Peace of pie.

Descartes argued in his Philosophical Writings that animals don't have souls, and by that he meant any mind at all separate from the body. Anotine Arnauld objected to this claim by the example of a sheep who sees a wolf and flees, and thus demonstrates the use of a brain process of perception and reaction.
I side with Arnauld. not just for the sake of argument, but due to my firm belief that if we were to have souls, animals would too, in that they appear to have a consciousness, just one less complex than a human's.
Therefore, I am vegetarian, and here is a vegetarian quiche recipe that my house-mate, who normally eats meat, described as "heaven in my mouth".

'Facon', carrot and onion quiche



For the pastry: rub 70g of cold butter into 150g of sieved plain flour, then bring together using 1 egg and any extra cold water necessary. Lump together and stick in the fridge for half an hour.

Filling ingredients:

4 eggs

200ml milk

dried herbs

50g (or more as desired) grated cheddar cheese

salt and pepper

4 or 5 rashers of quorn (vegetarian) bacon

a small onion

half a carrot

The pastry will then need to be rolled out evenly and carefully placed into a lightly greased flan dish, its important that it covers all edges or the quiche mixture could spill out of the base. The pastry should be about half a cm thick, enough to be opaque on the bottom.

Place the pastry base back in the fridge for a further half an hour, then blind bake in a preheated gas mark 5 oven by covering it with greaseproof paper and baking beans (or lentils, rice, any dried pulse will do). It will need twenty minutes. 

Meanwhile, fry the rashers of fake bacon, from frozen, on a low heat for about five minutes (you won't need oil). Remove and slice once cooled, then you can use the same frying pan to shallow fry the chopped onion. Peel and grate half a carrot.

Once the pastry base is blind baked, remove the baking beads and leave it another ten minutes to turn crisp and golden. Then leave to cool.

Once cooled, place the onion, carrot and bacon on the base. Gently beat the eggs, milk, half the grated cheese and seasoning in a jug and pour over the ingredients in the pie dish. Finish with the rest of the grated cheese.

Place back in the oven on gas mark 3 for 40 minutes to cook the quiche.



Ta-da! An impressive, tasty, but deceptively easy vegetarian dinner that will silence the critics.