Vegetable quiche

Once a fortnight I get a fruit and veg box delivered and it feels like Christmas opening the box and discovering what delights are in the box and then spending the rest of the fortnight finding new recipes and ways of cooking things a little different to break the monotony. All good fun for me and healthy eating to, well mostly ;o)  Although I get a fruit and veg box I spied on my travels the first English asparagus of the season while I was out, so rushed home with it to see what else I had to go with it.  After looking as what we had to use up I decided to make a quiche. 

While blind baking some shortcrust pastry in a 20 cm/8 inch tin, I assembled 8 cherry tomatoes and halved,  took the woody ends off the asparagus and blanched in salted water for 2 minutes.took a bag of spinach which i washed then poured the boiling asparagus water over it in a colander and it wilted, drained thoroughly and squeezed it dry and chopped when cool enough to handle.  Grated 1 fat clove of garlic and crumbled 1/4 block of feta cheese. 

I took 3 large eggs which i seasoned and whisked in 2 large tablespoons of creme fraiche. Think ours was low fat, which I used as didn't have any cream. Worked well enough so use what you have on hand. And stirred in the grated/crushed garlic to the egg mixture.

As you see once the pastry was blind baked I put all the veg in best I could, started with the spinach sprinkled over the base, which must be dry or you will get the dreaded soggy bottom! Then the asparagus and fitted the rest over best I could.

Before adding the egg mixture and making sure the oven was at gas mark 4/180 degrees I placed the tin on a baking tin.  My quiche/flan dish is loose bottomed so didn't want to take the risk of anything coming out of the bottom if it leaked.

After 35 minutes it had a slight wobble but not much in the centre and did look a bit more brown than this picture shows but was looking and smelling great

We left this to go just warm before taking it out of the tin and serving it with some new potatoes with mint and a little butter, and a little side salad.  

I was surprised this went down so well as the feta didn't have the usually cheesiness I grew up with in a quiche, but the veg shone through so well I honestly didn't miss it. And will remember this for that last bit of feta in the fridge no one seems to want to eat.