Madhouse recipe : Cheesy Crumb Crust Leek & Bacon Pie #lovemyleeks

I'm signed up to various foodie email newsletters and when they land in my inbox, they often give me ideas for meals, however loosely I interpret them. One such example was a Tomato Pie With Cheddar Crust. This sounded like just the sort of thing we'd like to eat but, when I clicked through, I was totally shocked to see that the filling was made with several cups of mayonnaise mixed with grated cheese and topped with sliced tomatoes. Not very healthy ! The "cheddar" crust was a mix of cheese cracker crumbs and grilled bacon, blitzed in a food processor. No healthier than the filling but it did give me an idea for a cracking #KitchenClearout recipe.

As you know, as a Degustabox reviewer, I receive a mystery box of foodie products every month and they often contain savoury snacks. We're going into overload - just a quick rummage in the cupboards revealed TEN bags and boxes of crackers, crispbread and savoury biscuits ! Several of them were half or even three-quarters used so it was time to use them up.

I tipped the odds and ends into my (small) food processor and managed to clear out five packets, which I thought was pretty good going and certainly made a difference in the cupboard !

Cheesy Crumb Crust Leek & Bacon Pie

ingredients :

about 200g of odds and ends of savoury biscuits

3tbsp melted butter

1 egg

3 leeks

a pack (200g) bacon lardons

2 mushrooms

3 eggs

glug of milk

a handful of grated cheese 

Put the savoury snacks in the food processor and pulse until you have rough crumbs. You can use whatever you want but make sure at least some of them are cheese flavoured for optimum taste. Adding something slightly spicy gives it a nice kick too.

Mix in the melted butter and egg and press together, just like if you were making a cheesecake.

Press into a flan tin lined with baking parchment. You need to cover the base and sides if possible. Pop into the oven at 180° while you prepare the filling.

Fry the lardons until they release some fat. Add the finely sliced leeks and mushrooms and cook for 5-10 minutes until the lardons are cooked. Put in a bowl to cool.

Add a handful of grated cheese.

Crack the eggs into the bowl and add a glug of milk. Give it all a stir.

Pour the filling into the pie crust and return to the oven for about half an hour until the egg has set, like a quiche.

We ate this hot with mashed potato and finished it off, cold, for lunch the next day. I thought it might be very crumbly but it actually holds its shape very well (the only bits that fell off were the crumbs that you can see on the plate from when I took it out of the tin).

The kids weren't keen on the crust but that was because I had included some Indian biscuits that had a strong flavour of cumin so I'll stick to cheese/plain flavours next time. It's a nice twist on a classic quiche and was certainly a great way of clearing out lots of odds and ends of packets.

Adding to this month's #KitchenClearout linky.

Also entering this recipe for the #lovemyleeks recipe competition, run by British leeks.