The spirit of Pasqualina. Easter quiche with wild garlic, artichokes and hardboiled eggs.

South or southwest 6 to gale 8.

Rough or very rough.

Rain or showers.

Moderate or good, occasionally poor.

 

Pasqua, the Italian word for Easter, lents its name to the glorious Ligurian dish called Torta Pasqualina.  I made the simplified Ottolenghi recipe many times (without the celery), not only at Easter; but I always wondered if you could do it as well with left-over hardboiled eggs (in my world left-over Easter eggs are not the chocolate variety, but mountains of hardboiled and painted eggs). So this year I decided to give it a try.

The original Torta Pasqualina is done with a variety of greens, either Swiss chard, beetroot leaves, spinach or artichokes. Plus herbs. And you can either mix everything together (bar the eggs) or do it the incredible complicated and tricky way as shown in the video on the first link.

However a visit to my children yesterday, where we then ended up in Whitstable eating oysters at the seaside, resulted also in bags of wild garlic. I have written about wild garlic last year, and can only urge you to give it a try if you can get hold of it. But do it quickly. This year we have a very early season for them.

So it was quite obvious that I don’t buy Swiss chard but use the wild garlic instead. And a jar of artichokes hearts in olive oil screamed: Me, me, me.

On top of it I had less puff pastry than I thought, so the obligatory cover was out of question.

By now I was so far removed from a Torta Pasqualina that I could only call my dish “in the spirit of Pasqualina“. But it tasted ace!

Quiche with wild garlic, artichokes and hardboiled eggs

Part of a sheet of puff pastry (about 80-100gr)

100gr wild garlic, chopped very fine

Zest of one unwaxed lemon

3 artichoke hearts in oil, drained

A few sprigs of fresh herbs (I used basil, dill and flat parsley)

5 tbsp ricotta

1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

1 raw egg

1 hardboiled egg

1 tbsp of olive oil

Salt, nutmeg and freshly milled black pepper

Cut the puff pastry so it fills a small tart or quiche tin. Put it in the tin, cut around the edge and put into the fridge.

Heat oil in a small pan; add the washed and drained wild garlic (stalks and all), the lemon zest and a bit of salt to the oil until it wilts. Add the artichoke hearts, which have been roughly cut, and continue to cook, until all the water (from the washed garlic) has evaporated. Put into a food mixer and chop a bit finer. Let cool. Once it is cold (or lukewarm) add the ricotta, grated parmesan, nutmeg, pepper and the raw egg to that mixture. Give it more chops with the food processor until nicely mixed but bits can be still seen (you don’t want a green mush). Taste, you might need more salt and pepper (remember that in a quiche or tart you need a strong tasting filling, once the egg has been cooked it will tone it down- one of the reasons quiches often taste boring). Or you could add a bit more parmesan.

Preheat oven to 180C. Peel your hardboiled egg and cut it in half lengthways. Take pastry out of the fridge and cover the bottom with about 2 tbsp of the filling. Lay the two egg halves cut side down onto the filling, fill the whole tin with the garlic mixture and make sure the eggs are covered too. You can go pretty high, even make a little “dome”, the filling will set quickly and shrink later to a flat level.

Into the oven and bake until the top of the quiche is nicely browned (about 35-45 minutes). Eat at room temperature.

Verdict:

It tasted absolutely ace. However the photo above is not exactly the dish. Well..how to explain this.

My landlord has put recently a new fire-alarm system into the whole house. If you have a hot shower..it goes off.

So when I opened the oven door to take the quiche out, the fire-alarm went off. I was so startled that I dropped the quiche, fortunately onto a plate. No way could I photograph that mess.

So I went out to get more puff pastry and start again. In the middle of the preparation I realised I had also run out of ricotta. So I mixed 3 tbsp of home made Tzatziki with 2 tbsp of mascarpone.

Maybe the extra garlic from the Tzatziki carried it from the very good into the insanely good (remember, just because it looks like a mess doesn’t mean you cant eat it). So..maybe add a smashed garlic clove in as well.

Happy Easter.                    Buona Pasqua.