Roger Mooking’s Goat Cheese Quiche

Oh I wish this picture was pretty as the quiche really was! Thankfully this was the last day with the Christmas lights up in the living room window which prevented me from taking my pretty pictures, LOL. Still, I hope it shows just how flakey, tasty and fabulous this quiche was.

I served it for tea for my mother-in-law Lorraine, along with my roasted butternut squash soup and rich white dinner rolls with thyme. Not something I would make every day because it is time intensive but for a special occasion? Perfect!

I began making Roger Mooking’s Goat Cheese Quiche by roasting three HUGE shallots slathered in olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper the day before we were getting together for tea. I love how they end up popping out of their skins and filled my home with astounding roasted onion aroma. So yummy!

I decided to use my food processor to make the dough. I have never put so much butter into a crust before, half a pound! I put the butter, flour and salt in the food processor and pulsed until the butter was broken apart but still had chunks in it. Then I slowly added ice water, gradually while pulsing until it looked like this:

I could tell that there was enough moisture in there that the dough would come together and not be too dry or wet. I gathered it into a ball and wrapped in plastic wrap and put in the fridge to chill overnight since I made this part of the recipe the day before as well.

Roger’s recipe makes enough pastry for a flan tin with removable bottom. I had more than enough dough for my pie plate. I wanted to use the excess crust for another recipe so I trimmed it right along the edge of the pie plate, leaving no overhang, and wrapped the dough and kept it in the fridge.

This recipe calls for blind baking so I had to prick the bottom of the crust with a fork…

… covered it in aluminum foil and added brown rice that I never eat to weigh down the crust. Beans would work better because they are heavier but this is what I had. It still puffed up a little but no big deal.

Brush some of this mixture on the pie crust and then put back in the oven until golden brown.

Add goat cheese, shallots and top with egg mixture and bake until done. It took a little longer than 30 minutes for mine to be totally cooked through.

Again, I wish this looked as pretty as it really was but fluorescent lighting is the bane of existence for all food photographers. By the time this was finished it was very dark outside, no light left in my kitchen. The good news? What a hit it was! We loved it and so did Lorraine. One of the flakiest crusts in the world but with all that butter, it had better be!

I cut a disk of the leftover dough and used it to finish off these individual chicken pot pies for dinner last night and again, super flaky and buttery!

Time intensive but super flavourful, this is my favourite kind of recipe… totally worth the effort. I give this recipe five out of five wooden spoons.