Crustless caramelised onion & spinach Quiche

It's been ages since I've done a homemade quiche so a few weeks ago I tried one out using generally what I already had in, but also my favourite quiche ingredients when buying any from the shop.
They are relatively straight forward to make and generally a good people pleaser, so fingers crossed it would go down well with my little fussy eater!

I opted for caramelised onion and spinach quiche. I have to be honest I'm not overly keen on the flavour of cooked Spinach but I love it raw so I used dried frozen spinach and a few fresh leaves on top.
I did cheat a bit to save time and used pre-made pastry but I am including a recipe for short crust pastry if you'd like to make it yourself.

Recipe

Ingredients:

For the short crust pastry:

• 100g butter
• 200g flour
• 2tbsp water

For the Filling:

• 5 medium eggs
• 1 carton of single cream
• 115ml semi skimmed milk
• 200g grated mild or medium cheddar cheese 
• 1 small white onion
• Half a bag of frozen spinach
• Approx 10 cherry tomatoes
• Small amount of veg oil (for onions)
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar (for onions)
• 1/2 tsp salt (for onions)
• Seasoning (I used salt, pepper and ground garlic)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 200oc
• Make the short crust pastry
• Roll out and fit to dish. Blind bake for 10 minutes.
• Thinly slice the onions and fry them gently in small amount of veg oil. When they start to soften add sugar and salt. Heat until softened and gently browned.
• Whisk the eggs, cream and milk together.
• Dry off spinach between pieces of kitchen towel.
• Grate cheese and add to mixture. We also sprinkled some on the base.
• Slice cherry tomatoes and arrange on pastry base.
• Add spinach and onions into the quiche dish.
• Add the egg mixture to the dish.
• Cook for 40 minutes at 180oc

We had our warm with salad, it was lovely and it was a hit with my fussy eater too!

Amoy sticky glaze chinese BBQ Quorn Fillets and veg with noodles

A few weeks ago I spotted a couple of new 'sauces' whilst out grocery shopping. I picked up one of Amoy's new range; sticky glaze sweet soy.
I'm always looking for inspiration for new vegetarian dishes that don't rile my condition (e.g anything based on pulses, chick peas, lentils etc) and I'd always wanted to try sticky glaze vegetarian style so these were great.
I tried it with Quorn fillets and veg and it was a success.

Roll on a few weeks later and I've tried out 'Sticky Glaze, Chinese BBQ' using Quorn fillets, similar veg and noodles.



A really simple dish to make. Here's what you need:

• A pack of Quorn fillets, left out to defrost (we used 4 fillets)
• A sachet of amoy sticky glaze
• Veg of your choice. I used 4 carrots, a leek, one onion and some baby sweet corn.
• 2 tsp vegetable oil

Method:

1. Pre heat the oven to 200oc
2. I first put the carrots and corn onto par boil
3. Whilst they were cooking I chopped the rest of the veg.
4. I brushed the vegetable oil over the bottom of a casserole dish.
5. I placed in 4 quorn fillets and placed the onion and leek around them.
6. I then drained and placed the carrots and corn into the dish.
7. Then I added the sticky glaze to the fillets and brushed onto surrounding veg also.
8. Then put into the oven to cook for 25 minutes.
9. Put noodles on to cook five minutes before the dish is due out.
10. Serve

Crunchy Smoked Paprika Tofu Skewers

*

So here are the smoked paprika tofu skewers I made the other night, a big hit with my fussy eater which was great!

With having the above mentioned fussy eater and having restrictions to what I can eat myself due to my crohn's, I'm always happy to come across new recipes that suit our needs that we've not tried out yet.

 I got this fab meal inspiration from Lauren Geislers blog and just used different seasonings to marinade the Tofu.

I was unsure of what seasoning to use due to said fussy eater, so I opted for what I felt was a safe flavour and tried out a spanish smoked paprika pot shot. As these seasonings are oil based they are not taken up by tofu as easily so after coating my drained, pressed Tofu in the pot shot and refridgerating for a while, I cooked it in a wok for about 15-20 minutes to help it take on the flavour a bit more.

After that I followed Lauren's recipe giving the tofu a rough covering with flour, coating in egg and rolling in bread crumbs. I used normal bread crumbs which I made just by breaking up a couple of slices of bread into pieces and sticking them in my blender.

I then baked for 30 minutes.

