My family loves a great homemade brunch. In the past, my brunches centered around a frittata or a an egg or tofu/cheese scramble, with lots of sides of hash browns, salsas, guacamole, bread, and fruit. For a recent family gathering, including all non-vegans except for myself, I wanted to try out a whole food, plant-based vegan centerpiece and decided to make this quiche, adapted from a few different recipes. I was surprised that everyone totally enjoyed this egg-free, cheese-free, oil-free quiche! It was a scrumptious, filling and wholesome brunch. Nutritionally, with the added salsas and sides, you have a lot of bases covered–greens, vegetables, onions, beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds, berries, and more!

The “crust” for this quiche is made simply from sliced potatoes, overlapped in the pie dish and pre-baked before adding the filling. I did put a drop of oil into the pan and wiped it out with a paper towel before adding the potatoes, to avoid sticking.  I scrubbed the potatoes and left the skin on. Then I thinly sliced the potatoes and placed them in the quiche pan, overlapping the slices to fill up all the spaces and covering the sides. I baked this potato crust in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 12 minutes, until the potatoes were lightly browned. There was some shrinkage of the potatoes, so I recommend using enough slices to thoroughly overlap each other.

For the quiche filling, rather than using the traditional eggs, cream and cheese, I used a blended mixture of cashews, tahini, flour, oats, almond milk, spinach, and seasoning, with additional vegetables, butternut squash, artichoke hearts and tomatoes, mixed in, and it baked into a luscious quiche texture.

For the base of the quiche filling, I used my Vitamix blender (see my post on Kitchen Essentials here– http://table-karma.com/kitchen-essentials-vitamix-ultimate-blender/) and all of the following filling ingredients to the blender, and blend until smooth:

1/2 cup Organic Rolled Oats

1/4 cup Raw Cashews (I did not pre-soak for this recipe)

1/2 cup Flour (I used Chickpea flour)

2 tbsp Nutritional Yeast

1 cup Unsweetened Almond Milk

2 tsp Dijon Mustard

1/4 cup Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice

4 cloves Garlic

Once you have the blended quiche base, you can stir in any extra vegetables you like. I really loved adding the butternut squash because it gave the quiche a “cheesy” look that I thought my non-vegan family would like. I also added the chopped spinach, sliced green onions, a jar of artichoke hearts, and tomatoes. Other great ideas wold be cooked asparagus, onions, mushrooms, olives, jalapeños, broccoli, chopped kale, etc. You can really customize this dish to your own taste!

I used a bag of Whole Foods Organic Butternut Squash, that I warmed in the oven along with the potato crust.

I mixed in the vegetables and topped the quiche with sliced tomatoes and more salt, pepper and herbs.

 

Pop into a the preheated oven and bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, about 20 minutes.