Good Vegan Quiche Recipe: Yes, It's Possible

Searching the fridge for food I found a vacuum-sealed box of tofu, and thought for half a second about my first tofu quiche that so traumatized me I never made another. But the fridge offered little else: asparagus, a quarter of a bell pepper, and four elderly flour tortillas which I olive-oiled and used to pave a pie plate and pre-baked for about 8 minutes as a crust. Everything else went into the blender. Knock me over with a feather, the result was good enough to serve to female company born after 1946, although if I was really serving company I'd use a normal piecrust. The original recipe from Allrecipes.com uses broccoli. Adding nutritional yeast to enhance the "cheese" flavor is my idea.

Tofu Asparagus Quiche

1 9-inch piecrust, prebaked until lightly browned
1/2 to 3/4 lb. asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch segments
1/4 red bell pepper, diced
1 Tablespoon oil
1 chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
12-ounce package of firm or extra firm vacuum-packed tofu, drained
1/2 cup soymilk
1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground red or black pepper
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
3 Tablespoons nutritional yeast

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. While the piecrust cools, saute the chopped onion in the oil until softened, add the garlic and cook some more, and in a separate pot, steam the asparagus well. (Leave it too crisp and it will release water into the quiche.) Drain the asparagus dry and put it in a large bowl with the chopped bell pepper. Dump all other ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Pour this mixture over the asparagus and bell pepper and mix well. Turn this mixture into the prepared crust and bake for 35 minutes. Allow the quiche to stand 10 minutes before cutting.

Berry Pie in Filo (Phyllo) Crust: Recipe

Crust-making is easy and lower-fat using fillo and cooking spray, and although unconventional, this pie tastes very good and isn't too sweet. How about a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it?

Berry Pie in Filo (Phyllo) Dough Crust

1 box filo dough, thawed
1 12-ounce bag frozen unsweetened strawberries, thawed, with their juice
1 12-ounce bag frozen unsweetened blueberries, thawed, with their juice
2 apples OR 2 pears, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons cornstarch
cooking spray
butter

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Place strawberries, blueberries and apple or pear pieces in a saucepan. Add sugar and cornstarch, mix gently and cook just until the juices thicken. Add cinnamon. Allow the saucepan and contents to cool.

Grease a 9-inch Pyrex pie plate with butter. Lay one sheet of fillo dough down over it. Let the excess fillo dough hang off the edges. Spray this with cooking spray. Continue to lay fillo sheets over the plate, fanning each piece around the pie plate so there's fillo hanging off every edge; spray each sheet. When there are about 20 sheets down, pour in the filling. Lay a few more fillo sheets over the filling and spray them and and butter the top layer. Then lift the excess hanging fillo up toward the center of the pie plate. It will be a wrinkly top crust. Spray this top crust or butter it to make it dark golden. 

Pierce the top of the pie three times with a knife. Place it on a baking sheet to contain any spills, and put the pie in the oven. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, then lower the oven heat to 350 for another 20 minutes. Allow the pie to cool. Yield: one 9-inch pie. That's 4 Midwestern servings, 8 servings elsewhere.

You will be surprised how the apple or pear pieces enliven this pie!