Fresh Asparagus Quiche

 

Crisp Asparagus spears cooked to perfection in a rich quiche retain a light crunch and impart a delicious flavour,  perfect for a weekend lunch in Spring. They are a spring-time favourite, and are in season right now here in sunny Queensland. They are very reasonably priced, so this is the perfect time to cook with this abundant vegetable. 

When there are so many cooking websites and recipe books available these days, how does one choose what to cook? When even I am feeling overwhelmed at the number of recipes I would like to cook, and believe me there are heaps of them, I go back to basics and try to cook with what is fresh, healthy and in season, and doesn't break the budget. There are always options to add more expensive ingredients if you want to impress for a special event.

Let's cook with delicious and healthy asparagus while it lasts:

Ingredients:

23 cm quiche dish required

1 packet of shop-bought shortcrust pastry, thawed, however home made pastry would be much better
2 bunches asparagus, bottom ends snapped off
1 bunch spring onions, white bottoms finely sliced  (reserve the greens for another recipe)
2 rashers bacon, use streaky if you wish, finely chopped (optional for a vegetarian version)
50 g butter
1 sprig of dill, finely chopped, not essential but nice if you have it
1/4 bunch of chives, finely chopped
A few good scrapes of fresh nutmeg, or 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg spice
Pinch of sea salt
200 ml double (thickened) cream
4 whole large eggs
100 g grated cheddar cheese, or gruyere for a more up market result
Torn Goats cheese (optional) and chopped herbs to garnish if you are entertaining

Method:

Preheat oven to 220C

1. In a 22-23cm quiche dish, pat the pastry into each corner, leaving the overhang.
2. Dock the base with a fork ( Alice Zaslavsky says this is just a fancy way of saying "poke"). We used to say prick with a fork! How terminology changes. This is a technique used with blind baking, so that the steam can escape preventing the pie crust from puffing up in the oven while cooking.
3. Pop the baking paper on top of the pastry, fill the dish with rice or dried beans or baking weights, and blind-bake for 20 minutes. Make sure your oven timer is on, time flies.

Rice used for blind baking. I keep this in a coffee jar in my pantry and just keep reusing it, but only for blind baking

4. Meanwhile, start on the filling. Sauté  the spring onion and bacon in the butter, set aside. Whisk the double cream with eggs, sprinkle in chives, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

5. Pull the blind-baked pastry base out of the oven after 20 minutes, remove the baking paper and rice (don't spill the beans), and return the pastry case to the oven for another 10 mins.

6. Once the pastry base has baked through, sprinkle grated cheese, cooked bacon and spring onion, push in the asparagus (either whole, or chopped into rustic pieces) then pour over the cream and egg mix, being careful that it only reaches the edge of your pastry, not spilling over the top of it.

7. Turn the oven down to 150C and then bake the quiche for 35 minutes or until egg mix has set. Test with a skewer that it comes out clean. Mine needed 40 minutes. This depends on the size of your dish really.

Back story:

If you have the time, and love making your own shortcrust pastry I would certainly do that for this quiche, however if you are time poor and asparagus-rich, good quality pastry is available from delis and some independent supermarkets, even though I will admit that I had already bought mine from the supermarket and couldn't waste it.

 I first saw this recipe when I was watching the vibrant and very successful Alice Zaslavsky on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) Morning breakfast program quite a while ago now, when she was featuring a selection of delicious dishes using fresh asparagus. This was one of them.  Alice's specialty is delicious recipes using vegetables. Her original recipe said to use a 20 cm quiche dish, however I found that too small for this recipe when I first made it, but waste not want not. I made a very small quiche minus the pastry using the leftover filling that wouldn't fit in the quiche dish, so I think just a normal size 23 cm quiche dish is more suitable. I suspect this was just a typo, and honestly, Alice would need to be up cooking at 3.00 am on the same day that she appears on Morning Breakfast and looking as "fresh as a daisy", so a typo on her website is very understandable.

If however you would prefer to eat a quiche minus the pastry, no problem, just lightly grease a quiche dish and pour in the eggy filling and add the asparagus spears, and it will still be delicious. We're trying to watch the calories at the moment, in between special events of course, so when I make this dish again, very soon, it will probably be minus the pastry. I do love eating pastry though. 

I have another favourite classic and easy quiche recipe, no pastry,  that I often make for a quick lunch, which is minus the bacon but has 2 cups of chopped vegetables in it, and I think that chopped fresh asparagus would also be perfect in that one. Here is the recipe for it if you are interested; My Easy Vegetable Quiche recipe Not quite as fancy as this recipe but very tasty.

Recipe notes:

• The decorative foliage that I have used on my quiche is edible, yellow Tarragon flowers and leaves, and red Pineapple sage flowers which by the way are delicious and very attractive on the bush. I can't grow dill here because of the humidity, and I forgot to buy it so my quiche is dill-less, however it works a treat if you have it. It still tasted amazing without it. With a recipe like this you can make the budget edition, or go all out and be as up market as you like with cheeses, pastry, herbs etc, they will both taste delicious. 

•  Does canned asparagus really come from the same vegetable as the fresh variety? While it's in season I am embracing the availability and the price of this precious vegetable. The asparagus I used only cost $1.00 per bunch at the supermarket. Sadly, I can't grow it here in North Queensland,  however in the the southern states and in the Northern Hemisphere I imagine the quality and price could be even better. 
• This recipe would be amazing using the white asparagus which grows very well in Europe.

Speaking of delicious,  I can still remember back in the 1980's when we thought a toasted cheese and canned asparagus sandwich was delicious, and was sought after. Can you remember those?

Thanks for dropping by and I would love to hear from you if you have taken the time to read this far and make this quiche.

Best wishes and have a great weekend.

Pauline