Surprisingly Easy Recipe: Salmon-Broccoli-Courgette Quiche

Joeri Poesen //

Quiche

Quiches are pretty straightforward to make. And you can pretty much thrown anything in them as long as you get the basics straight. They can be as light and healthy or cheesy and heavy as you want.

If you've never made one, why wait? Just go for it, and surprise yourself.

Salmon-Broccoli-Courgette Quiche

I love the combination of salmon and green veggies, so this is one of my all-time favorite recipes.

Even though I'm a great herbs and spices enthusiast, I like to keep this quiche simple - just salt and pepper - to really bring out the fish and veggie tastes.

Time Needed

  • Prep: 30 min
  • Oven: 30 min

Tools Needed

  • Baking tin (flan type)
  • Oven
  • Sheet of baking paper (optional)
  • A Few cups of dry beans or rice (optional)
  • Something sharp and pointy and knife-like to cut the veggies

Ingredients

  • Ready-to-use quiche pastry
  • Salmon fillets: 250-350 gr (depends on your taste)
  • Broccoli: 250 gr
  • Courgette: 150 gr
  • Leek: 100gr (optional)
  • Eggs: 2
  • Cream (whichever kind you like - I use low-fat): 200 ml
  • Salt, freshly ground pepper
  • A little bit of butter or oil to grease the baking tin

Steps

If you're using ingredients from the freezer, ensure everything's properly thawed.

  • Keep the pastry in the fridge
  • Cut up the broccoli and the fish in small cubes, 2-4 cm across. (The broccoli bits in the picture were actually a bit too big, hence the 2-4 cm recommendation)
  • Cut the courgette in thin slices - as thin as you can. try to keep it at around 3 mm max.
  • Cut up the leek as finely as you can.
  • Break the 2 eggs and gently mix them together in a cup with the cream.

That's all the ingredients prep done. Now we need to prep the pastry - I just use store-bought quiche pastry, sold in almost every supermarket rolled up as a single unit.

As we're going to be adding wet filling on top of the pastry, you should pre-bake your pastry to stop it from getting too soggy, and to ensure it gets fully baked.

Pre-baking pastry without filling is called Blind Baking. The idea is simple: put the pastry in the tin, but a baking sheet on top to stop it from drying out and baking too much too quickly, and put something on top of the baking paper to keep it in place - usually special ceramic beads or a few cups of dried beans, dried rice, etc.

  • Put the pastry in the tin, ensuring you have 2-3 cm of 'pastry-wall' (the rising edges of the tin)
  • Put a sheet of baking paper on top of the pastry and cover with a few cups of dried beans or ceramic beads
  • Pre-heat the oven at 140°C
  • Blind-bake the pastry for about 10 minutes

If you don't have baking paper or beads, or you can't be bothered, you can skip the pastry pre-baking. If you do, add about 10-15 minutes of overall baking time to the next steps, and hope for the best.

  • Take out the tin, remove the paper and dried beans/beads
  • Change the oven temp to 180°C
  • Add (some of) the courgette on top of the pastry in a single layer
  • Add the salmon, broccoli and leek on top of that, all mixed together or in layers - as you wish
  • After each layer of ingredients you add, sprinkle a pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper - to taste
  • Pour the cream/egg mixture over the veggies and fish. Don't worry if it's very liquid - it will set.
  • If you have any courgette left, add them as top top-most layer of the quiche. They'll shrivel up and may burn a bit, but I Iike the effect and taste.
  • When the over has reached 180°C, put the tin back in for about 30 minutes When the top of the quiche is a nice golden brown, after roughly 30 minutes, take out the quiche.

All done. Serve hot or let cool, put in fridge and serve chilled.

Delicious and altogether quite straightforward. If you like the result, do experiment with other base ingredients, add ricotta to the cream/egg mix, add some cheese, ... do whatever you want :)