There’s nothing happening so here’s a story about a quiche.

A while ago I bought some blue cheese by accident, thinking it was a nice normal cheese – HORRORS! I have always had a problem with blue cheese, and as a child I can remember being incredulous that adults would voluntarily put it into their mouths. It is the food of the devil himself.

BUT. There was this one time when my friend Tamsin made a quiche with blue cheese and dates. It was so delicious it is still stuck in my memory-bank. Have you got any food memories like that? Please share if so…

I met Tamsin on ante-natal classes and we had our babies a few weeks apart. Baby Lianna (L) was very keen on Baby Fin (R) from day one as you can see, and she spent her toddler years trying to grab him and squeeze him with her ping-pong ball podgy hands.

Their mothers watched loads of episodes of ‘Changing Rooms’ on daytime TV, taking turns to go and buy a bag of chips at the East Worthing chip shop and making lists/ charts to boss Colin around with after work: endless DIY plans and paint choices. I was SO, SO lucky to have a friend like Tam in those first years of parenting because we had a crazy amount of fun.

In the quick of an eye in was 2013 and the famous quiche was produced. They had moved to France and we were camping in their garden. Fin had grown so strong he could lift up buildings with his bare hands, and Lianna had enormously long legs and was a super-clever-bilingual-ballerina-horse-rider.

Yes, that’s Evie on the back.

In another quick of an eye, 7 years later almost to the day, I tried to recreate that quiche (to use the blue cheese). I fell at hurdle one, the blind baking, and found myself turning to the Facebook community for support. It amazes me how much free help I get within minutes via Facebook, because somebody somewhere is scrolling through and sees my dilemma: in this case, were my ceramic beads too weak or was my pastry too strong?

I received a flurry of things to consider; was it self raising or plain flour, was there greaseproof paper under the beads, was the oven too hot so the sides cooked too quickly, was I sprinkling the base with cold water, was I pricking the bottom of the pastry first … (I always thought people were just showing off when they did that on the telly – but now I know.)

The beads created quite an intriguing dimpled texture which looked a bit like cellulite. The eggy filling sat in the dimpled sections or ran off the raised pastry so it went under the loose-bottomed base. Thus my tin was welded together inside one big omelette – WOW! I couldn’t have done that if I’d tried! But there were 2 major plusses: a) the quiche was very tasty, with blue cheese safely offset by dates, and b) whenever I sprinkle herbage on top of things it makes me giggle remembering Fin, distraught in his high chair wailing, “it’s got grass on it… it’s got grassssss on iiiiiit….!”

Rustic. “Humble”, as the TV chefs would say. Ha ha!

A professional baker @beardy_baker sent the following tip which I would like to pass on to you now, dear reader. “Preheat a flat baking sheet, hotter than you need in the oven, like 220. Then drop the temp to 180 when you add the case. That way when the case touches the preheated tray it’s got a head start and direct heat. … Also rest the pastry for 20 mins in the fridge before you bake.”

And so another lockdown day passed, with its own entertainment. At the current rate of output, if I live to 100, I’ve got 7 more attempts at a blue cheese/ date quiche. And when my life is over I’ll be at the Great Heavenly Banquet where there’s no such cheese, no cellulite, no friends leaving for France, no sadness at time passing, and no food with tin inside. AMEN.