How To Make A Sausage Quiche

I am going to show you how to make a sausage quiche. Quiche being a French dish. I am going to be using a Toulouse sausage available in most supermarkets.

The amount of sausage that you put into this is entirely up to you. But what you have got to remember its going to contribute a very much to the flavour of the quiche. Its got garlic, red wine, herbs and pork.

What I have done is break these into marble sized pieces and I have sealed them in a frying pan on the stove, just to get them firmed up. Once it is into the mold, as you can see it has been partially baked, baked in blind. This is done by lining it with kitchen paper.

Then you can use rice, beans or these ceramic balls. This keeps the sides of the quiche nice and stiff. So we are going to construct now the custard and the garnish.

I am going to use sweated onion, blanched bacon. Now what do I mean by blanched bacon? This is bacon, pancetta you can use, cut into small pieces, covered with cold water and rapidly brought to a boil. What this does is to wash the bacon, get rid of any unnecessary salts on the outside.

It gives you a much more superior flavour in the finished dish. I am going to make the custard using 4 eggs, an egg yolk, 500ml of milk and some double cream just to finish it. One egg yolk.

The egg yolk enriches this. It is a very, very rich dish all together. Lightly break the eggs, you don't want to over whip them.

You don't want them to soufflé. By over whisking you are going to introduce air and give it an unnecessary volume of air inside the custard. I am adding the milk to the egg and the milk, not over mixing it.

Now this is blanched bacon. I have already explained that this is not salty because I have washed by blanching it with cold water and then running it under a cold water tap and draining all the water off. You can either add this as a volume to the custard.

It still lacks a certain flavour so I am going to give it some sweated onion. This is one medium sized onion finely chopped and cooked down in butter. Its sweet.

If you use raw onion it would be entirely unsuitable, you need to get the acidity out of the onion to give it the flavour I want. This is up to you entirely, the amount that you use. I am also going to take some Parmesan cheese and add that into the mixture, not on the top but into it.

And I am going to add a volume of chopped parsley to give it some colour. I washed the parsley after chopping it because I don't want it to over-green the custard. I am going to add some milled pepper.

I am not going to add any salt because I already have bacon and the Parmesan cheese which is going to give it all of the necessary salt that I want. Now, because these are largish I am going to put these into the bottom of the flan ring. You see that they are quite firm but I have hardly cooked them at all.

I have allowed them to cool because you don't want to be putting a hot, sealed piece of meat with the custard. It might start to cook it slightly and that is not what we want. I don't want too much of this.

The influence of the Toulouse sausage is strong enough. I am going to try to separate these out. And this is where the delicate bit starts.

Now you have to get this into the oven to bake it I would say for at least 30 minutes to allow the quiche to set. Finally now just to make it horribly rich I am going to put some double cream into it. Lift it on to a shelf and if you can, pull the shelf out.

Now, I am going to just pour this gently all around and top with a garnish. Right to the brim. Now very carefully I am going to slide the shelf in.

You have already got a little bit of colour on this quiche crust. What you can do, is once it starts to bake and get hot, you don't want the pastry to burn. I am going to lay a piece of greaseproof paper over it at that point to stop it singing the top of the pastry.

It has taken about 45 minutes