Deli Delights...

There's nothing better than a good deli, brandishing the best of British produce. I like nothing more than trotting into a well-stocked delicatessen and gazing over the extensive range of meats, cheeses, scrumptious dressings, marinades and preserves. All the better if there happens to be a range of freshly picked fruit and vegetables- not long plucked from the ground and still bearing the earthy residue, something a supermarket cannot quite compete with.

There happens to be just such an offering nestled down the road from where I live. Although nothing beats a social trip here for a coffee and a delicious slice of homemade (and probably over-priced) cake, of a morning, it is such a treat to hand pick local produce in just such a venue when your own garden won't quite yield such delights!

Recently I wandered down to said destination with ideas for supper that night at the forefront of my mind. And what utter inspiration a well stocked deli can offer compared to the supermarket where, if I haven't been efficient enough to make a list, I seem to wander aimlessly from aisle to aisle plucking all sorts of miscellaneous items off shelves before realizing, upon my return home, that these mismatched items will not be conducive to a complete meal recipe of any kind!

The moment I walked in I saw a mouth-watering variety of quiches and tarts ahead of me, so with my initial idea of some sort of salad completely dashed and now comparatively inferior, I set my mind to a homemade quiche for supper and started out on a hunt for some delicious quiche-fillers. The cheese counter did not disappoint and after choosing a delightful goats cheese I also found a fat red onion, some oak-smoked streaky bacon (freshly sliced in front of me no less!), a box of free-range eggs from somewhere that sounded like a 5* hotel for hens, an enormous lettuce and a ripe avocado (something that pleased me an embarrassing amount, as in the supermarket I'm always left trying to find a ripe avocado but end up groping one bullet-like fruit after another!). Home I went with my laden brown paper bag.

After an hours pottering in the kitchen out of the oven came a golden quiche deeply filled with balsamic red onions, crispy bacon and crumbled goat’s cheese, that if I say so myself was a deliciously indulgent supper a long with a crisp green salad.

NB. For a scrummy quiche I believe the pastry should be blind baked for crispness, I also find that a loose bottomed metal quiche tin results in an infinitely superior quiche as opposed to one baked in a ceramic dish. The metal one conducts the heat better allowing the pastry to crisp up, whereas whenever I've used a ceramic I end up with a rather disappointingly soggy supper.