Leek and mushroom quiche

I wanted to make a quiche for the family as they came home from a vacation last night and liked to eat something easy. Leek and mushrooms were the only vegetables I had so that’s how I came up with the idea of making this quiche. I tried out a new pastry this time as well. I didn’t much feel like cooking up a potato and making the potato pastry out of that, so I used one of the plain flour-butter-and-water pastries out of my pastry book. I couldn’t tell you much about the difference in taste, but I think it is minimal. It does, however, save you a lot of time cooking and dicing potatoes. So this is what I’ll be using from now on. On the downside of this sort of pastry, it seems to need to be baked for about 10-15 minutes separately first, before you add the filling. I didn’t do this and didn’t have to with the potato pastry, but afterwards the bottom and the middle were slightly soft so it might be a good idea to bake it for a few minutes beforehand next time. Anyway, let’s go on to the recipe:



Pastry
Ingredients:
200 grams flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
90 grams butter
4 tablespoons water

Filling
Ingredients:
6 eggs
200 ml milk
150 ml (double) cream
1 leek
2-3 hands-full mushrooms
Salt & pepper

1. Cut the vegetables into small slices and cook them in water.
2. In the meanwhile make the pastry by sifting the flour and salt together.
3. Add the butter and crumble it together with the flour with a fork. Lastely, add the water and knead. Then leave in the fridge.
4. Beat the eggs and add the milk, cream, salt & pepper and mix it all together.
5. Wash the leek and mushrooms until they have cooled and add them to the egg-mixture.
6. Grease a cake tin and line it with the pastry. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius or 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Bake the pastry for 10-15 minutes, or add the filling straight away and bake the whole quiche for about 30-40 minutes.

I made a Greek mini tart variation on this the same day. That involved a bottom of tomato/pasta sauce and a topping that included Greek yogurt, egg, milk and herbs. It was very nice as well, although it looked a lot less appealing as the cupcake-sized quiches exploded like volcano's (quite literally with the red sauce), slightly burned on the top and completely sank in after they cooled down a little. But everyone said they tasted nice, so who’s complaining?
Apparently leek is a terribly good option for a quiche. Initially I thought it would be very plain or somewhere lacking something, but it was really nice. The little bit of mushrooms I had through the quiche also gave it more taste. If you think a quiche is not complete without cheese, add some grated cheese to the egg-mixture or sprinkle some on top in the last 5 minutes of baking. I tend to do that as well sometimes!
Anyway! Enjoy this recipe and feel free to use this pastry as a base for whatever quiche you can think of. (I’m begging you to be creative!)