proper ham, cheese and onion quiche

We’re all itching for the proper ham, cheese and onion quiche, but honestly, like I’m going to let that happen without some flimflam first.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I might have changed his wording a little, but damn it, this is my blog not his. He’s absolutely right, though. I’ll give you an example – I have many, many cake and cooking tins from the halcyon days way back when when I used to bake all the time and delight my friends and co-workers with biscuits, cakes and goodies. Now all they get is barely disguised contempt and secretive farts into my office chair. One of these tins is a fancy Lakeland square tin with one of those bottoms that you push up (same as Paul) to release the cake. Great idea. Has it ever worked? Has it balls.

Does that stop me trying it? Of course not. No, every time a recipe requires something square, out it comes. I spend a few minutes looking owlishly at it, demanding that it doesn’t leak, then proceed with the recipe. This time it was for a fancy quiche – lots of cheese, egg whites, decent ham. I spent an age cutting up the onion, sweating them down, making everything just right. Popped the mixture into this non-leak square tin, placed the tin in the oven, turned my back for one moment to set Just a Minute away on the iPad and turned around to see all the beaten egg dripping out of the oven. My kitchen floor looked like the gusset of a £5 prostitute’s knickers. It would have been more effective had I left the removable bottom off.

Well I was furious. I’d given this fucking tin enough chances. Yes, I could line it, but it was sold to me on the basis I didn’t need to line the fucker and I’m not going to be dictated to by Lakeland. I salvaged the contents of the quiche into a Pyrex dish, covered it with egg-white and took the scalding hot square tin outside, where I set about it with a sledgehammer. Do I feel better? Yes, I do, and I’m all set if I ever want to make a rhombus-shaped christmas cake.

Anyway, that’s the only wrinkle in an otherwise lovely, quiet weekend. You know we aren’t ones for doing anything that requires more movement than entirely necessary, and that was certainly the case on Saturday, when we literally moved from the bed to the settee and back to the bed. We make no apologies, we have busy working weeks. But last night Paul turned to me and said, through a fine mist of pastry crumbs and spittle, that I was to wake him up early in the morning and not let him sleep in late. Pffft. Let me explain how weekend mornings work in our house.

I wake up about 8.30am, always have. I’m not one for sleeping all day – once my eyes open, I’m awake and that’s the end of it, thank you. Knowing he is tired, I’ll generally stay in bed until half nine so Paul has something to lie against and act as ballast to stop him tipping onto his front and drowning in his chin-fat. I’m like one of those tyres you see strapped onto the side of piers for the ferry to rub against. He’ll murmur incoherent nonsense in my ear, put a clammy hand around my belly and fart those indescribably foul morning farts in my general direction all the while. I don’t know what his body does to food overnight but I swear you could power a small city on the strength of his morning flatus. He chuckles away to himself whilst he lets them out, which I do find endearing as I’m clawing at my throat trying to find oxygen.

At around half nine, I get bored with looking at Reddit, not masturbating and spending our money and decide to wake Paul up. This is a complicated process. First I’ll start by cuddling in so he gets far too hot, but then he just moves away or lets out a warning fart, making me retreat. The next step is to start shaking the bed by jiggling on the spot, but that does nothing other than occasionally illicit a cry from him to ‘STOP WANKING’. Plus, our bed is so ridiculously oversized that by the time the tremors eventually hit him, it’s usually nighttime again.

advert - summer-01

With the shaking of the bed bearing no fruit, I turn to shaking him directly, starting off with the buttocks, moving up to the stomach and then, if that doesn’t work, his shoulders. This normally does the trick and after he’s wiped the sleep from his eyes and tried his luck with Little Paul (not happening, matey, not without a shower and caustic acid) he reassures me that he’s going to get out of bed as soon as he’s ‘done his stretches’ and could I make him a coffee? I’m happy with this – I’ll mince, invariably stark-bollock-naked, into the kitchen, make him a coffee and return only to find him fast asleep and pulling that face that reminds me awfully of what I imagine his mother looks like when she hasn’t had the formaldehyde in her tank topped up. At this point I generally take a huff and set about cleaning the kitchen instead, which really only punishes me instead of him. At 11 I’ll go in, flap the duvet, wake him up and tell him to get up. At 11.30 I normally go in and take the duvet away altogether, which only results in him sleep-farting more in an effort to heat the room.

Noon means the nuclear option. I’ve touched on this before, but we’ve got speakers in each room of the house that can be controlled centrally via the iPad. These ones, if you please. They’re useful for cleaning – a bit of Dolly in the bathroom, some Radio 4 in the kitchen. Great stuff. At noon, I choose the worst song I can possibly find, turn the volume up to 100 so the bass shakes your fillings out, sneak in and muffle it a little with a towel so I don’t deafen the fucker, then on goes something genuinely frightening: We Want The Same Thing by Belinda Carlisle has a very loud intro, for example. There’s been Minnie Riperton singing Loving You, too, but that starts out slowly. This morning was Magic Dance from Labyrinth, which worked, but only because he was laughing so much.

