Bacon Quiche!

To make bacon quiche you first need to know how to make shortcrust pastry. So we'll start with that :) This is a fail safe simple pastry, use it for all pies, savoury tarts or bake it like a scone and cover it with mince, what ever takes your fancy.
This make enough to full a 9 inch quiche dish

Ingredients
8oz flour
2oz margarine
2oz lard
pinch salt
enough milk to make a dough

Method

• Keep the fats nice and cold and cut them up into cubes.
• Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl and run in the fats
• Use and electric for speed (plus it keeps things nice and cold) but using your hands is much more fun.
  
• Bang the bowl a bit so any bits of fat not mixed in will come to the surface.
• When its all rubbed in, add the milk a little at a time until you have a a dough that is ready to roll.
  

Once its made, wrap it in cling film and keep it in the fridge for about 20 mins before you roll it out. This will help it keep its shape.

Don't over work it, because it will become stretchy and shrink when you put it in a baking dish and don't forget the flour the worktop before you start to roll!


And Now for the Quiche itself......


I only own a 12 inch quiche dish so one lot of pastry is never enough, and I have never bothered to work out exactly how much, plus if I did then there wouldn't be any left over to make cheese straws with.

Ingredients
2 lots of short crust pastry
6 eggs
a splash of milk
1 onion
6-8 slice of bacon cut up
(cooking bacon works well too)
one big tomato
1tbsp mixed herbs
lots of cheese
(about 3/4 of a medium block)
oil
butter/marg
salt
pepper

Method

• Cut up the onion and bacon and fry until brown (but not crispy) Let this cool down before using them though because they will spoil the egg mix.
• Beat together the eggs, milk, salt, pepper, mixed herbs and the stir through about 4/5 of the cheese.
  
• Grease the quiche dish and roll out the pastry until its about half a cm thick.
  
• Line the dish with the pastry and cut the excess off (keep this for something tasty)

At this point I should be telling to the blind bake the pastry by covering it with greaseproof paper and filling the quiche with rice to prevent the bottom of the quiche going soggy. It takes about 10-15 mins at 170 degrees. I've never done this and neither did my Mam and between us we never managed a soggy bottomed quiche. If you are worried about a soggy bottom blind bake it first, is not, try it and see how it goes.

• Put the bacon and onion in the pastry case and pour over the egg mix.
• Sprinkle over the rest of the cheese and slice the tomato and put it on top in what ever pretty pattern takes your fancy.
  

Bake for about 35 mins until the egg is solid throughout. Don't panic if when you take it out of the oven you have a HUGE dome in the dish. As is cools this will go down and it will look like a normal quiche.