Being a staff member at VfL has its perks. At the start of the year, we sent a VfL recipe calendar to all members of our UK List of veggie-friendly care homes, and I managed to get my hands on one. It was designed for catering staff, so that each month they have an exciting new vegan dish ready and waiting to try out with residents. I'd love to share one special recipe from this calendar with you, as we celebrate National Vegetarian Week.
This recipe is for an Asparagus, Potato & Broccoli Quiche, designed by one of VfL's very own Roving Chefs, Maggie. I sampled this quiche months ago, when we had a pop-up lunch for older vegans and veggies at a local community centre to celebrate the launch of our vegan meal delivery guide, Dinners to Your Door. When I tried it then it was absolute heaven, but I didn't consider making it myself... surely quiche is complicated?
I generally only think about cooking when I'm hungry, therefore the majority of my meals are prepped and on the plate within 15 minutes. When I turned the page of the calendar at the start of May, I realised that this quiche recipe would be staring at me in my kitchen for the whole of the month. So instead of torturing myself with the memory of good quiche, I decided to give it a try!
This recipe has more ingredients than I'm used to, with a total of 13 listed. However, I chose not to use the optional black salt, which provides the flavour of egg. I didn't see any point in adding this, because I found the taste and smell of egg gross even before I went vegan. I bought chickpea flour, pastry and the fresh vegetables from the shop. All other ingredients were already in my kitchen cupboard.
I started making the meal at 7pm, knowing that a friend would be coming round to eat at 7.30pm. I thought this couldn't possibly be enough time – I had to prepare the vegetables, mix the flour in with other things and get it all quiche-shaped! Most significantly, I didn't have any weighing scales, or a quiche tin! As I had a 500g sack of chickpea flour I guessed at what was a quarter, and put the mixture in a cake tin.
I followed all of the steps as closely as possible, preheating the oven, blind-baking the pastry, using a whisk to beat the flour and vegetable stock. I then spooned all the mixture on top of the pastry, and sprinkled a hefty amount of (optional) vegan mozarella on top.
My friend was about 5 minutes late, and I put the quiche in the oven pretty much as she rang the bell. So that's a total of 35 minutes from start to finish... not bad for my first shot at a quiche recipe!
I served it with a lentil concoction of my own devising (lentils, spinach and oatly cream), and a salad.
About 45 minutes, later, I took it out of the oven and cut it easily into pieces. Since I'd made mine in a cake tin, it was thicker than your average quiche and actually cut into cake-like slices.
All I can say is, this quiche was fabulous. The texture was so creamy and thick. Next time I'm going to turn it into a pasty filling, because it made me reminisce about the days when I'd get a 70p cheese and onion pasty from Sayers. Now I've got a healthier, tastier and cruelty-free alternative.
I recommend this recipe to anyone: try it out and surprise them with a magnificent creamy vegan quiche!
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Recipes