I called him Hoggle, he called me DCI Vera Stanhope. Paul was awake and all was right with the world again.

Seriously though, what does fuck me off just a smidge (if you’re reading this, my little clartyarse) is that he’ll invariably turn to me fifteen minutes after getting up and say ‘you really need to start waking me up earlier’. How we both laugh as I imagine waking him up with petrol and matches.

Anyway, come, let’s get to the quiche. I really miss quiche when I’m dieting, not least because the Slimming World equivalents are usually full of cottage cheese and empty in taste. It’s the food equivalent of eating a bath sponge, only at least with a sponge you get the excitement of wondering whether you’ll choke to death to alleviate the crashing boredom. I’ve seen quiches made with Pasta and Sauces and I think, all the very best to you, but that’s not really for me. No, I need cheese, eggs, chest pains and flavour. So, here we are.

One compromise I’ve had to make is the pastry. There’s no way that you can bring pastry in under Slimming World’s radar, I’m sorry. Decent pastry is butter and flour combined, there’s not much that can be done without your consultant (hey consultants, big fan!) having a conniption fit and sobbing into her fan of stickers. However, salvation lies in the form of sweet potatoes. Yes, that’s right.

proper ham, cheese and onion quiche

to make a proper ham, cheese and onion quiche, you’ll need:

Seriously, look at the top of that. This makes enough for six large portions served with salad.

proper ham, cheese and onion quiche

to make a proper ham, cheese and onion quiche, you’ll need:

  • one large sweet potato
  • a decent, non-stick pyrex dish that’ll not spill your dinner everywhere
  • three thick slices of ham – we got ours chopped at the deli counter, you want it about a cm thick (or use bog standard stuff if you want)
  • two large red onions
  • 2 large eggs
  • 125ml of 1% milk (from a HEA allowance, although 100ml is only two syns, so if you want, divide by six for less than half a syn per portion)
  • the whites from four more eggs
  • whatever cheese you want – I used 140g of Danish blue cheese – 35g is a HEA
  • pinch of mustard
  • bit of salt
  • lots of black pepper

to make a proper ham, cheese and onion quiche, you should:

  • slice your sweet potato – you want thickish slices and to save time and make this easier, use a mandolin – the one we use is currently reduced on Amazon, so it is
  • take your pyrex dish, give it a few squirts of spray oil and then layer the sweet potato on top of each other, covering the bottom and a little of the sides – don’t worry about the fact it doesn’t look uniform, that’s fine
  • put that into a preheated oven at 190 degrees for 25 minutes or so
  • whilst that’s cooking, cut up your onion nice and fine and sweat it off in a pan – I added a pinch of fresh thyme because I am one classy fucker
  • cut up the ham into nice cubes and crumble your cheese up
  • in a jug mix the egg whites, two large eggs, 125ml of 1% milk, pinch of mustard powder, salt and pepper
  • once your sweet potatoes are done, take them out of the oven, push them around a bit to make sure there are no major holes in the bottom of the dish
  • layer on the onion, the cubed ham, the cheese and then the egg mixture
  • cook in the oven for around 30 minutes on 200 degrees – make sure it doesn’t burn, but also, it’ll be a wee bit wobbly when it comes out, leave to cool and it’ll firm up nicely
  • I mean, do use your common sense though – if it looks like you could pour it on your cereal, cook it a bit longer
  • how easy was that?

You can swap out the cheese but don’t be adding mushrooms or tomatoes, they add liquid. I think this should be freezable, but not sure. Portion it up for lunches or, more realistically, eat the whole lot and spend the rest of the night on the toilet clutching your poor eggbound belly.

Looking for more ideas with pork or even taster nights (which you could take this quiche too, if you were feeling generous?) – click the buttons below! You could make this veggie too, so I’m including that link.

porksmalltastersmallvegetariansmall

Over and out!

J

Comments

comments

47 thoughts on “proper ham, cheese and onion quiche

      • Delicious just made this quiche and i love it. I made with normal potato though because hubby doesn’t like sweet potato. It is the best.

      • This recipe popped up on my newsfeed yesterday so after my nightshift last night I’ve just popped one in the oven for tea, I halved the recipe as it’s only for me. Looks delicious, may not make it until teatime 🙂

  1. Love this! Will definitely be giving it a go and your blog is a scream 🙂 my husband looks on at me like I’ve lost the plot many a time as I sit there tittering away to myself!

