Recipe: Wild Garlic Quiche from Macknade

In this month's recipe, we're sharing a foolproof shortcrust pastry recipe made with a food processor, but you can use pre-made pastry from our freezers instead, or even make it the traditional way by hand!

Creme fraiche is used instead of traditional cream for a richer, melt-in-the-mouth texture, and the wild garlic is chopped up and treated like a fresh herb, so there's no need to pre-cook the filling.

You can pick up wild garlic in-store or you can forage for it in local woodlands yourself - you will quickly notice its distinctive smell if you are in the right place!

Remember though, it's a short season, so get in quick and enjoy it while you can...

1.5 HOURS
SERVES 4-6

INGREDIENTS

AVAILABLE IN STORE

• FOR THE SHORTCRUST PASTRY

• 200g plain flour
• 100g unsalted butter (or 60g unsalted butter and 40g lard for a flakier pastry), plus extra for the tin
• pinch of fine sea salt
• 2 tbsp ice water

• FOR THE WILD GARLIC QUICHE

• 100g full fat creme fraiche
• 2 large eggs
• 2 large egg yolks
• 100ml semi skimmed milk
• pinch of grated nutmeg
• salt and pepper
• 20g wild garlic
• gruyere cheese

INSTRUCTIONS

1. To make the pastry, blitz the flour and the butter - fridge cold and cut into small cubes - with a pinch of salt in a food processor until the mixture is sandy. Gradually add 2 tbsp of ice water, blitzing all the time, until the mixture comes together into a somewhat clumpy dough.

2. Butter a loose bottomed, fluted 18-20cm tin and set aside.

3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and bring together with your hands into a round disk of dough. For the flakiest pastry, you want to work the dough as little as possible.

4. Roll the dough out into a disk just a little bit larger than your tin, and using the rolling pin to help you lift the dough place it over the tin, gently using your fingertips to press it into all the corners: don’t worry if it tears, you can just patch it up with scraps once you’ve used a serrated knife to trim the excess and used your fingers to tidy up the edges and make a smooth edge.

5. Chill the pastry case for at least 20 minutes.

Top tip: If you don’t fancy making the pastry yourself, you can pick up some ready done shortcrust pastry from our freezers!

6. To make the filling, whisk together the creme fraiche, whole eggs and egg yolks until smooth. Then whisk in the milk, nutmeg, and a generous amount of salt and pepper.

7. Finely chop the wild garlic and whisk into the mixture.

8. Place the pastry crust on a heavy bottomed baking tray (this will both help you prevent a soggy bottom and help you transfer the quiche to the oven without spilling any filling!) and pour in the filling. Grate over a generous amount of gruyere before baking for 35-40 minutes at 190C until the top is golden, puffy, and the pastry is flaky. Depending on your oven, you might need to turn the quiche halfway to evenly brown the top.

9. Allow the quiche to deflate for about 10 minutes before carefully removing from the tin and slicing.