This post originally appeared at Rebel Angel.
Happy Christmas everyone! Hope you all managed to get a bit of festive break, whether or not you were celebrating. I had half-planned some blog posts during Christmas time in my calendar, but didn’t end up getting round to writing them so just took the time off instead. I’m still not back on normal scheduling (this year I get from the 21st December till the 2nd January off work!), but the days are starting to feel a bit more normal again, so I’ve got a few blog posts to share with you.
First up, who’s feeling like a Christmas pudding after all the food they’ve had this season? Me! Although, to be fair, I was feeling fairly watermelon-like in the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas anyway so it didn’t make a huge amount of difference to me! Christmas food is super rich though – all that cheese, chocolate and gravy – so one of the things I often strangely look forward to afterwards is eating some fresher and lighter food.
This year, I got Ben two cookbooks for Christmas – a pretty big reduction on the usual amount I’d say! These were The Roasting Tin and The Green Roasting Tin, both by Rukmini Iyer. Confession time: even though he unwrapped these on Christmas Day, we’d actually been using the first for a couple of weeks before and we’d flicked through the veggie version to pick out some recipes for after Christmas, whoops! This week, we’ve chosen a few recipes from the two books for some hearty but really tasty meals that are pretty simple but still healthy.
But first, we needed to use up some leftovers. Hands up, who has leftovers galore after Christmas?! My family always has a big get together on Christmas Eve (this year it was nearly 30 of us!) where several of us bring different dishes – these aren’t anything fancy as it’s a buffet type meal, but we have so many things left at the end of the night. Then of course, there’s the Christmas day leftovers, and often bits and pieces from Boxing Day too. This year, Ben and I bought a ham to use this week as lunches and to knock together into some tea time dishes.
So as well as the traditional turkey sandwiches in bread buns on Christmas Day and nibble bits out of the fridge, we wanted to make things a little bit different. Rather than just ham sandwiches, we decided a leftover Christmas ham quiche with a sharp cheddar and salad on the side would be something slightly (just slightly!) lighter and fresher than the big, heavy meals we’d been having. I actually mixed in a little Red Leicester cheese with the cheddar as we ran out just before I’d grated enough, and that added a little bit of colour to the quiche – you could easily swap the cheeses over if you wanted to.
I’ve always been told that quiche is really difficult to make – getting the pastry right and the filling to set are apparently tricky. Well, there’s a little bit of a cheat here by buying ready made shortcrust pastry (why wouldn’t you?!), but the filling was so simple to make and set perfectly. It took barely any time to put together, then we just left it in the oven – a very easy process! So here’s the recipe for my leftover Christmas ham and cheddar cheese quiche:
Leftover Christmas Ham & Cheddar Cheese Quiche
Ingredients
- Shortcrust pastry (big enough for 10 inch pie dish)
- 350 ml milk
- 120 g leftover cooked ham
- 30 g plain flour
- 3 eggs
- 1 tbsp tabasco or chilli sauce of your choosing
- 1 tsp English mustard
- 120 g Cheddar cheese grated
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180C.
- For pre-rolled pastry, simply line your 10 inch pie dish with it, ensuring it goes all the way up the sides and has a slight overhang – trim to fit if necessary.
- Line the inside of the pastry with foil or baking paper, then weigh down with baking beans (we actually use rice for this, lentils are also good).
- Bake for 10 minutes then remove the baking beans and foil/baking paper and bake for another 10 minutes.
- While the pastry is baking, in a large bowl, mix the milk, flour, eggs, tabasco and mustard. Stir or whisk until well combined, then mix in the shredded leftover ham and grated cheese. Reserve a little cheese to sprinkle on the top for more colour if you like.
- Pour the mixture into the pastry case then returned (carefully!) to the oven. Bake for 40 minutes, until lightly browned and set.
- Allow to cool for around 10 minutes before serving with a side salad.
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