Quiche

I first tasted quiche during outing and I really liked its creamy and cheesy richness, so I decided to give it shot at home :) So here is my version for the same.

Quiche is a savoury, open-faced pastry crust with a filling of savoury custard with cheese, vegetables or meat.
practically you can fill anything in it :) and that's the beauty of quiche. I had put veggies in quiche and here is how I made it.
Ingredients:
1. Pie crust (refer to http://vinitsjoyofcooking.blogspot.in/2013/08/pie-crust.html)
2. 1/2 cup grated cheese
3. 120 ml heavy cream
4. 120 ml milk
5. 1 egg + 1 (yolk)
6. salt, pepper, spices, herbs for taste (your call)
7. Half onion in thin strips
8. Half capsicum in thin stripes
9. Half tomato (remove stem and seeds) in thin stripes
10. 1 tsp oil (any cooking oil shall do)

Method:
In a skillet/pan heat 1 tsp oil and sauté onions, tomatoes and capsicum until they are done, turn heat off and set it aside to let it rest to room temperature 

Now mix in 1 egg + 1 yolk and whisk together.

Add in grated cheese, cream and milk and keep whisking. If you want your quiche to be very creamy then replace milk with cream or vice versa, if you want it more cheesy then reduce cream a little and add extra cheese. You can play with it as you like. Key thing is quiche should be creamy thats all :)

Add in salt, pepper any other hrebs/spices as per your wish. Cheese already has some salt contents so you may need to keep eye on how much salt you are adding in :)

Now add sautéed veggies to this mixture and give it a nice mix.

Baked quiche

Make sure you have aligned pie crust in baking teen and oven is pre-heated to 180 degree Celsius.

Pour mixture over pie crust in tin and make sure it does not spill over edges of tin.

Bake this upto 10-15 minutes and check for firmness, and then cook for 10-15 minutes more or till quiche starts browning. Your quiche is ready, it may appear little bit wobbly but its fine, thats how it should appear :). you can serve it right away.

A nice quiche piece

Pie crust

A beautiful Pie crust is essential for pies (ofcourse :) ), tarts, quiche and many more. So here is how I made pie crust for my preparations. This makes crust for about 6-7 inch tin.

Ingredients:

1. 100 gms all purpose flour (maida)

2. 40 gms unsalted plain butter (I use fat free butter)

3. 10 gms shortening ( लोणी (loni) , मक्खन (makkhan)

4. 1-2 tsp. cold water

5. 1/4 tsp salt

6. 1 Egg white 

Method:

For a good pie crust, butter and shortening must be cold, so keep it in refrigerator until you gather all required ingredients. 

First put all purpose flour and salt in whisking bowl and give a little whisk to mix them well (I use small mixy)

Now cut butter in small cubes and mix in above mixture, now blend them together in pulsating action,

we don't need to keep it spinning in mixy. Dough should like coarse not fine paste.

Now add shortening to mixture and again blend together in pulsating action.

Now add 1 tsp water into mixture and give little spin, please note that we don't want to make dough in a fine paste, we just need enough water so that mixture will hold together when pressed by hands. Add more water if needed. As per my experience you need total 1 and 1/2 tsp water only, but it can change depending on flour you use. 

Press mixture by hand to make sure it holds, if it does then its done.

Now kneed mixture into small ball and then press it round shape, cover with plastic/aluminium and refrigerate it for about 30 minutes.

Now we are ready to roll out and bake our pie crust.

Take out dough from refrigerator and put it on flat surface. Use more flour so that dough won't stick to surface. Now rollout dough neatly in round shape, just a inch more than diameter of your baking tin. Use more flour to prevent dough from sticking to surface.

Make sure to lightly grease your baking tin by either dusting with flour or 

Now carefully lift rolled out dough on rolling pin and carefully place on your baking tin and with lightly pressed it against tin. Put this in refrigerator untill oven is preheated. 

Pre-heat oven to 200 degree Celsius, once oven reaches to this temperature; take out baking tin from refrigerator and put on flat surface. Gently puncture pie using fork as we don't want pie crust to rise once it starts baking.

Put a slightly greased parchment/butter pepper on tin and fill it with pie weights (beans/rice/washed sand (dry)), so that pie crust won't rise as it bakes and retain its shape and does not sogg down from tin's edge.

Put tin in oven and bake it for about 10 minutes or till edges of pastry start browning. 

Remove from oven and remove parchment/butter paper and pie weights.

Reduce oven temperature to 180 degree Celsius and bake for 5-10 minutes more, pie crust should be ready now.

I prefer to brush pie crust with egg white, so that egg whites seals any cavity/punctures/holes in pie crust. This helps pie crust to go soggy when we pour pie mixture in it later. If you apply egg whites then bake it for another 2-3 minutes so that it shall seal pie crust properly.

Our pie crust is ready, you can use it once its cooled down. You can refrigerate it for 2-3 days or keep it frozen as well. Make sure you covered in properly before refrigerating it.