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!

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.