King Charles III coronation quiche: see recipe – 05/05/2023 – World

A quiche is a quiche. Besides the obvious, it can be more than that. Or less: maybe it’s not even a quiche.

Highly problematized is the coronation quiche, a dish conceived by the British monarchy to gather subjects with Union Jack flags, around community tables, at the enthronement of Charles III this Saturday (6).

The royalty proposes a lunch (“big lunch”) with a quiche of spinach, tarragon, green beans and cheddar cheese. Signed by Mark Flanagan, the king’s chef, the recipe (see the end of the text) was published on the royal family’s website so that it could be executed by any commoner.

The English press – which still employs reporters and editors to exclusively cover the royals – took the quiche for granted. Never before has a savory dish received so many devastating reviews.

They say the coronation quiche is too plebeian, that it’s exclusionary of the poor, that it’s one hell of a mess, that it has no dietary restrictions and that it could cause an outbreak of piriri from Cornwall to the Scottish Highlands.

They label her unpatriotic. They accuse it, finally, of being a cheap spinach pie that doesn’t deserve to be called a quiche.

A Sheet tested the recipe to try to understand the bafafá. The Buckingham Palace recipe was followed to the letter and resulted in a perfectly good, balanced and tasty quiche. The problem appears to be with British society, which is facing a particularly bad time.

Let’s go back 70 years to the coronation of Elizabeth II, Charles’ mother. The kingdom was still recovering from World War II, and the British Empire was crumbling. It had recently lost the Raj, Asian possessions where today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are located.

In a great political marketing move, the royalty invented a recipe to be shared by the entire population: the poulet reine Elizabeth. Yes, in French: those were other times, and it was the same royal house, always skidding when pretending to be popular.

The Queen’s poulet was soon nicknamed the “coronation chicken”. It’s chicken in a creamy curry sauce, to be eaten at room temperature, as a salad or sandwich filling.

As a chicken is not just a chicken, coronation chicken extended a hand to France, historical rival and ally against Hitler: the recipe was prepared by the branch of the Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in London.

The other hand, smelling of curry and mango chutney, waved to the large Indian and Pakistani community that had already migrated to the seat of the crumbling empire.

Coronation chicken has become a classic of British cuisine. It is unlikely that the same will happen with Charles III’s quiche.

This time, the other side of the English Channel isn’t just a fancy name for chicken. The King of England decided to celebrate his coronation with French food – a specialty from the Alsace-Lorraine region, the quiche is a pie filled with eggs, cream, cheese and a multitude of complements.

The choice fell like shriveled pork rinds into the British stomach. Eleanor Steafel of the conservative Telegraph says the royals “have made the bold decision to opt for something that, frankly, borders on unpatriotic”.

The Times, also on the right, went to France to look for Évelyne Muller-Dervaux, grand master of a certain Confraternity of Quiche Lorraine. The entity maintains that the recipe made with bacon (okay, lardon) can only be called a quiche; the spinach and fava bean recipe would be nothing more than a savory pie.

Pie or quiche, the coronation dish seems to seek to rebuild the bridge with continental Europe, snubbed by the disastrous brexit. Clumsy is the attempt to pet the vegetarian population – the pasta recipe uses lard, optionally and totally unnecessary. The title of the Telegraph story sums it up: “How the coronation quiche managed to offend everyone.”

The British have struggled with the bad reputation of their own cuisine for centuries. They achieved reasonable success, with media projection chefs and the formidable transformation of the gastronomic park of their cities. “London is the world’s most delicious and diverse food city,” writes Felicity Cloake in The Economist.

For Cloake, Charles’ “penitential” quiche reinforces the stigma that the British eat badly. She even suggests that the recipe released by the Crown may result in undercooked eggs and, consequently, the risk of mass contamination by salmonellosis.

King’s eggs have been the subject of another criticism: due to an avian flu epidemic, the ingredient has become expensive and less plentiful in the UK.

When the price of eggs becomes an issue on the king’s coronation menu, something is very wrong. The British are going through the worst economic crisis in decades, and the dissent over the pie reflects a violent drop in the self-esteem of a proverbially proud people.

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KING CHARLES 3rd CORONATION QUICHE

Performance: 6 servings

Difficulty: Average

Authorship: Mark Flanagan/Buckingham Palace

dough ingredients

• 250 g flour (plus a little more to flour the pan)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 50g chilled unsalted butter, cubed
• 50 g lard (you can replace it with more butter)
• 60 ml of milk

stuffing ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 125 ml of milk
• 175 ml fresh cream
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon (can be substituted with basil or parsley)
• 100 g cheese (English cheddar, gruyère or steppe) grated
• 180 g cooked spinach, squeezed and chopped
• 60 g cooked fava beans or edamame beans (green soybeans)
• Salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

Way of doing

1. In a bowl, place the flour and salt. Add the butter and lard and mix with your fingertips until you get a crumbly mixture. Gradually add the milk and work the dough with your hands until it forms a smooth ball. Cover and leave in the refrigerator for half an hour.
2. Grease and flour a 20 cm round cake tin with a removable base. With a rolling pin, open the dough into a circle slightly larger than the shape. Carefully place the dough in the mold, pressing it gently against the bottom and walls. Cut the trimmings.
3. Cover and refrigerate for another half hour. Heat the oven to 190ºC.
4. Cover the dough with parchment paper and, on top of the paper, place raw beans or rice to make weight. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove paper and weight. Bake for another 5 minutes.
5. Reduce oven temperature to 160°C. Beat the eggs and mix in the milk, cream, tarragon, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
6. On top of the dough, place half of the grated cheese. Distribute the spinach and broad beans. Pour in the egg mixture (if left over, save it for other preparations). Cover with the remaining cheese.
7. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool before unmolding the quiche.