is the one reliable eater in the family, never mind that she consumes things literally at a snail's pace) didn't want so much lemon curd on the tart base. :( So there was no point in me making a whole lemon curd pie anyway.

(PSST. If you're making these lemon tarts, be sure to only put in the lemon curd if you want to eat it right then and there/ serve it to guests on the spot! I figured it out the hard way after piping all that lemon curd into the tarts, that it would be impossible to heat it up the next day to have it nice and warm without melting all the curd. -___-)

With all that leftover tart base, I decided to try incorporating it into the Quiche recipe. This recipe was a real mish mash, because I also made use of a recipe for a 'crustless mini Quiche' from Pure Green Magazine.



So incase you wanna know the ingredients I eventually ended up dumping in to make the filling (because the second recipe had more greens in it):

1. 4 eggs plus 2 egg yolks 
2. 150g of bacon (pan-fried) (I really couldn't bare to use lardons) 
3. 1/4 cup green onions, chopped 
4.1/2 cup baby spinach, shredded 
5.1 1/2 cup button mushrooms, sliced 
6. 1/2 cup red peppers, diced 
7. 1/2 cup chedder, shreded 
8. 1/4 tsp salt 
9. 1/2 tsp cracked pepper

The recipe was pretty simple. :) For the filling, it was basically mixing all the ingredients together after the initial whisking of the eggs. After which, the mixture was spooned evenly onto the tart base on the tin, and baked for about... 25 minutes I think. (Longer because I had to bake the tart as well)



It actually turned out pretty decent. A couple of learning points though:

1. It's best not to mix recipes that are so different! >< The second recipe was for a Crustless Quiche which basically meant that it didn't involve baking a separate tart layer at all. The timing was total trial and error and after initially removing the quiche from the oven, I'd only realized that the tart hadn't been completely baked after cutting a slice out. So back into the oven it went. 2. A tart base for a SWEET dessert should not be used as a tart base for a SAVORY dish. That wasn't a huuuuuge mistake because I actually really liked the mild sweetness of the Jamie Oliver tart itself. But combined with the savory ingredients of the rest of the quiche... it didn't quite jive that well. Lesson learnt. ;p



That said, it turned out to be pretty tasty. :D And I think it's always good to just try out recipes to see what aspects of each one I end up liking. All part of the learning process.

Man, that was a little lengthy. But the conclusion is, I think --> Give Jamie Oliver's recipe for the tart base a try! :D It's GOOD STUFF.