24 June 2012

Quiche aux brocolis...

...et au fromage de chèvre. We seem to be getting really fine broccoli in the markets these days. It must have to do with the weather. When nature (or the farmer) hands you good fresh broccoli, what do you do? You make a quiche.

Buy or make a classic pie crust with the pastry called pâte brisée in France. Cook it for 10 minutes in a hot oven and set it aside. Meanwhile, cut a head of broccoli into florets (bouquets in French) and pre-cook them slightly by steaming them or by dropping them for three or four minutes into a big pot of boiling water. Drain and refresh to stop the cooking.

If you can get a good Loire Valley-type goat cheese like a Selles-sur-Cher or a Sainte-Maure, cut it up into small cubes. Otherwise, use Cheddar or Cantal cow's milk cheese cut up the same way. Optionally (for many, but absolutely for me) sauté some chunks of smoked pork bacon (lardons fumés) or smoked ham (why not smoked turkey? or hey, smoked salmon!) for added flavor.

Putting together a broccoli quiche with lardons and goat cheese.

Arrange the blanched broccoli bouquets, the chunks of cheese, and the browned lardons in the pre-cooked (blind-baked) pie crust. Break three eggs into a bowl, beat them lightly, and add a cup of milk or half-and-half or even cream. Don't forget some black pepper and a little nutmeg, but go easy on the salt because the cheese, lardons, and crust (most likely) are already salted.

Pour the egg mixture into the pie shell to cover the other ingredients and bake the quiche in a medium oven for half an hour to forty-five minutes. You'll know when it's done by the color and the aroma. It will puff up, but then sink back down as it cools.

Quiche goes well with pommes frites...

If you have a new fryer ;^), make a batch of French fries to eat with the quiche. Quiche-frites is always a good combination.

14 comments:

  1. It would never occur to me to eat quiche with fries! Salad, yes.

    I haven't noticed broccoli so much, but peas have been good. My own peas, mangetout and broadbeans have loved the cooler damper conditions. Green beans are going to be late though.

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  2. Susan, omelette-frites then? Eggs and potatoes together — you can't go wrong.

    Slugs and/or snails keep eating our haricots verts sprouts. Walt planted some cocos plats (Italian green beans), however, and they have survived.

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  3. Probably slugs and/or snails don't know Italian and don't understand how to eat 'cocos plats'?

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  4. Now that you have that great
    new deep fryer, I have the
    feeling that most things are
    going to "go well with frites."

    Do you ever slice the potatoes
    and make pommes soufflee? I
    think that's what they're
    called. When I was a little
    girl, my mother and I would
    make these. So much fun to
    watch the slices "poof up."

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  5. So annoying to have comment
    appear twice. How do I eliminate
    one?

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  6. Sheila, I have the same problem. As I understand it, if you have a Google account, then there is a delete button. If you don’t have a Google account, like you and me, there is no delete button. Simple as that?

    Ken will explain this much better than I ever could.

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  7. CHM is right, Sheila. Meanwhile, I've deleted the extra comment.

    Pommes souflées, what a good idea...

    By the way, Walt and I both remember having quiche et frites often in Paris cafés over the past 25 years. It's a standard like saucisses-frites and steak-frites.

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  8. The French answer to "Fish 'n' chips"... what a good idea. [Tim}

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  9. That is Tim as t'Cat not t'Wife

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  10. Ken

    If you put a clear plastic bottle ( top and bottom cut off) around each sprout to keep away the snails or slugs ,until they have grown upwards enough , will that be a solution?

    I am planning to do that with my hemerocallis next year . Two years , in a row, rabbits have been eating them as soon as the young leaves start coming out . This year I had put little colourful flags next to each of them to deter those rabbits but to no avail .

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  11. "If you have a new fryer...." *heh heh* Good one, Ken :)

    Your quiche looks mighty full of yummy things. I would say, in my quiche eating experience, the ones made with as much cream as possible (instead of just milk) have that certain delicious creaminess that makes the quiche just that much better. What do you think? Do you notice a difference based on how much cream vs just milk there is in a quiche?

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  12. Judy, I do think cream improves the mixture. In fact, I almost never have whole milk in the house, just skim. So I use some skim milk and some cream in combination to enrich the quiche or béchamel or whatever I'm making. Sometimes I have liquid cream but mostly I use thick crème fraîche.

    Tomorrow we'll be testing out the new fryer for the first time. Wish us luck.

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  13. Is it really a meal without fries?

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  14. @Starman - it sure isn't a happy meal.

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