SURPRISINGLY GOOD Smoked Trout + Dill Quiche

It has been a long week: Noisy builders, Winter dust, listless teenagers, recuperating elderly mothers and a nasty cold. It was an effort to make a Med-Lemon let alone be a domestic goddess so we defaulted to cottage pie and to be honest I don't really think the boys even noticed the difference.

I promised myself to pick it up a bit today, so in a minor flurry of Sunday kitchen action I fiddled around with some rather exciting new recipes along with the usual weekend quiche. As it had been a slow week, I still had a fridge full of food including some smoked trout from Peak Trout in the freezer. With a quick trip to Midlands Garden Centre and lots of newly acquired dill we pulled together a surprisingly good quiche. Normally I wouldn't consider this 'blog-worthy' but as we have a lot of delicious trout at the moment, thought it worth sharing.

Speaking of herbs, despite appallingly behaved dogs who dig up everything and benign neglect (the 9 year old is meant to water) I'm slowly building up my little herb garden and was quietly pleased when I listed out what had been planted so far: French tarragon (which seems to have been whacked by our daily frost) Mint, Chervil, Lovage, Borage, Parsely, Chives, Rosemary, Thyme, Sorrel, Marjoram, Burdock and now Dill. We had loads of Basil and Coriander during the Summer and apart from the Tarragon everything else seems to be hardy-ish which is handy as herbs are ridiculously expensive in the supermarkets here. We're lucky to have a herb farm called Peter's Gate down the road and I pop in often to see what new herbs they have. I'm looking forward to using them - particularly the chervil which one never finds in shops and the burdock which is so on trend . I do like bitter tastes (think Campari)  which apparently is rather trendy and terribly 2015. Can't think how I'm going to use it yet. My mother said it sounded like something out of Lady Macbeth.

But back to the smoked trout quiche:

JML

Smoked Trout + Dill Quiche

Crust:

Enough short crust pastry to line a quiche pan. I used the parmesan pastry from a week or so ago. 

Filling:

350g smoked trout, flaked

Good handful of fresh dill, snipped finely

Small onion, finely chopped

125g mature cheddar or gruyere, grated

125ml cream

125ml milk

3 large eggs

Salt & pepper

Method:

1. Roll out pastry and bake blind for about 15 minutes
2. Gently fry onion until soft in a tiny bit of butter
3. Whisk up eggs and add cream and milk
4. Snip up dill into egg mixture and add cheese to mixture and season well
5. Sprinkle the onion and fish evenly over the baked pastry case
6. Pour over the eggy cream cheese dill mixture evenly
7. Bake in a 180C oven for about 40 minutes, until slightly golden on top
8. Trim pastry edges to neaten up and leave to 'set' for about 15 minutes.

Enjoy with a green salad, a baked potato and a crisp glass of something dry and white. 

Perfect Sunday lunch or a light supper.