Category Archives: lunch

An even better quiche recipe

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Real men don’t eat quiche. Real men eat vegan quiche, then do the washing up followed by giving their partners a back massage.

This is a superior quiche to this one.

A lot of the heavy lifting steps in this recipe can be done ahead of time, indeed the pastry needs to be made ahead of time and refrigerated for while. The cauliflower can also be roasted a day or two ahead if you happen to using the oven already.

In:

  • 1 batch Shortcrust pastry
  • 1 batch Scrambled breakfast tofu
  • 300 g cauliflower, chopped into small florets
  • Handful of green beans, finely diced
  • 1 medium onion, finely sliced
  • 1 tomato, sliced fairly thinly
  • 1 cup chickpea flour
  • 1.5 cups water
  • 2 tabs of light miso
  • handful of your favourite olives (de-stoned if necessary) and sliced
  • 2 or 3 (semi) sundried tomatoes, chopped
  • Olive oil

Do:

Dissolve the miso into the water. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, miso water, 2 tbsp of the oil. Cover and let it sit for a few hours or overnight. There’s no need to refrigerate it – in fact…just don’t. The keen eyed will note that this step is based on a Soccatta mix.

Once the Soccatta mix is ready…Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Roast the cauliflower. Place in a bowl with a splash of olive oil and coat well. Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until softened and slightly charred. Put to one side.

Whilst roasting, add a teaspoon of oil to a pan and fry the onions for about 3 minutes until they start to caramelise. Meanwhile, put a small saucepan of water on to boil.

Once the water is at a rolling boil add the chopped beans and blanche quickly. Drain and cool them with cold, running water. We want them still slightly crunchy.

Line an oiled quiche dish with pastry, prick the bottom and bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and prepare the filling.

In a large bowl (or use one of the saucepans if big enough) combine the cauliflower, beans, olives, sundried tomatoes, onions, and scrambled tofu. Toss until fairly evenly mixed.

Add everything from that bowl into the pastry shell and gently smooth down until fairly even. Pour the the flour mix over as evenly as possible. Top with the sliced tomatoes.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, brush with a little olive oil, place in the oven for a further 5 minutes.

Allow to cool before serving.

Kitchen Note: If you don’t have one of those quiche dishes where the sides can be removed separately from the bottom despair not. The shortcrust pastry has a tendency to shrink slightly so will almost always smoothly pull back from the edges during cooking. Lightly oil the quiche dish if in doubt.

Tomato Soup in 15 minutes

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I just don’t get why anyone would want to eat canned tomato soup. This takes 15 minutes at the most, which I reckon must be only a little longer than it would take to open a can and heat it.

SheWhoMustBeFed often tries to avoid too much wheat and this filling lunch can be eaten with or without bread. This recipe feeds one; or two if accompanied by toast/fresh bread.

Ingredients & Preparation

  • 3 thin slices of onion, finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon each chopped fresh rosemary, thyme
  • 3 medium/small tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 Tbspn miso
  • 1 Tbspn tomato paste
  • Tspn ground pepper
  • ½ cup of water or light stock
  • Olive oil
  • When serving: (thick) balsamic vinegar

Method

  • Lightly sauté onions, garlic and pepper.
  • Meanwhile lightly blend rest of ingredients
  • Add to pot, stir thoroughly and simmer on low for 10 minutes
  • Serve in wide, shallow bowl.
  • Drizzle balsamic vinegar in a thin spiral swirl from the centre to the outside
  • Serve with hot crusty fresh bread.

Roast Potato and Onion Soup

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Cold, grey, dreary English days call for a hearty winter soup to take the chill out of the bones. SheWhoMustBeFed had been out doing errands and came home looking all blue and frigid around the edges, so I made this soup to thaw her out. The roasted vegetables add depth of flavour and texture. This recipe will feed two very hungry people, and it takes about half an hour from clicking on the oven to sitting down to eat.

Ingredients

  • 4 medium spuds – a type that roasts up nicely
  • a few cloves of garlic
  • 1 medium onion
  • fresh bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, parsley, dill
  • black peppercorns (to taste: I would add about 3/4 teaspoon)
  • white miso
  • olive oil

What to do (important to do in this order if you do need to make this in less than 31 minutes)

  • crank up the oven (to whatever tempurature suits your oven for roasting vegetables)
  • top and tail the onion, remove the outer flaky skin. Place in a small roasting dish with olive oil and place in the hottest part of the oven
  • reserve one and half potatoes
  • do not peel the remaining potatoes. Dig out any nasty bits. Cube. Place in a roasting dish with olive oil and place in the hottest part of the oven
  • de-skin the garlic, place in a small covered baking container with olive oil and get that in the oven too.
  • Dry roast the peppercorns
  • ** Note: I leave it to you to remove the onion, garlic and spuds from the oven at the right time. In my oven, the onion would take the longest, followed by the spuds. The garlic would be ready in about 15-20 minutes while the peppercorns would be (dry) roasted in 5 or 6 minutes.
  • Meanwhile….peel the reserved spuds. Cut in to smallish pieces and boil together with the bay leaf and the miso paste. Once the spuds are soft, gently mash them. This forms the basis of the “soup”
  • Once the peppercorns are roasted; crush them in a mortar and pestle
  • Once the garlic is roasted, puree it together with some of the soup and add to saucepan. At this time also add the chopped rosemary and thyme, and fish out the bay leaves.
  • Once the spuds and onion are roasted… the outer skin of the rost onion will be chewy and needs to be removed. Stand the onion on one end and slice in half with a very sharp knife (a blunt knife will make a right mess of this as the onion should be very soft). Lay down the halves on their cut side. Using whatever implement is to hand, “pinch” off the outer layer and discard. Cut the roast onion into largish pieces.
  • Add roast potato, onion, pepper, chopped dill and parsley to the soup.
  • Stir
  • Eat – note that the longer you delay the eating now the less the roast spuds will have a nice crispiness to them

Nice with chunky bread…