with salt. Combine the crème fraîche and crushed peppercorns in a small bowl with the remaining 1 teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt and stir well.
Divide the soup among bowls, top with the crème fraîche mixture and serve straightaway.
SPRING GARLIC
At farmers’ markets, you see spring garlic in different sizes. For this recipe, try to find bulbous heads that are close in size to a head of standard garlic. Sometimes, especially in early spring, the spring garlic on offer might have slim heads, about the size of spring onion bottoms. These are just fine, though you’ll want to use 6 or so, including the tender parts of the stalks. Even on the larger bulbs of spring garlic, there’s a chance that the bottom 10cm or so of stalk will also be tender enough to use in this recipe.
ASPARAGUS QUICHES WITH MINT
I’m afraid that quiche has gone out of fashion, hasn’t it? I think I know why. When I was growing up, I ate some truly horrible ones, both home-cooked and shop-bought, packed with what seemed like a refrigerator’s worth of odds and ends suspended in overcooked egg. The only fun I’d have eating them was squidging the filling through my teeth. But as with most foods we think we don’t like, a truly excellent specimen can change our minds in a bite. My hope is that this quiche does just that with a delicate, flaky crust and an eggy filling that’s fluffy enough to banish those bad memories for ever.
You could eat quiche piping hot from the oven, of course, but I prefer it once it’s cooled a bit or at room temperature. Fresh from the oven, quiche tastes mostly of crust. Only when it cools does it all balance out, the crust stepping back a few paces and the egginess and filling marching forward to say hello.
Quiche makes a great vehicle for whatever vegetables are in season and a fun way to impress when you have a crowd over for lunch. Little quiches are really cute, but feel free to make one larger quiche, if you fancy. A 28-cm tart tin will do it, though you will wind up with some extra dough.
makes twelve 8cm quiches
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
Twelve 8-cm wide, 2.5-cm deep ring moulds or tartlet tins
FOR THE DOUGH
375g plain flour
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking powder
110g unsalted butter, well chilled and cut into 1-cm pieces
60g crème fraîche
55ml very cold water
FOR THE FILLING
Sea salt
450g asparagus (spears as thick as an index finger), woody bottoms snapped off, stalks cut into 0.5-cm pieces, tips left whole
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into several chunks
115g finely diced Spanish onion (about 1 small)
1 small bulb spring garlic, tough outer layer removed, bulb thinly sliced and then roughly chopped, or 1 tablespoon thinly sliced regular garlic
¼ teaspoon Maldon or another flaky sea salt
2 large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks
180g double cream
165ml whole milk
8 mint leaves, thinly sliced at the last minute
make the dough
Combine the flour, sugar, sea salt and baking powder in a food processor and pulse several times to mix them well. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture has the texture of fine breadcrumbs. A few pebble-size pieces of butter here and there is just fine.
Transfer the mixture to a bowl, pour in the crème fraîche and water, and use your fingertips to toss and gently smoosh the mixture just until it comes together as a dry, slightly crumbly dough. Don’t overwork it and don’t let it warm up too much. Cover the bowl and keep it in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes.
Line your work surface and a baking sheet with baking parchment. Turn the dough onto the work surface and roll it out to an even 0.5cm thickness, dusting the dough with flour if the rolling pin sticks to it. Trace an inverted bowl with the tip of your knife to cut out twelve 11-cm rounds. Work swiftly to line each ring mould with a dough round, pressing the sides and bottoms gently. Put them on the baking sheet, cover them with clingfilm, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
bake the shells
Position a rack in the centre of the oven and preheat to 160°C/gas 3.
Cut baking parchment into twelve 12.5-cm squares. Crumple each square into a ball, wet the ball under running water, squeeze out all the water and flatten them out again. (This makes them more malleable.) Just before you’re ready to bake the shells (not sooner), take them from the fridge. (They must be nice and cold when you pop them in the oven, or else your quiches will be greasy.) Use one square of baking parchment to line each shell and fill each one almost to the brim with dried beans or raw rice. (You can save the rice or beans to use the next time you bake.) Put the shells back in the fridge for about 15 minutes.
Bake, rotating the baking sheet once, just until the dough is no longer raw but not yet coloured at all, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the beans or rice and parchment squares. Gently prick the bottom and sides of the dough with a fork, which will prevent it from puffing up as it bakes. Return to the oven and bake until the shells are evenly light golden brown and the edges have pulled away from the sides of the pans, 25 to 30 minutes. Let the shells cool completely before you fill them. Leave the oven on.
make the filling and assemble the quiche
Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and salt it generously until it’s slightly less salty than the sea. Cook the asparagus stalks in the water just until they’ve lost their raw crunch, 1 to 1½ minutes, using a spider to transfer them to a colander to drain. Do the same with the tips, keeping them separate from the stalks.
Melt the butter in a medium cast-iron frying pan over medium-low heat until frothy. Add the onion, garlic, and Maldon salt and cook, stirring now and again, until the onion is soft and just barely browned at the edges, about 12 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.
Combine the whole eggs and egg yolks in a large bowl and whisk briefly. Combine the cream and milk in a small pot, set it over medium-high heat, and cook just until it reaches a strong simmer. Immediately remove it from the heat, then very gradually pour it into the bowl with the eggs, whisking as you pour. Stir in 2 teaspoons of sea salt. Let the egg mixture, onion mixture and asparagus come to room temperature.
Divide the onion mixture among the shells, spreading slightly to form a layer. Spoon in the asparagus stalks (about 2 generous tablespoons per shell). Whisk the egg mixture, then ladle in enough of it to come