Whilst the tofu was cooking I used up the left over pot shot with some pasta to accompany the skewers and served with salad and dip. I used a whole pack of Cauldron Tofu which made 4 large skewers so enough for 4 adults** when served with Pasta and salad. We saved our extra's for the next day. G loved trying out food on a skewer, having a go with the dips and enjoyed the way the Tofu was cooked. A secret little woohoo went off inside my head at finding something else that G will happily eat without a fight!

a bit of a forced smile but she did like them!

We saved the extra skewers and left over pasta for the next day

I'd try out some home made, non oil based marinades next time.


*As you can see I have yet to get fancy table wear to display my meal idea's/recipes for the blog. This will soon be ammended. I also still don't have my camera repaired from the pesky grains of sand that have rendered the Zoom Lens inactive. 

**Or 6 children if put on smaller skewers or used as finger food

Leek & Parsnip risotto ft Quorn

I would like to have a beautiful photo to open this post with but bad lighting and my own camera being temporarily out of action (pesky sand grains) lead to a dodgy one off my daughters camera I'm borrowing (which I'm very grateful about or photo's would be non existent right now). 

Anyway! I decided to have a go at incorporating some quorn products into a risotto last night. 

In retrospect I think less would have been more and I would have done this without the quorn bacon and the parsnip. The veggie bacon is lovely and parsnip goes wonderfully in risotto but this was a bit too adventurous and had too many ingredients! 

Also the stock is everything. I tried a cheaper version than I usually use with risotto, it was Asda's own vegetable stock and felt really let down on the flavour. Bisto all the way! At least until I find a good cheaper alternative.

If using the recipe below I would either just do the pea, leek and parsnip or as I mentioned above just the pea, leek and quorn chicken version.

Recipe

Ingredients:

Image sourced from internet

• 3 tbs vegetable oil
• 3 garlic cloves diced
• 1 red onion diced
• 2 handful's of frozen peas
• 2.5 pint's of vegetable stock 
• 1 Large Leek
• 2-3 Parsnips
• 2 handfuls Quorn chicken pieces
• 2 pieces of Quorn veggie bacon 
• 375g Arborio Rice
• Knob of butter/margerine

Method:

• Peel and dice garlic and onion and place into a large oiled pan (2tbs oil) to slowly soften.
• Peel and chop parsnip into chunks and place into separate pan of boiling water to par boil for 10 - 12 minutes.
• After 5 minutes break the 2 slices of veggie bacon into small squarish pieces and add along side the quorn pieces to the large risotto/wok/non stick pan.
• Thinly slice leek and add to the main pan.
• After 10 minutes turn up the heat slightly and add last tbs oil to pan and add in your risotto rice and mix together so coated in the oil.
• After a few minutes add a ladelful of stock and mix in.
• Allow the rice to absorb the stock and then add the next ladelful. Continue like this until you have added a pint of stock. Then add the par boiled parsnip into your risotto pan.
• Continue again to slowly add the rest of your stock, allowing it to be absorbed in each time.
• Keep cooking/adding stock until your rice is soft/al dente.
• Mix in a knob of butter/margerine for an extra creamy affect.

Apologies for the dodgy photo!  

The quorn turned out to be a lovely edition.

My favourite risotto is pea and parsnip. I think I'll be trying out roasted courgette risotto next but back to a good vegetable stock.


What's your favourite risotto recipe?

Quorn pieces 5 veg Stif-fry with Satay Sauce

I made this last night and whilst I think most people know how to make a stir fry I'm putting up a recipe just in case you have never made one before and would like to give it a go!

Ingredients:

• Quorn pieces
• 1 red onion
• 1 yellow pepper
• A handful of baby sweetcorns
• 1-2 Leeks
• 3 cloves of thinly sliced garlic
• 2 medium carrots
• Sunflower oil
• Asda Satay Sauce
• Sharwoods medium noodles

Method:

• Remove Quorn pieces from the freezer a while before cooking
• Wash, peel and slice all vegetables
• Par boil carrots in a separate pan for a couple of minutes
• Gently warm some oil in a wok/large non stick pan 
• Add the garlic and onion after gently cook
• After about 5 minutes, remove these into another dish and add in the carrots and sweetcorn to the wok with some more oil. I don't always do this, but if you have a smaller pan you need to to ensure the veg cook properly.
•  After a couple of minutes add in the leek and pepper.
• If using dried noodles rather than fresh egg noodles, stick these in a pan to cook now. Sharwoods take about 4 minutes.
• When veg are ready (tender but not overly so) add back in the garlic, onion and quorn and add in your sauce.
• Cook/stir for few minutes.
• Drain noodles and toss with some soy sauce
• Serve 

I usually use Quorn pieces or Tofu when making a stir fry. Out of the all frozen meat free chicken piece's I find Quorn's to be the best, but just to reassure anyone I'm not biased as I actually don't like their sausages or mince.
I tried Asda's own Satay sauce this time to keep on a budget. It was very mild which is good for my 3 year old but it could have done with just a bit more flavour!





