Bodge It Together Quiche!

Things never go to plan when I'm cooking! I thought I'd make myself a nice cheese and onion quiche for my lunch for the next couple of days. Unfortunately my last onion was all had gone all pink, fluffy and squishy. Not a good look for an onion.

I decided to improvise with a couple of shallots left over from when The Boyfriend was doing some fancy-pants cooking. Hmm... squishy too. To be fair, these guys had been sitting around for a good few weeks.

After raiding the fridge, I thought the only thing that sounded vaguely quichey was a red pepper (plus cheese, of course!).

The small portion!

Other problems I ran into:

• I forgot to chill the pastry (as per usual - turns out fine!)
• I don't have a rolling pin - I stick flour on the outer layer of a roll of cling film, then pull that layer off when I'm finished!
• I don't have a quiche/flan tin - I used a cake tin instead
• I don't have baking beans - for the pastry's blind bake I covered it in foil with some dry rice grains on top.
• I made the pastry too short on one side and the quiche filling ran down the side
• I dripped egg and milk mix into the bottom of my oven, which was hot from the blind bake so I couldn't clean it and had to smell it burning for half an hour!

It turned out pretty well, despite me making it! The cost of the recipe works out to 34p/51p per person depending on portion size (not including the cost of a rotten onion!), and I didn't have to go out and buy more ingredients!

The recipe (bodged together from this original recipe):

190g of plain flour - 8p (based on 60p for a 1.5kg bag)
80g margarine/butter - 18p (based on £1.10 for 500g of Vitalite)
half a tablespoon of oil - about 5p
one red pepper - 31p (£1.25 for a value bag of four peppers)
3 eggs - 74p (£1.48 for six free range eggs)
300ml of milk - 17p (based on 6 pints at £1.89)
90g cheese - 50p (based on 2 x 450g packs for £5 - always on offer!)
black pepper - about 1p.

Total = £2.04

This quiche serves 4-6, so it is 51p for a meal portion or 34p for a side portion. 


The eggies are by far the most expensive part of this quiche, but I will only eat free range eggs after seeing the state of rescued battery chickens and visting a barn of uncaged hens.

If you confine yourself to a smaller portion, Calorie Count will give you a C+ grade. The recipe has a fair amount of saturated fat (6g), but it's very low in sodium and has a fair whack of vitamins and minerals from the eggs and milk. Not super healthy though I'm afraid.

Anyway, my point is - who cares if you don't have the right ingredients/equipment/cooking ability? You can bodge a cheap meal together without having to run to the local corner shop every time you cook!

Make it do or do without!