With the King’s Coronation on May 6th just days away, your thoughts might be turning to what to make for your street party or the Coronation Big Lunch on May 7th. If so, I’d urge you to have a go at royal chef Mark Flanaghan’s Coronation Quiche which is the official recipe to mark the celebrations and features crisp pastry, spinach, broad beans, tarragon and cheddar cheese. I made it last week and I have to say that it’s one of the most delicious tarts I’ve ever tasted and is definitely a show-stopper!
However, some press reports were distinctly down-beat, accusing the quiche of being bland, with watery spinach and hard-to-find ingredients – all accusations that can be avoided if you follow my top tips!
Making a good quiche from scratch is quite an operation, but the great thing about this recipe is that you can make all the elements several days in advance, bringing it all together on the day for the final bake. You can make the pastry, line the tart tin, blind bake the pastry case, prepare the vegetables and mix the custard filling 3-4 days in advance so with a bit of planning you can spread the work and make it a far less onerous task.
The original recipe calls for a 20cm deep tart ring, but I’ve tweaked it to make a larger, 23cm quiche using a standard fluted tart tin, which will make 8 generous portions and up to 12-16 smaller slices. I used my usual (and may I say failsafe) pastry recipe which omits the lard and I have increased the ingredients to fit the larger size tin. Finally, I stuck with my usual custard formula of 4 eggs to 400ml of cream (I used half single and half double cream)
Click here for the Coronation Quiche recipe
Here are our top tips for making a perfect Coronation Quiche:
THE PASTRY:
Great shortcrust pastry should be crisp and crumbly in texture. This is achieved by using a high solid fat to flour ratio, by adding the minimum amount of liquid to bind the ingredients together, and by handling the pastry dough as little as possible. (You want to keep your pastry “short” by preventing the formation of gluten. Gluten is created when water is mixed with flour, and forms into long chains or threads, and the stretchy gluten is further developed when the dough is manipulated – think kneading bread dough).
So the key to a good, tender and crumbly “short” pastry is minimal liquid and minimal handling which is very easy using a food processor. However, it is important to have enough liquid to make your pastry pliable and easy to handle. A dry pastry will be difficult to roll out and will likely crack when cooked. Thankfully, it’s easy to check you’ve got the right consistency. Pulse the butter and flour together until it resembles fine breadcrumbs, then add your liquid and pulse until it resembles small pebbles. Take a little of this mixture and press together – if it is smooth and pliable, continue pulsing until it forms a dough. If it feels a little dry, add a little more water, ½ a teaspoon at a time until you’ve got it right.
I find that if I’ve got the pastry just right, I can roll it out straight away and line my tart tin, without needing to rest it in the fridge first. I also trim the over-hanging pastry at this stage by gently rolling a rolling pin over the rim of the tart tin which will cut the excess pastry off and leave you with a neat edge. Pricking the base of the pastry all over with a fork at this stage which will prevent it ballooning up when cooked. If you skip resting the pastry before rolling it, it is essential to chill the lined tart tin for at least a couple of hours or even overnight before blind baking it.
Don’t throw the pastry off cuts away! If your pastry does crack when you blind bake it, you can use the left-over pastry to do a patch up job.
Blind Baking:
There are 2 stages to blind baking your pastry case and it is essential that pastry is well chilled, otherwise the butter will melt before the structure is set and the pastry shell will collapse.
First, you need to line the pastry with baking parchment and fill with baking beans (or uncooked rice, beans, lentils, sugar, or even old coins) and cook for 15-20 minutes. This will cook and set the sides of the tart case and ensure it maintains its shape.
Next, you need to remove the baking beans and bake the tart for a further 10 minutes which will cook the base of the tart and ensure no soggy bottom! (For added security, brush the left-over egg white over the base of the pastry and cook for a further 5 minutes to seal it). If you have any cracks in the cooked pastry, carefully press bits of your left-over uncooked pastry to cover them up – no need to cook again as the raw pastry will cook when you bake the filled quiche.
THE FILLING:
Spinach:
An easy way to cook the spinach (if ready washed) is to pierce the bag a few times and zap it in the microwave. Cook it on high for a minute, check for doneness and continue to cook for another minute until done – mine took about 3 minutes. Alternatively, you can empty the spinach into a colander and pour over a kettle of boiling water.
You need to dry your spinach really, really well! Once it’s cooked, cool it a little then squeeze it with your hands to get rid of as much water as you can. Once you’ve done this, put it in a clean t-towel or J-cloth and squeeze again until you can’t get any more liquid out of it. You’ll be left with a fraction of the volume of the uncooked spinach and it will form a fairly solid lump. Put your lump on a board and chop roughly. (You can do this a couple of days in advance).
Broad Beans:
Broad beans are just coming into season, but even if you can find fresh, I’d advise using frozen beans which are smaller and sweeter. Whatever you use, you’ll need to remove the silver-grey casing on the beans which can be tough and bitter – this is a little time-consuming so worth doing in advance. To cook the beans, simply place them in a bowl and cover in freshly boiled water to defrost. Leave for a few minutes, then drain and refresh under cold water.
To remove the skins, pinch the between your fingers until the bright green kernal pops out. I reckon the skins account for about 25% of the total weight of the bean, so you’d need about 100g of frozen beans to achieve 75g once skinned. (You can do this a couple of days in advance).
Cheddar Cheese:
I’d advise using the strongest cheese you can get your hands on and have suggested extra mature cheddar. You can grate the cheese any way you want, but a quick and easy way is to cut it into cubes and whizz in a food processor until it forms a crumb-like texture – but be careful not to take it too far as it will clump if over-processed. (You can do this a couple of days in advance).
The Filling:
It’s essential to season any egg-based recipe such as a quiche or soufflé really well. This is because as the eggs rise and expand, the flavour will be diluted. So you need to be pretty heavy-handed with the salt – your uncooked custard should taste distinctly salted before you cook it, otherwise the finished product risks being bland.
SUBSTITUTIONS:
If you can’t find broad beans, you can use edamame beans which is the substitution suggested in the original recipe. However, I think frozen peas or petits pois would also work well and a mix of peas and edamame would be delicious.
If fresh tarragon is nowhere to be found, use 1 tsp of dried tarragon instead. Failing that, a mix of chopped dill and flat leaf parsley would taste great too.
You can use frozen leaf spinach instead of fresh, in which case, defrost it and squeeze out the water as per the instructions above.