No Cheese, Vegetable Quiche

The recipe appears in the Make If From Scratch Carnival!


(I'm clearly not a food stylist but I hope you can see how good this quiche looks anyway!)

I've never made a cheese-less quiche before so when I was faced with leftover pie crust dough, lots of eggs and vegetables but no cheese and too much snow on the ground to go get some, I was a little concerned. I figured I'd give it a go, without the cheese and see how it turned out. It was delicious! The texture was much lighter and fluffier and the flavor not nearly as rich as a standard quiche. I much preferred this no cheese variety. I have to assume the lack of cheese makes it healthier too! You can throw almost anything in a quiche so if you don't have these vegetables, use what you do have! Also, don't feel constrained by the amounts of vegetables. You're trying to fill up the pie shell; the exact amount of each are not important.

1 pie crust (store-bought or make your own)
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, diced
1 crown of broccoli, broken into florets, cutting the large ones
2 cups of sliced mushrooms
1 crushed, dried red pepper or 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 cup milk
4 eggs
salt and pepper to taste

Some people advocate pre-baking the crust and some don't. I like to pre-bake my crust as I feel it makes the crust flakier. If you want to pre-bake, put the crust in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 375 degrees.

Put a pot of water on to boil for blanching the broccoli. Prepare a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking when the broccoli is done. When the water comes to a boil, add the broccoli, blanche until the broccoli is bright green - about 3 minutes, remove the broccoli from the boiling water and plunge in the ice water to stop the cooking. Remove from the iced water and set aside on paper towels to drain.

Saute' diced onion, dried red pepper, salt and pepper until the onion is translucent, add garlic, saute' until fragrant - about 1 minute. Add bell pepper, saute' until starting to soften, about 3-4 minutes, add mushrooms, saute' until the mushrooms give up their liquid and it is mostly cooked off. Remove the vegetables from the heat.

Combine the eggs and milk and set aside.

Layer the vegetables into the pie crust, filling the crust evenly. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the vegetable filled pie crust. I topped my quiche with leaf cut-outs made from the leftover dough. If you decide to decorate your quiche in this manner, brush the dough leaves with egg white to help them brown.

Bake for 30 - 45 minutes at 375 degrees. Check the quiche carefully. The quiche will be done with the egg custard is set and no longer shakes when you jiggle the quiche. Remove from the oven and let sit for 15 minutes before serving.

Let me know what you think about the no-cheese quiche!