French Club Challenges
Mini Quiches
The melodious preludes of Debussy resonate in my ears, complemented by the kind words of members of the local French community who relished my mini quiches. It feels like a grand piano concert, with just a dozen of us today. Yet there are thirty quiches: a true feast. I baked them with care after being tasked with preparing savoury canapes, and chose to make them as I thought "what could be more French?" Quiches are the most wonderful tartlets which can have various fillings, enveloped in an egg and cream mixture and sprinkled with grated cheese before a brief 15-minute stint in the oven. We once visited Mireille, my French "mum", as I lovingly call her, in a village bordering the Fontainebleau forest. We were ravenously hungry and she greeted us with a delightful, still-warm courgette quiche. She placed it on the table and inadvertently left my husband alone with it. We engaged in lively kitchen banter for about a quarter of an hour, then returned to the living room, where the fireplace crackled, only to discover that my husband had demolished all but one slice. It was quite awkward! The entire sizable dish had vanished almost in an instant. Since then, I've learnt the delicious art of French home cooking. And so I attempted to replicate the same effect for a slightly larger group, using a muffin tin with 12 wells. To make 30 small quiches, I had to bake three batches.
Ingredients
- 1 onion
- 200 g bacon
- 250 g mushrooms
- 500 g courgettes
- 2 cloves garlic
- ½ bunch coriander
- 200 g canned salmon
- Chives
- 300 g sour cream
- 300 g double cream
- 6 eggs
- Salt and pepper
- Ready-made puff pastry sheets
- Grated cheddar or mozzarella cheese
Method
- 1For the first batch, finely chop and sauté one onion, 200 g of bacon and 250 g of mushrooms. For the second batch, thinly slice and sauté 500 g of courgettes, adding two grated cloves of garlic and half a bunch of coriander at the end. For the third half-batch, mash a 200-g can of canned salmon with a fork and add chives.
- 2Combine 300 g of sour cream, 300 g of double cream and six lightly beaten eggs. Season both the mixture and fillings with salt and pepper, then cut out circles of the desired size from ready-made sheets of puff pastry and line the moulds with them.
- 3Prick the bottoms with a fork and start by spooning in the filling, followed by pouring the egg mixture and sprinkling with grated cheese: different batches with either cheddar or mozzarella.
- 4Bake for 5 minutes at 210°C, then another 10 minutes at 170°C.
