Coronation Quiche Recipe

This deep quiche with a crisp, light pastry case and delicate features flavours of Spinach, Broad Beans and fresh Tarragon. Eaten hot or cold with a green salad and boiled new potatoes, this Coronation Quiche Recipe makes for a perfect Coronation Big Lunch dish!

35 minutes 45 minutes + 1 hour chilling Medium Serves 6

Image: Buckingham Palace

Ingredients

Pastry

125g plain flour
Pinch of salt
25g cold butter, diced
25g lard
2 tablespoons milk
Or 1 x 250g block of ready-made shortcrust pastry

Filling

125ml milk
175ml double cream
2 medium eggs
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
Salt and pepper
100g grated cheddar cheese
180g cooked spinach, lightly chopped
60g cooked broad beans or soya beans

Method

To make the pastry: sieve the flour and salt into a bowl; add the fats and rub the mixture together using your fingertips until you get a sandy, breadcrumb-like texture. Add the milk a little at a time and bring the ingredients together into a dough. Cover and allow to rest in the fridge for 30 to 45 minutes.
Lightly flour the work surface and roll out the pastry to a circle a little larger than the top of the tin and approximately 5mm thick.
Line the tin with the pastry, taking care not to have any holes or the mixture could leak. Cover and rest for a further 30 minutes in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to 190C.
Line the pastry case with greaseproof paper, add baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes before removing the greaseproof paper and baking beans.
Reduce the oven temperature to 160C.
Beat together the milk, cream, eggs, herbs and seasoning.
Scatter half of the grated cheese in the blind-baked base, top with the chopped spinach and beans and herbs, then pour over the liquid mixture.
If required gently give the mixture a delicate stir to ensure the filling is evenly dispersed but be careful not to damage the pastry case.
Sprinkle over the remaining cheese. Place into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until set and lightly golden.

Recipe notes by Elizabeth Gibbs

In celebration of Coronation Big Lunches taking place over the Coronation weekend, Their Majesties have shared a recipe for a Coronation Quiche – featuring spinach, broad beans and tarragon.

The Coronation Big Lunch aims to bring neighbours and communities together to celebrate the Coronation and share friendship, food and fun. Her Majesty The Queen Consort, as Patron, has attended Big Lunches all across the UK and the world, including in Ghana and Barbados.

This recipe shows double the quantity of pastry compared to other recipes on the internet (including the one on the royal website). I found this makes a firmer pastry. And I’ll suggest blind baking at a low temperature 160C fan, for twice as long – 30 minutes.

Blind baking a pie crust is necessary when it will be filled with an unbaked filling (such as with pudding or cream pies), in which case the crust must be fully baked. If you reduce the plain flour to 200g, the pastry might be thin enough not to require blind baking.

Be sure to squeeze out as much moisture as you can out of the spinach so that you are not adding unnecessarily increasing the risk of a soggy bottom. And worth mentioning that the pastry includes lard, but you can swap this for butter to make it vegetarian.

Finally, keep baking until you get a crisp golden brown pasty that holds up to the soft, creamy fillings.

Coronation Weekend