La quiche Lorraine

This is a recipe for a real quiche Lorraine. It doesn’t have cheese. Keep the cheese to do other quiches or pies. The foundation of the real quiche Lorraine is what is called a migaine, a mixture of eggs and cream.

Since there are so few ingredients, their quality is important: prefer non-smoked lardons, real full-fat crème fraiche (full-fat double cream) for maximal authenticity.

The choice of pastry is important. Traditionally, a pâte brisée (shortcrust pastry) is used. This is very easy to make at home. Something to try is to use a pâte feuilletée instead (puff pastry). This is much harder to make at home, but possible. Buying a pre-rolled pastry of good quality is a perfectly acceptable route.

Ingredients

Serves 6 (but more realistically 4); about 45min total, 10min active time

• pâte brisee or pâte feuilletée (shortcrust pastry or puff pastry), about 200 to 300g
• crème fraiche épaisse entière (full fat double-cream), 400g
• egg yolks, 3
• whole eggs, 3
• lardons non-smoked, 150g (non-smoked bacon cut in lardons)
• pepper of your choice, to taste
• nutmeg, to taste

Recipe

Set the oven to pre-heat at 200°c.

Cook the lardons in a pan until really golden but not burnt. Don’t add any fat there.

In a bowl, whisk the cream, the egg yolks and eggs, plus the spices. Don’t add salt (the lardons are salty enough usually). The whisking step is critical. Whisk at least 5 real minutes (this is supposed to be long and annoying), or you can of course use a kitchen mixer or the like with a whisking attachment. Near the end of the whisking process, add the lardons and whisk again.

Unroll the pastry in a pie dish (possibly still on its paper, butter the dish generously if not using paper, and don’t forget to prick the pastry if using puff pastry). Push with your fingers all around the crust area so that it’s sticking to the side of the dish and stays upright. Don’t skip this step, as the moisture of the migaine has a tendency to make the pastry fold back inward while in the oven. This cannot really be fixed afterwards and makes for a messy crust, ruining what is arguably the best part of the quiche.

Pour the migaine in the dish. At this stage, you might want to re-distribute the lardons so that they spread evenly in the egg & cream mixture. It’s ideal to not wait to much during those steps. Whisking the migaine allows incorporating air bubbles in the filling, which lowers the density of the quiche and is key to the success of this recipe.

Lower the oven temperature to 180°C, and place the quiche low in the oven, for about 35 minutes. If everything goes right, the migaine should raise above the level of the pastry near the end of the cooking time. Pay attention to the coloration pattern visible at the top of the filling; depending on how uniformly your oven heats, you may have to rotate the quiche to make the coloration even. Try to keep the oven door open for as little as possible while doing so.

Once cooked, rush it out of the oven, slice in 6 (but more realistically 4), and eat while it’s still really hot. It will be all puffy for a few minutes, and then fall again, this is normal.

On the side, a simple green salad is perfect. A powerful olive oil/balsamic vinaigrette with finely chopped dill works well with this dish.

Quiches keep wonderfully in the fridge for a few days, and are excellent cold the next day, but can also be re-heated.

Bonus

Anne-Sophie Pic (8 Michelin stars) says that a nice twist is to add a generous table spoon – about 20g – of Savora to the migaine. Of course, she is right.