Mushroom Quiche

Quiche is an open faced savoury pie.  The filling of quiche is savoury custard and cheese along with meat, seafood and vegetables filling.  The flavour is derived from the filling and the type of cheese used.   They can be had both cold or warm, though I found them best when warmed. 

  Pie pan is first lined with pastry crust, that is blind-baked,  and then  followed by cheese, filling, custard and finally topped by cheese.  The custard filling is heavy cream whisked with eggs.  Ratio of cream and eggs is 2:1 (ie for every ½ cup of cream, you should add ¼ cup of whisked egg).  After baking, quiche gives out an aromatic smell throughout the place and  was very light and fluffy when tasted. 

My second filling, was vegetarian choice.   I used mushroom along with spring onions.  You can use mushroom with palak or spinach with corn.  Any vegetarian filling is fine, as long as it gets cooked well before stuffing into quiche. 

 I tried yellow(mature)  cheddar cheese in this quiche.  This yellow cheddar had an dominating aroma, and quiche was like an cheesy explosion J  You can also try other varieties like gouda, mozzarella etc.  All thanks to Swathi Iyer from Baking partners group, for initiating this wonderful challenge.  

For making 8-inch Pastry crust and Blind baking, please refer  here

For the  Mushroom and Spring onion filling:

You will be needing

For the filling

•         1 tbspn butter
•          ¼ cup of sliced shallots
•          ¼ cup of sliced spring onion bulbs
•          1 tsp finely chopped ginger
•          1 tsp finely chopped garlic
•          Salt, to taste
•          Pinch of haldi/turmeric powder
•          ½ tsp chilly powder
•          1 tsp dhanya powder
•          175 gm of finely sliced mushrooms
•          1 cup finely chopped spring onions (green part alone)

For the custard

•          ½ cup Amul fresh cream
•          1 large egg
•          ½ tsp of chilly powder
•          ½ tsp of pepper
•          Salt, to taste

Others

•          75 grams of cheddar cheese

Add butter to the pre-heated tawa, this is followed by adding shallots and spring onion bulbs.  Saute them for an minute, add finely chopped ginger and garlic.  Add all the spices.  

Add our sliced mushrooms and sauté till they coat the spices.  Add the spring onion greens , simmer the flame and cover the pan, cooking for 20 more minutes till the mushrooms are perfectly cooked and the filling becomes dry.  

Cool the filling, keep aside. 

Grate the cheddar cheese, keep aside.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree Celsius. 

For the custard, open the amul fresh cream pack.  Do not shake.  Separate the liquid contents from the pack and use the cream part.  This is done because we need an heavy cream for quiche and amul has an low fat content, so separating its cream would enhance the fat content and hence is done.  The liquid part can be used in cooking purpose, like you can add them in curry, kheer etc.  

In an large bowl,  add ½ cup of cream part (from amul cream), one large egg, chilly powder and salt.  Whisk them, till they are completely dissolved.  

Final Assembly:

Take the blind-baked pie crust and sprinkle them with cheddar cheese at the bottom.  

This is followed by our prepared filling.  

Pour in the custard and top with  the remaining cheese.

Bake them for 35 minutes or till the filling is firm.  

Mushroom quiche was dominated by cheddar cheese aroma, and tasted delecious.

Linking this to Baking partners, run by Swathi Iyer