I'll be experimenting by incorporating some Quorn chicken pieces and Quorn bacon into a risotto this evening so I'll see how that goes! I'll also be putting up a recipe for Amoy sweet soy sticky glaze Quorn fillets and veg on the blog very soon!




Have you ever tried any Quorn products? What did you think?

Jus-Rol Lemon & Blueberry Tarts

 After using Jus-Rol for our apple and blackberry pie the other week I ended up having a look on their website and found lots of lovely recipes. One quite simple fun looking one I thought would be good to do with Grace was the Lemon and Blueberry tarts. They sounded lovely and also quick to make thanks to using Jus-Rol Short Crust Pastry Block.

Of course you can make your own pastry for these but this was easier baking with a 3 year old who has a tendency (not just mine I'm sure!) of sprinkling sugar and flour everywhere - 'it looks like snow mummy' and an unawareness that holding the mixing spoon coated in a huge glob of mixture might result in said mixture going all over carpet/table/furniture/child, delete as appropriate!

Recipe:

1 Shortcrust Pastry Block (chilled) 

125g mascarpone cheese tub 

1 egg  

1/2 lemon Juice and rind 

75g caster sugar   

Approx. 100 blueberries (fresh) 

 icing sugar to serve if desired 

Method: 

Preheat oven to 200°C / 180°C for fan assisted

1. Unroll pastry, cut out 12 discs, use to line a 12 hole bun or jam tart tin.
2. Beat together the egg, cheese, lemon juice and rind and the sugar until creamy. Divide the blueberries between the pastry cases and top with the cheese and lemon mixture.
3. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until pastry pale golden and filling set.

To go to direct to the recipe follow this link

A bit messy but lovely!

We found you could make twice the amount (24 tarts) with the whole of the pastry block. You could also just save the other half of the pastry for another recipe.
We doubled up the filling ingredients so we had enough for the extra tarts.

Yum!

After filling all the tarts we still had some mixture left so put that in a pie dish and cooked that too. It was lovely just on it's own or could be had with ice cream.

G loved the final results which hopefully made up for mummy being stressy :( when she started sprinkling the sugar everywhere but the mixing bowl. We will definately be making these again :)

Vegetarian Cottage Pie

Please excuse the seriously dodgy photo!

In case you can't tell what it is from the shockingly bad photo (he only one that came out visible thanks to bad lighting and no proper camera) it's a lovely vegetarian cottage pie!

It tasted lovely so that's the main thing!


Recipe:

Ingredients:

•  Bag of veggie mince (I used Asda's own, I'm not keen on Quorn mince)
• 4 carrots peeled and chopped
• 1 large courgette (or other veg of your choice)
• Frozen peas
• 1 diced red onion
• Thinly sliced garlic
• Half tin chopped tomatoes
• 1tbsp tomato puree
• Pint of vegetable stock
• 2tbsp soy sauce
• 2tbsp vegetarian gravy granules (used to thicken as I didn't have any corn flour).
• Salt, pepper, various herbs for seasoning
• 1 1/2 tbsp margarine
• 2tbsp soya milk
• Approx 900g potatoes

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180c
• Peel, slice then boil the potatoes until tender. Drain and set aside.
• Whilst the potatoes are boiling, peel and chop the onion and garlic and fry in oil in saucepan until gently softened. Peel, chop and add carrots.
• Chop and add courgette or other veg to pan.
• Add the veggie mince, peas and vegetable stock, stir then allow to simmer.
• Add the tomato puree, tin tomatoes, seasoning, soy sauce and gravy granules. Allow to simmer and continue to stir. 
• When sauce thickened and carrots soft enough, pour into large oven proof dish.
• Mash the potatoes with the milk and margarine until smooth and fluffy. Add seasoning. Spread over the veggie mince then smooth over with a fork.
• Bake for approximately 20 minutes until the topping is crisp. I could have done with leaving mine to cook for a few more minutes but I had a hungry child to feed!

I would say mine would serve 8 to 10 depending on portion sizes. Serve with extra veg.....carrots, peas...what ever you fancy.