  2. Love this! Made this as a breakfast option and it tastes great. It was a little ‘wet’ at first but I sliced it into portions and put a bit of kitchen roll in the bottom of the Tupperware box which has worked a treat. Lovely cold or hot.

    • Nowt worse than when it gets a little wet! Glad you liked it, I’ll remember the tip about the kitchen roll, not that ours lasts long enough to make it that far…

  3. Oh lads this quiche is quite honestly better than shop bought !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t know about freezing it, we never gave it a chance to cool. Thanks for all your hard work , love ya love ya love ya. x x x x

  4. OMG this sounds soooo good. Thanks guys and now I’ve finished choking on my coffee as I’ve laughed so much, I’m off to buy some sweet potatoes ! xxx

  5. Made this and it was gone as soon as it could be shoved into our greedy mouths without having to go to A&E with scalded food pipes. I feel your pain about the cake tins I relented and lined mine. Thank you X

      • I did exactly the same as you, put it in the tin with the loose bottom, eggs all over the work top and kitchen floor, didn’t realise that so few eggs could make such a mess, didn’t even get it to the oven, did mine in a cooking dish in the end up, but I tried it without the base and it was just eggs and bacon quiche, I’ve bought some low fat grated cheese so I will do the cheese and onion with the sweet potato bottom.

  6. OMG this quiche is amazing! I made it last weekend and we were all blown away by how ‘quiche-like’ and fabulously tasty it was, we didn’t even miss the pastry. Very positive comments all round, and from my family (aka the worlds harshest critics) that’s saying something! Thanks a million guys xxx

  7. Thanks guy’s just put this in the oven.can,t wait for tea .can you please tell me what size dish did you use .thanks x

  8. You’ve got some amazing skills with a keyboard! I’ll work around to the sweet potato thing…little scary… but it has the word potato in it so it MUST be delicious…

  9. Can I just start by saying that I never EVER comment on blogs (I usually get distracted/bored/asleep) but I felt like I had to on yours. Firstly, you’re super funny and I find that charming. Secondly, the recipe worked so well! The sweet potato complemented the bacon beautifully (oh I forgot to say I subbed leeks for onions and bacon for ham…I didn’t have any good ham in and like hell am I going out again once I’m home) and it added another dimension to an already delicious combination of ingredients. Lastly, (I don’t really have anything else to say but I’d committed to this format of writing and it didn’t feel like I could finish on a ‘secondly’) you’re great.

  10. Not cooked for over a week as been feeling like stir fried shit! Have just whipped this up and popped in oven, as feeling the need for proper food ( shant bother with salad tho, will poss have with chips) LETS HOPE I CAN TASTE IT.
    Love all your recipes so far, so fingers crossed xx

  11. Hilarious! My husband is also a Paul and I swear to god I could’ve written this about him! He also does that annoying thing where he gets up late takes ages getting ready (so we’ve been sat in our coats waiting for a million years) comes downstairs and says “come on what you waiting for we’re going to be late”! Also can’t wait to try this recipe!!

  12. Tried this recipe tonight and all I can say is WOW its amazing even my whole family liked it will only be making this quiche from now on its so lovely x

  13. Made this yesterday and apart from nearly taking the top of my finger off using a spiraliser instead of a mandolin, and after putting the dish in the oven then realising i had not added the milk to the egg mixture ( i know there is always one) and added it after, it turned out fantastic and look forward to remaking it without the mistakes.

  14. Absolutely delicious!! Made it this evening for my mum and hard to please nephew (He ate 2 slices!) A firm favourite now. Off to look at your other recipes to find my next one to try!

    • When I get round to making this I’m going to try lining mini muffin holes (silicone so doesn’t stick) with that thin cut, damp and flaccid ham, pop an egg yolk in the middle, top with a little bit of grated cheese and sprinkle with some sort of salty garlicy seasoning. Think that would make a tasty little syn free amuse-bouche – pinch the cheese from your HE ration. Alternatively, throw them in with ‘fried’ eggs and pretend you got double or triple yolkers! Sorry puss x

  15. Just made the French onion risotto (and yes the mandolin is fantastic) have lots of thyme left over and sweet potatoes currently ageing nicely in the cupboard so am going to have a go at this tomorrow – love your blog

    • You’re doing what I wish I could do – using all the odds and sods in the fridge to make more delicious food! Good work – and glad you like the mandolin. Tell me, how many fingertips have you lost?

  16. Tried this recipe and it was lush just like a real quiche a bit wet at the bottom so stuck it back in the oven for 5 more minutes, thank you !!!!

  17. Making this lovely quiche ready for lunches this week! It’s a staple in this house. When I make it, husband is so happy, I get laid! Hurrah!
    Love you guys. X

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.