Vegan leek and butternut quiche

A delicious and colourful protein-packed dish – we felt like domestic deities pulling this beauty out of the oven, and you will too.

 Ingredients

1 butternut pumpkin

1 leek

A few stalks of fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)

Vegan pastry (gluten-free if required)

350g soft or silken tofu

1 cup grated Angel Food cheddar

⅓ cup chickpea flour

¼ cup nutritional yeast

1 tablespoon cornflour

½ cup plant-based milk

½ teaspoon mustard powder

1 teaspoon black salt (this will help give an eggy flavour – but regular salt is fine too)

½ teaspoon white pepper (or fresh ground black pepper)

Instructions

1.        Preheat oven to 200°C.

2.        Peel the butternut and cut into approximately 1cm dice. Toss with a little oil, spread on a baking sheet and roast until softened and starting to caramelise on the edges. Remove from the oven and set aside. (You'll only need about half of the butternut for the quiche, so use the rest in a salad or soup tomorrow!)

3.        Trim, wash and finely slice the leek. Sauté, with the thyme, over medium heat in a little oil until softened. Remove from the heat and set aside.

4.        Blind bake your pie crust: use pastry to line a 25-cm diameter baking dish and prick all over with a fork to allow steam to escape (to help keep it flat). Cover the pastry with baking paper and cover that with either ceramic baking beans or dried legumes (e.g. chickpeas) to weight the pastry down. Bake for 10 minutes at 200. Remove the baking paper and baking beans, and bake for another 5 minutes.

5.        In a food processor or blender, blend the following ingredients until smooth: tofu, cheddar, chickpea flour, nutritional yeast, cornflour, milk, mustard, salt and pepper.

6.        Preheat oven to 180°C.

7.        Fill the pastry shell with one cup of the roasted butternut and one cup of the sauteed leeks, and a generous sprinkle of fresh or dried thyme leaves. Pour over the tofu mixture – it should come up to almost the top of the sides. Decorate the top, if you wish, with some pieces of pumpkin, and fresh tomato slices.

8.        Bake for about 40 minutes – the centre should just be set, with a slight wobble. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before cutting.

Serve warm or cold, with salad or steamed vegetables.

The recipe is not suitable for freezing, but will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

Notes

If your baking dish is wider than 25cm then the filling will of course be shallower and cooking time will be less. If your dish is smaller, you will likely have some extra mix left over: you can bake this in small greased ramekins.

Variations

Use Angel Food feta instead of cheddar – blend it as per the recipe or gently stir in with the vegetables if you’d like to keep it in bigger pieces.

You can certainly use different vegetables than the butternut and leek we’ve used here. Most will need to be precooked, like the butternut and leek. Small broccoli pieces would be good, precooked and then drained and blotted to remove as much moisture as possible.