Serves 4-6 / Difficulty – Medium / Prep 30 minutes and 30 minutes cooking time.
This is often requested dish, and when I make it for guests I often get asked for the recipe. I enjoy it with a side salad of chopped tomatoes and celery, some salad leaves with a nice salad dressing of olive oil, cider vinegar, wholegrain mustard, mayo and salt and pepper, whizzed up in my Bamix mill, it takes seconds and tastes great. You can buy a Bamix hand blender with mill here, a great investment for the kitchen.
Ingredients
Ready rolled shortcrust pastry (or make your own)
Butter for greasing
About 5 slices of thick cut back bacon
1 medium onion
1 small head of broccoli florets
3 eggs beaten
300ml of milk
25g of cornflour
Cheddar cheese grated or thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
Method
To blind bake the pastry if you have baking beans. If you don’t just grease the dish with butter and roll the pastry into it and trim off any edges.
- Set the oven to 200c
- Grease an 8 inch pie dish, add the pastry trimming the edges of the top lip to make even. Cover the grease proof paper and add the beans. Bake on a baking tray in the oven for 15 minutes. Take out and remove the beans and grease proof paper
To make the filling
- Chop the onion and cut up the bacon into small pieces, discarding any fat. Add to a frying pan with the olive oil and cook on a medium heat for about 5 minutes.
- Boil the broccoli in a pot of salted water for about 5 minutes until soft.
- Put the cornflour in a non-stick saucepan and stir in 50ml of the milk to make thin paste. Pour over 200ml of the milk and stir well. Bring to a simmer, stirring constantly for about a minute until the sauce has thickened.
- Take off the heat, stir in the rest of the milk and season. Add the cooked onion and bacon, add the eggs, season and stir the mixture well.
- Add the mixture to the pastry filled pie dish then cover with grated or thinly sliced cheddar cheese.
- Bake on the preheated baking tray in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes or until the filling is firm.
- Take out the oven and leave to cool, best served warm but also delicious cold.
