Red Chard, Cheddar & Lemon Quiche

Last night my friends arranged a wonderful cocktail party at their place. All the guests were dressed up in their best outfits, there was a wide range of drinks, and what’s the best, a wide range of lovely cocktail bites. I still don’t know how many days my friend has used in preparing all that, but I assume MANY.

The best things I got to taste there was a cracker with apricot and miso jam, and a chocolate tart with pistachio halva and sesame salt. I really have to try these out myself too!

In a manner of fact, I had promised to help in cooking something for the party. What happened was that I got a mild food poisoning from something I ate on Friday, so I was not feeling very good yesterday. Bravely I still started to prepare the red chard mini quiches I had promised, but what eventually happened was that they got stuck in my cupcake pan and broke. Almost all of them. So that was it. Luckily I had still half of the dough as well as the filling left, so I decided just to make a traditional quiche and bring it to the party.

Cut in small bits it was almost as nice as the individual mini quiches would have been!

Red Chard, Cheddar and Lemon Quiche

Basic pie crust:

125g butter (salted)

3dl all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons ice cold water

For the filling:

bunch of red chard, washed and stems cut off

1 tablespoon olive oil

small bunch of rocket, washed

200ml heavy whipping cream

200g creme fraiche

3 large eggs

100g yellow cheddar, grated

50g parmesan cheese, grated

1 teaspoon lemon peel, finely grated

salt and black pepper to taste

Prepare the crust. Using your fingertips, work together butter and flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Quickly mix in the ice cold water, form into a ball and refrigerate while you make the filling.

Roughly chop chard and rocket. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and sautée chard for 30 seconds. Set aside.

Mix together cream and creme fraiche. Whisk in the eggs, cheeses, lemon peel and rocket.

Preheat the oven to 200C°. Cover the base of a springform pan with baking paper and grease the sides with butter.

Take the dough from the fridge. On a floured surface, roll it out into a round slightly bigger than the diameter of your pan.

Place the rolled dough in the pan so that it covers the bottom and about 1/3 up the sides. Pour the filling on the crust, top with sauteed chard and bake about 30 minutes or until golden.