Tulip & Lily: Spring Food: Asparagus Quiche with Tomatoes and Mozzarella

Hello everybody,

I hope you enjoy such a lovely Sunday as I do! The sun is shining beautifully in Vienna and I've spent most of the day reading. I finished Kristopher Jansma's wonderful book "The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards" today and can really recommend it, if anyone is in search of a good read. :)
Of course beautiful spring days also deserve delicious spring food! That's why I'll share a recipe for a very tasty asparagus quiche with tomatoes and mozzarella today. Yummy!

What you'll need...

...for the dough

100g butter
250g flour
1 egg
a pinch of salt
a little water

...for the filling

ca. 350g green asparagus
3 tomatoes
125g mozzarella
a handful of fresh basil
2 eggs
50g cream
125 ml milk
1 tablespoon crème fraîche
50g grated parmesan
salt
pepper
nutmeg

How it works

For the dough combine the flour with the butter and rub between your fingers until the mixture becomes crumbly. Then add the salt, the egg and the water and knead the mixture into a ball of short pastry. Put the dough into the fridge and let it rest for an hour.

In the meantime wash the asparagus and cut it into 2 to 3 cm long pieces. Blanch them for about 3 minutes. Cut the tomatoes crosswise, blanch them in boiling water for one minute and peel them. Then cut them into cubes. Do the same with the mozzarella and cut the basil into small pieces.

Stir the eggs with the cream, the milk, the crème fraîche and the parmesan and flavour with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Preheat the oven to 170° C. Roll the pastry and line the baking pan with it (as I don't have an actual quiche dish I used a regular baking dish and that worked just as well). Prick several times with a fork and bake the dough for 10 minutes.
Take out the dough and fill it with the asparagus, the tomatoes, the mozzarella and the basil. Pour the egg-milk-cream-mixture over the vegetables.

Put some aluminium foil on the baking dish and bake the quiche for 30 minutes. Then remove the foil and continue to bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until the quiche becomes golden brown. Take out the quiche and let it cool down for 5 minutes. Enjoy!! :)