"Don't put peas in a quiche. They may go nicely with a ham or crab filling, but they make the custard fall apart. Not to mention the fact that a spotty quiche looks a bit silly." Nigel Slater
I had no blog ideas so I decided to check out the myriad of little yellow post-its in Nigel's Tender Volume 1 book, and came across the above quote. It struck a chord with me because I am planning on a vaguely curried chicken, pea and carrot quiche for dinner. I've made similar quiches before with leftover tandoori chicken (well my tandoori chicken, not the real thing), and it has always been a surprisingly tasty thing even though, of course, it is not at all classic quiche-like.
Now I guess I'm with Nigel in a sense if you end up with something like the above - a recipe from Cookidoo, which looks to be a very plain quiche. But only in the sense that it does, I suppose, look a bit silly. Although it might please a child - which is a very valuable thing if you can't get your children to eat peas. Nevertheless unless you are a professional food business or hosting some kind of foodie event, it probably doesn't really matter what the food looks like. Or does it?
Maybe if the food in front of you looks unappetising at one end of the spectrum and downright repulsive at the other, then it might be difficult for your intended audience to try it. If they absolutely have to eat it, then they might be surprised by a delicious taste and therefore ignore the looks. And of course if you are starving I'm sure you would eat anything. But if it just looks a bit silly - I suppose like the version above then I don't think anyone is fussed.
Besides there are ways to either make a virtue of the spottiness or to hide it.
I trawled the net, but even more superficially than usual I confess - looking for examples, and taking either from the first to appear or those that leapt out at me.
There are two fundamental ways of hiding your peas, the first being to just purée them. I offer two examples of this the first of which is Green pea and feta cheese quiche with avocado pastry from Piper Cooks. That combination of peas, feta and mnt, is very common although avocado pastry is somewhat intriguing. However, as you can see, no actual pea in sight, not even in the decorative topping. The second is Sainsbury's Sarah Akurst who has Pea, ham and mint quiche - another common combination - as is salmon.
The other way of hiding your peas is to hide them amongst a whole lot of other green stuff - usually spinach but it could be something else. This one Spring vege crustless quiche/New World (NZ) has two cups of peas hiding in plain sight there. You can just see the odd pea, but they don't stand out and they don't look spotty.
Or you can make a virtue of the fact that this is a pea quiche and go overboard - literally, as in this creation from Kitchen Stories - Spring vegetable quiche with potatoes and peas. I didn't actually look at this recipe in detail because it was hidden behind a Cookie authorisation which looked a bit suss to me, but it looks as if the author has taken the first approach for the body of the quiche - puréeing the peas, but then covered the top with them for serving. Which is, at least, different.
Different as well, and in the category of making a virtue of the appearance of peas, is this Triple-cream and leek mini quiche with pea salad from Ricardo Cuisine. It's really not relevant I suppose because the peas are not actually in the quiche. They are just arranged decoratively on top. And indeed my very first example did much the same with decoration. Nevertheless the peas are a feature of the whole dish. Really the main feature in fact, and you certainly wouldn't get away from eating peas. Whether it counts is a moot point.
And of course, there are many pea quiches, whether pure pea, or combined with something else which are spotty to a lesser or greater degree.
However, Nigel has another criticism. "They make the custard fall apart." I'm not entirely sure what he means by this. Does he mean that the peas remain so solidly pea like that your smooth quiche custard is broken apart by them - little pea shaped holes in the silky smoothness you are striving for? Or does he mean that there is some kind of chemical reaction caused by the peas that makes the custard split and/or curdle?
The custard in this Pea and brie quiche from Taste is pretty solid looking, and certainly not broken apart when sliced. However, I would guess that as you break into it, the peas may indeed fall from their little holey homes. I also suppose that if your custard was not quite as solid, then the peas, would indeed fall out of their holes as you ate.
I confess that the custard in my quiches is not as solid, or as silky looking as the above. Mine looks rather more like this example - MInted pea and pancetta quiche from Egg Info. I don't know whether it's a fundamental flaw in my custard making or the fact that my quiches are often loaded - like this one, with other stuff. Tonight's curried chicken and pea one, for example will also include leeks and grated carrots, and maybe some feta too, so I suspect the overall texture will be grainy rather than smooth; creamy rather than solid.
Now admittedly Nigel Slater makes his living from food, so he has a greater need for perfection - at least when on show - than do I. So I tried to find a picture of one of his quiches - well one where you could glimpse the interior, and the only one I found was this Salmon and watercress tart on the BBC Food website - and I have to say I am relieved to see that the texture is much like my own.
Perfection, and slightly pompous remarks about spotty quiches are however a little bit unlike Nigel in some ways, because there is no doubt that the vast majority of his recipes are incredibly simple and incredibly tasty as well. And you would have to think his mission is to encourage - after all his very first book Real Fast Food, was all about recipes that were barely recipes. But he's a bit middle-class isn't he?
Unlike Jamie - a trained chef, which is something you tend to forget - who is definitely trying to connect with the working class 'ordinary' housewives - in a matey kind of way, many would say overly matey. This is his Asparagus quiche - whose texture also resembles mine. This recipe is pretty simple, and he does indeed have many recipes that are - increasingly so - but he also has some that are fairly complicated.
However both wer reassuringly similar to my efforts. Neither of them had a recipe for a pea quiche however.
I was also relieved when I decided to look for an 'utimate' quiche recipe and found this Tarte aux poireaux from Alain Ducasse (recipe in French I'm afraid), I was also somewhat relieved as his creamy filling didn't even look really set. I would have been apologising for undercooking. Perhaps I shouldn't, and I've got it all wrong all along.
My conclusion is that it was the spottiness of a pea quiche that offended Nigel - and I don't really think that matters in the context of home cooking. Although I will confess that my initial pictorial example, was indeed a bit offputting. Sort of anaemic - and the peas looked so large.
I'll try to remember to take a photo of tonight's effort, just because I should really.
YEARS GONE BY
January 15
2023 - Grilled fish - Bali style
2021 - Inventing dinner - a journey
2018 - Burnt? - no detoxifying charcoal - I think I posted this one by mistake recently
2017 - Sunshine
A quiche for everyone.. being prepared as I type. Plannned meal time 6pm, as going out to party with onee of our neighbours at 7pm. Ahe the good life! 😉