
One of my favourite food-related blogs, which I only recently discovered, is ‘Joe Pastry‘. Written by a former baker and pastry maker, his blog is full of interesting historical pastry knowledge, a fair bit of science, and lots of good instructions for different pastry techniques with plenty of handy photos. It’s not the prettiest blog I read but I’ve learnt more from it than most other food blogs.
I’m not quite sure now but I think I discovered Joe Pastry while on the hunt for a good quiche recipe. I didn’t just find a quiche recipe, I found an entire quiche tutorial there. For my brother’s party a few weeks back, I made three of these quiches and added an assortment of herbs from the garden to them. They were delicious - great crusts, perfectly textured custard, and the strong flavours of the herbs were balanced by the cheese. They were so good my mother asked me to make another one later on during my holiday. I had time to take lots of photos so, here’s my variation on this quiche recipe:
Courgette, feta, and chives quiche
For the pastry:
- 1 cup of plain flour
- 1 cup of wholemeal flour
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 225 grams of chilled butter (I cut mine up and froze it in the freezer first)
- Water

I blended half the flour and the frozen butter together and then added the crumbled combination to the bowl of the mixer along with the rest of the flour. I’m not exactly sure how much water I added, but it was more than I originally intended to and the dough came out stickier than I expected. Which was actually a good thing, because after I kneaded it for a while (probably not the 10 minutes that was recommended, because I’m lazy) and let it rest in the fridge for an hour, it rolled out perfectly:

With that lovely not-falling-apart-on-me pastry, it was super easy to fold in half twice (like folding a piece of paper into quarters) and plop it into a cake tin (in lieu of a quiche mold) and unfold. Don’t forget to leave plenty of extra dough around the edge to allow for shrinkage.

I lined the crust with paper and filled it with some wheat grains that had been languishing in the pantry for awhile (whatever works - dried beans, macaroni, uncooked rice, chickpeas etc) then baked it for half an hour at 190 degrees C. Took the wheat and paper out and put it back in for another 15 minutes to get properly brown. Here’s a photo, but because it’s wholemeal you can’t really see the brownness.

While the crust was baking I got the filling ready.
For the filling:
- 3 medium-sized courgettes (zucchini)
- 500 grams of feta cheese
- A handful of chives
- 6 eggs
- 2 cups of cream
- 2 cups of milk
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
- Grated cheese for on top (I used up some leftover Parmesan)

I cooked the sliced courgettes in a bit of olive oil and added the salt and pepper to them while they cooked. While they were cooking I chopped the chives and crumbled the feta into a bowl. Once the courgettes were a bit cooler I mixed them together with the feta and chives.

While I was getting the fillings ready I scalded the milk and cream. I’m not entirely sure if this step is necessary for quiche (see here for more on scalding), but it doesn’t take long and it doesn’t really matter if the milk is a bit warm so I do it anyway. I blended the milk mix and eggs together (in two batches, because it wouldn’t all fit) in the blender so they came out bubbly and fluffy on top.
Once the fillings are done, the crust is cooked, and the milk mix blended it’s just a matter of putting everything together. Which for me, just meant putting the courgette mix into the crust and pouring the milk/egg froth on top. Notice how fluffy the top looks?

And a sprinkling of grated Parmesan for the top. Then into the oven at 160 degrees C for one and a half hours. Apparently, quiche is ‘done’ when it doesn’t slosh if you shake it but rather, wobbles. I erred on the side of caution and left mine in until it was about 20 minutes past the wobbly point, which didn’t seem to do any harm and gave me a bit more peace of mind. Here’s my finished quiche:

At this point I deviated quite significantly from the recipe… It looked and smelled so yummy I trimmed off enough of the extra crust to lift off the cake tin and sneaked myself a slice while it was still quite warm. Now that I’ve had quiche this good and know how to make it, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to buy it again.
