Quiche Lorraine

Ingredients

• 200g plain flour
• 100g cold unsalted butter, diced
• 1 egg yolk, for the pastry
• 0.5 tsp fine salt
• 2-3 tbsp ice-cold water
• 250g smoked lardons or thick-cut streaky bacon
• 3 whole eggs plus 2 egg yolks
• 300ml double cream
• 100ml whole milk
• A generous grating of nutmeg
• White pepper and a little salt

Before you cook

• Rub the cold diced butter into the flour and salt with your fingertips until it looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
• Stir in the egg yolk and just enough ice water to bring the dough together in a ball, handling it as little as possible.
• Flatten the dough into a disc, wrap it, and chill it for thirty minutes.
• Cut the bacon into short batons about one centimetre wide.

Steps

1. Heat the oven to 190C fan and put a baking sheet in to heat with it.
2. Roll the chilled pastry out to three millimetres thick and line a twenty-three centimetre tart tin, leaving the excess hanging over the rim.
3. Press the pastry into the corners with a small ball of offcut dough rather than your fingertip.
4. Prick the base all over and chill the lined tin for twenty minutes.
5. Line the pastry with baking paper and fill it to the brim with baking beans.
6. Set the tin on the hot baking sheet and bake for twenty minutes.
7. Lift out the paper and beans and return the case to the oven for eight minutes until the base is dry and sandy.
8. Trim the overhanging pastry off flush with the rim using a small serrated knife.
9. Turn the oven down to 160C fan.
10. Fry the lardons in a dry pan over medium heat for six minutes until the fat has run and the edges are golden.
11. Drain the lardons on kitchen paper.
12. Whisk the eggs, extra yolks, cream and milk together with the nutmeg, white pepper and a small pinch of salt.
13. Scatter the lardons evenly over the base of the pastry case.
14. Set the tart tin on its baking sheet on the oven shelf and pour the custard in there, filling it right to the top.
15. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes, until the custard is set at the edge and still trembles at the centre.
16. Cool the quiche in its tin for at least twenty minutes so the custard firms up.
17. Serve it just warm, never straight from the oven and never fridge-cold.