Cherry Tomato and Bacon Quiche

I love quiche. I think it's because it has cheese in it, and tastes good with bacon. I have probably about 10 recipes for quiche, but they all boil down to two essential recipes. This one is the soft cheese recipe, which normally calls for feta or goats cheese.

Cherry Tomato and Bacon Quiche
4 eggs
1 c milk (wholefat) or cream (1/2 and 1/2)
~4 pieces bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 handful cherry tomatoes, washed and quartered
2 handfuls baby spinach, washed and drained
1 handful fresh parsley, roughly chopped (optional)
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
~80 g blue cheese
1 small handful grated Tasty cheese (mild cheddar or mozzarella is fine)
paprika, cumin, salt and pepper
1 pie shell

Directions

1. Prepare pie crust per instructions*
2. Preheat oven to 200C/400F
3. Cook bacon, drain fat, and crumble when cool
4. Fry onions until soft, add spinach and parsley and cook until wilted
5. In bottom of pie shell, put bacon, onion, spinach and tomatoes
6. Crumble blue cheese on top, then grated cheese
7. In a large bowl, mix egg, milk and spices (to taste).  Pour over pie shell to cover all ingredients
8. Bake at 200C/400F for ~45 minutes, or until golden on top and a fork in the centre comes away clean.

* Pie Crust Instructions

Some people like to make pie crust from scratch. That's fabulous. I'm not one of those people. I buy sheets of frozen pastry (shortcrust is best, although I often buy puff pastry because I can' use it more for other things).  When you buy frozen pie shells though, you need to blind bake them so that they retain crispiness.  Most packaging will have instructions, but just incase, here's what I use.  Note: I keep a tupperware container in my pantry full of 'blind baking' rice that I just reuse ever time I'm making pies.

1. Defrost pasty 10-15 minutes at room temperature
2. Preheat oven (180 fan/200C)
3. Lightly grease pie tin
4. Put pastry in tin, trim excess (I usually roll it out a little bit so it fits nicely)
5. Put in sheet of baking paper
6. Fill 2/3 with rice
7. Bake 10 minutes
8. Remove rice (here's where you put it in a tupperware container to reuse)
9. Bake 5-10 minutes

I love quiche, and the great thing about it, is that the recipe can be completely changed. The only "necessary" ingredients are the eggs, milk and cheese, and you can use any kind of cheese you want.  I love putting spinach in my quiches, but other good ingredients include mushrooms, sundried tomatoes,  roasted pumpkin (squash), garlic, leeks, ham and etc. Also, I like to use both cheese (soft and regular cheese), but if you don't want to include the tasty/cheddar/mozzarella cheese, use ~100g (or as much as you like) of a softer cheese like feta or goats milk cheese.

The other trick to making quiche - it calls for cream, it's delicious with cream, I almost never use cream.  If you are brave enough to use a rich cream, it is really reflected well in the flavour of the finished product, however I don't usually have cream in the house, nor do I like using it while cooking, so instead I use what usually ends up being 1% or 2% milk.

I like to serve my quiche with bbq sauces and ketchup, and a small side salad.  It's also delicious cold (or reheated) as leftovers