I made this quiche for our new year's day buffet party and it uses winter vegetables, but they are ones you can also find at this time of year - at least, I certainly did the other day. As a quiche is a light dish that can be eaten cold, while it is great for buffets that you need to prepare ahead, it is also really good for picnics and al fresco lunches.
I based my quiche this Linda Barker recipe on Good to Know; I used my giant pink pie dish which I love but don't have reason to use very often. You can make your own pastry but I used ready-made as the recipe suggested, as I had a lot of food to prepare for the buffet!
Roll it out and line the pie dish and then fill with baking beans - this weighs the pastry down while you bake it blind.
I had a lovely selection of vegetables to use for this including some fennel, butternut squash (one of my favourite vegetables), red onion and spring onion.
You do have to pre-cook the vegetables so chop them up, lay out in a roasting tray and drizzle with a little bit of oil. Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes and allow to cool a little, then sprinkle over the baked pastry crust. I then sliced up some goat's cheese and laid it on the top.
Beat 3 eggs with 300ml milk and season and carefully pour into the quiche making sure it doesn't spill over the edges. Bake in the oven at 180C for 25-30 minutes.
The top is a lovely golden brown when cooked; I don't have a picture of the whole quiche but you can see a lot of the ingredients inside in this slice. I thought the quiche was lovely - the butternut squash and fennel went really well together and the goat's cheese gave a really nice depth of flavour.
I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is Q.
The theme for this month's Pastry Challenge, hosted by Jen's Food, is picnics, and this quiche is perfect for a picnic.
Butternut squash is one of my favourite vegetables - it's so versatile, as it can be roasted, mashed, used in soups, and goes well with salads as well as hot meals. I also like the fact that it's a really robust vegetable and quite difficult to overcook, and the colour always adds something nice to a plate. So I am sharing this with Vegetable Palette, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen, as her theme this month is 'your favourite vegetable'.
This also fits in with the Simply Eggcellent challenge hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen, where eggs take centre stage, as his theme this month is savoury dishes.
