Eggless Spinach and Cheddar Cheese Quiche

For this month's Baking Eggless group challenge, I chose a savoury bake. Every month we tried out sweet bakes and the members asked for savoury bakes for a change. So I selected a recipe for quiche from Martha Stewart's web site. Quiche is a savoury pie usually filled with a mixture of cream, eggs and cheese. The crust is usually made of biscuit dough and when baked it becomes crisp and flaky. The filling comes out to be a soft custard complimenting the crispy base. Our challenge was to make the filling eggless. As the filling had 4 eggs, it was quite challenging. When I thought of a substitute, the first ingredient which came to my mind was paneer. When baked it will be soft and it will also give volume to the filling. When I finished with the quiche, I couldn't wait to remove it from the pan. So I did a mistake. I removed it when it was still hot and the filling was very soft. Then I let it to cool and it became firm. I made another small quiche which I removed from the pan when completely firm. It came out so nice. We had it with tomato ketchup and it was so rich and delicious.

Recipe Adapted From Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

For The Pie Crust:

Maida/ All Purpose Flour-1 1/4cup

Cold Butter-100gm

Salt-1/2tsp

Sugar-1/2tsp

Ice Cold Water-2tsp

For The Filling:

Spinach-2bunches

Cheddar Cheese-200gm

Full Cream Milk-1cup

Crumbled Paneer-1/2cup

Onion-1

Green Chilly-3

Salt-to taste

Butter-1tbs

Procedure:

Mix maida, butter, sugar and salt and mix it with finger tips until crumbly. You can also use a hand blender or food processor to do the work.
Add the water and bring the dough together. It will be still crumbly.
Place it in a cling wrap, cover and refrigerate for 30minutes.
Finely chop onion, green chillies and spinach.
Heat butter and add onion and green chillies.
When they turn golden, add the spinach and salt.
The spinach will wilt. Transfer contents to a colander and drain excess water. Press the mixture to remove all the liquid from the spinach.
Preheat oven to 200C.
Roll out the pie dough between two cling wraps into a thin circle.
Grease a 7 ½” pie dish with a loose bottom.
Remove the top cling wrap and place the rolled out dough on the pie dish.
Remove the other cling wrap and press the dough into the dish.
Remove excess dough.
The remaining dough can be used to line a small 4” pie dish.
Prick the lined dough with fork.
Blind bake for 10minutes.
Add paneer and milk and grind it to a smooth mixture.

Arranging The Quiche:

Spread a portion of the cheese on the crust.
Divide the spinach mixture between two crusts.
Sprinkle another portion of the cheese on it.
Divide and pour the milk mixture on both the quiches.
Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.
Bake on the middle rack for 45-60minutes.
The smaller quiche will take only 30 minutes.
During the process, if the quiche browns fast, then place a wire tray on top shelf and place a foil on it to avoid further browning.
After 60minutes, remove the quiche from oven.

Removing The Quiche From The Tin:

Once warm, place the quiche on a long, narrow but firm object. I used a condensed milk tin.
Gently loosen the sides and remove the side of the tin.
Now with a thin and long spatula, release the pie from the bottom plate.
Gently transfer to a serving plate.
Slice it up and serve.

P.S:

1. Don’t fill the crust to the rim. Leave a little gap. Otherwise the filling will ooze out from the quiche.

2. Make sure that the quiche is warm and firm while removing it from the tin. I did the mistake of removing it when hot and quiche lost shape. So be patient.