Day 25 - Quickie

I did something I rarely do today, I followed a recipe almost exactly...

This is my take on Bryanna Clark Grogan's Quiche recipe.

Oh, o.k. I didn't exactly follow it. I made my own version of pastry (didn't even look at her recipe for that), adjusted the vegetables to suit what I had and substituted gaily for anything I didn't like the look of in her stuff. It worked really well.

This is what I did -

Make filling:
I used two sweet peppers shredded with one medium onion fried in a little oil until they were soft and limp. Season with a little salt and pepper and allow to cool.

Make the pastry:
300g white flour, half self raising, half plain (or use all plain with 1/2 tsp. baking powder)
75g olive oil
some water.

Put the flour and oil into food processor and whizz a bit, then add enough water to bring everything together into a dough. Start with 2 tablespoons but you may need 4 or 5. Add them in stages. Once it spins up into a ball, stop the processor, take it out of the bowl and knead very lightly incorporating any small leftovers. Use to line a 23cm diameter loose bottomed tin or any other suitable flan dish with sides.

I had a slightly smaller tin and had enough pastry left to line the bottom of 15cm sponge cake tin too of which more later.

Prick all over or use baking beans on parchment to stop bottom puffing up and bake blind in a hot oven 200C for about 5 minutes or a little longer. Remove from oven. Keep the oven on.

Make 'eggy' liquid:

Measure 370g non-dairy milk into the food processor
Add 100g silken tofu (soft or firm)
30g of cornflour
15g nutritional yeast
2g agar agar powder
1 tsp. vegan stock powder (I used Marigold)
1 pinch of turmeric (less is more here!)
1 pinch of nutmeg (great spice)
I didn't add more salt and pepper but it's up to you.

Process until it is well combined and smooth.

Make the quickie:

Arrange the vegetables in the par-baked shell and gently add the 'eggy' liquid. Just like the original version you may prefer to do this with the flan dish on a tray or even on the oven shelf to avoid spills as you transfer it from workplace to oven.

I added vegetable bacon bits also known as pine nuts as a final garnish.

Bake in the hot oven for 30 minutes. It needs to be this long so that the heat will activate the agar. You may need to cover the pastry edges if they start to brown too much but it wasn't a problem here.

Allow to cool, so that the agar will set before serving. Can be reheated if you prefer it served warm but don't overdo it.

My little disk of pastry was topped with the bits that wouldn't fit in the main pan. This made a flat tart without pastry sides but the eggy bit firmed up nicely, so if you prefer a tart with less pastry this is the way to go.



And now, because I can't really fit it in anywhere else I'm just going to rant a little. This excellent recipe is just the sort of thing I never normally make because I have a real dislike of the vegan who knits a complete ersatz meat-eaters world out of tofu. It's wrong in so many ways I don't even want to start explaining it but because I'm nothing if not inconsistent and because I think this particular recipe has a real role for providing food for omnivores that won't take them too far out of their comfort zones I will probably make this again. And so should you.