Looking for a breakfast or just a filling bite? Being a cross between a dessert and proper breakfast quiche will not disappoint when it’s tried.

It’s fascinating how easily we can get into bad habits and even worse how easily we can form our life around it, like that would be the most normal thing in the world. It’s much to do with our primitive brain and our inability to recognize when we are acting on its behalf, which is practically almost all the time.

Of course, it’s not a bad thing having a dedicated organ to do some mundane tasks, like breathing and pumping blood around our body, as it would be extremely tiresome to sit all day in a corner, thinking of breathing in and out.

Well, actually there are people who do that, but meditation is not as easy as picking a breakfast. In fact, picking a breakfast or anything is easy as long as we leave the things to be decided by our primitive brain.

Once the leash is taken away from the autopilot, we face huge amount of brain crunching decisions minute after minute. Anyone who has ever tried a diet, knows that the hardest part is, not doing the diet, but not doing what we used to do.

Many of us has gone through the agonizing pain of opening the cupboard, looking for something edible only to face the fact that we have nothing there that would be fit to eat in our new healthy life.

Ready made sugar filled breakfast cereals that classify more as dessert than nutritious meal choices. Not like some of the classical breakfast choices, like the pancakes should be ever served as a breakfast to anyone, yet generations have grown up on it.

Unfortunately, it seems that having desserts for breakfast doesn’t bode well with our long term health and it makes us not just visually unappealing but sick, too.

Luckily, there is light at the end of the tunnel, even if we have been born and bread on dessert all our life, yet we would like to turn our back on the temptations of sugar and starches.

Of course, we can drastically cut everything out of our life and burn them like bacon. but not everybody is up to such sufferings, yet. Some of us prefer just to trim down on things while trying out another one.

That’s fine too and that is what quiche is good for. Quiche is a French tart that is a somewhere between desserts and a proper breakfast. There are many varieties exist of this dish, partly because in reality such meals were prepared in English speaking countries well before the name Quiche seeped into popular knowledge.

One of the most popular one is the Quiche Lorraine which not surprisingly comes from the Lorraine region of France. It’s basically an open pie aka tart, filled with lardon, cream and eggs mixture. Nowadays a bit of matured cheddar is also added to it, just for fun.

The crust is generally pre-baked to avoid having a soggy crust but if we are short of time or care, we may just get away with baking the pie and the filling at the same time. It’s a dish that is pretty forgiving and allows plenty of experimentation with all sorts of spices and herbs that we can find in our cupboard or garden.

Ingredients

Crust

1⅔ cup / 200g Flour
7 tablespoon / 100g Butter room temperature
1 Egg
¼ cup / 50ml Water
½ teaspoon salt

Filling

5oz / 150g Bacon or Pancetta or Lardon
1 head / 200g Onion (finely diced)
1 clove Garlic (crushed)
½ cup / 30g Cheddar (shredded)
¼ cup / 20g Scallion
½ cup / 120ml Milk
½ cup / 120ml Cream
4 Eggs

Kitchen utensils

Ø10½” / Ø26cm Baking tray

How to make Quiche

Crust

Put flour, butter, egg, salt and the water medium size bowl.
Work the butter and egg into the flour until it comes together by hand. A lot depends on the moisture content of the flour. If the dough is too dry and flaky, pour a little bit more water over the mixture. If it still sticks to the bowl or onto our hands after ten minutes of kneading then add a bit of more flour to it.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a circle shape, the size of our baking tray.
Place dough onto the tray, fit or tweak it if needed.
Put a heavy round object on top of the dough to keep the crust down or use pie-weights if available.
Place it in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes until the crust hardens then remove the weight.
Poke the dough with a fork.
Put it back into the oven for another 10-15 minutes until slight golden brown spots starts to emerge at the sides.
When it is done take tray out. Meanwhile the crust is baking, prepare the filling.

Filling

Dice or slice the bacon, pancetta or lardon.
On medium heat render out the fat for about 10 minutes. Move the pieces around to avoid burning down and uneven browning.
We are going to use the rendered out fat to caramelize the onions. Add the onions and saute it on high heat for about 5 -10 minutes.
When it gets a glassy / translucent color lower the heat to medium low and cook it for about 15 – 20 minutes.
Add garlic and scallion then cook it until the garlic gets fragrant for about 2 – 5 minutes.
Beat eggs then mix in the cream and milk. If we run out of milk or cream just substitute one with the other.
Mix in the bacon, onion and scallion then add the cheese.
Pour filling into the pre-baked pie crust.
Depending on the oven and how long we pre-baked the pie crust we may need to apply a crust protector which can be made from tin foil or purchased online.
Place the quiche into a 350°F / 180°C oven and bake it for 20-30 minutes. Don’t forget to take the crust protector off to get a lovely golden brown color. Check if the eggs set by making a little cut somewhere.