Smoked ham, leek and goats cheese impossible pie

Impossible pie, what a fascinating title.....

Impossible pies come in two forms, sweet and savoury. The former is essentially a baked custard style dish, the latter a form of a crust less quiche. The impossible bit being (I think) the fact that other than whisking the milk and eggs together you basically throw everything in to the dish and bake and it does look rather impossible at first.

The resultant pie was very tasty and great for a light meal when served with a green salad, its also a useful recipe for using up a few eggs when you have a glut from your hens like we have currently. The additions are infinitely variable I used leeks as we had some in the garden and the ham as it was in the fridge, but I am thinking of making a fully vegetarian version probably using pre cooked broccoli or asparagus and adding a little seasonal wild garlic or sorrel next time.

Serve warm or cold, its also the ideal pack up and go snack for a picnic or lunch box, a definite keeper in my opinion. I now need to try the sweet version.

I recently received a lovely hamper of goats milk goodies from St Helen's Farm so took the opportunity to use both goats milk and goats cheese in this recipe.

What you need

• Extra virgin rapeseed oil (1 tbsp or so)
• Couple of leeks - cleaned and sliced thinly
• Garlic - crushed or wild garlic if in season
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 eggs
• 70g Self raising flour (it works fine with gluten free)
• 300 ml semi skimmed milk (I used Goats as that what I had to hand)
• 1 pack of smoked ham - chopped into small pieces
• Approx 80g mature goats cheese -grated

I used a lightly oiled Pyrex flan dish to bake the "pie" in.

What you do

• Pre heat your oven to 200c 
• In a frying pan cook the leeks and garlic until softened and just every so slightly colouring
• Remove from heat and place in baking dish along with ham and the grated cheese, season with a little sea salt and pepper
• Whisk the eggs, flour and milk to make a thin batter
• Pour this over the leeks, cheese and ham
• Loosely cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes
• After 30 minutes, remove the foil and bake for a further 30 minutes until the pie is firm and golden.
• Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes or so, before serving in slices 
• Refrigerate if you wish to serve cold.