Mushroom Asparagus Quiche

What can I say about quiche that hasn’t already been said? It’s an easy-to-make dish, it can be customized however you like, and, with its filling of eggs, milk (or cream), and cheese, it is substantial enough to satisfy just about anyone. You can get super creative with assembling the various ingredients and produce works of art, but even fledgeling foodies can prepare a quiche that looks and tastes delicious. The main fillers in this quiche are mushroom and asparagus - which is a fairly misunderstood and underappreciated vegetable! For other tips and suggestions on how to cook asparagus, please visit our friends at Quick Easy Cook. Their blog is teeming with information on subjects ranging from kitchen utensils to specific ingredients and foods to chef apparel (think comfortable shoes!) - and has a plethora of quick and easy healthy recipes that even novice cooks can master.

Okay, back to the quiche - here's a simple dice-and-dump recipe for a hearty breakfast, lunch, or dinner!

 

Ingredients: (serves 6-8)

~8 asparagus spears

~4oz mushrooms

4 eggs

1 cup milk (I used 1%)

~1 cup + 3 TBSP shredded cheddar cheese

~2-3 cloves garlic, minced

Pepper, salt, paprika to taste

1 pie crust

Heat oven to 350°F.

Beat eggs in a bowl. Add milk and spices and mix well. Finely chop the asparagus and mushrooms.

 

Toss the chopped mushroom and asparagus with 1 cup of shredded cheese. Place pie crust in a 9” pie pan, spread veggie-cheese mixture into the pie crust, then pour in the egg-milk mixture. Sprinkle the remaining shredded cheese on top.

Bake 40-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the quiche cool for 5-10 minutes, then dig in!

 

~ Karla

Find us on Facebook

Blueberry Banana Cheesecake Bread

We eat a lot of bananas at my house - plain, with peanut butter, in oatmeal, you name it. Sometimes we buy too many, and half of them will pass an acceptable level of ripeness before we have a chance to eat them...so I’ll mash some up to make these delectable blueberry banana muffins - my go-to recipe for using up super ripe bananas. They are perfectly sized for breakfasts, as well as snacks that don’t make you feel too guilty. But, as with many things that I make a lot, I got a little bored with these and wanted to mix things up a little bit. I came across this recipe that literally does just that: banana bread split by a cream cheese layer - yum! I’m a huge fan of cheesecake, so adding a layer of cheesecake-y goodness sounded like the perfect boost for my basic recipe.

 

Ingredients:

Base banana bread recipe can be found here

Add-ins: ~¾ cup blueberries (I used frozen, and did not thaw before adding to the batter, but did try to remove any excess ice that had built up)

For cream cheese filling

8oz cream cheese, softened (I used reduced fat)

6 TBSP all-purpose flour

½ cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9x5 loaf pans.

Prepare the blueberry banana bread batter according to the directions found here.

For the cream cheese filling, combine all ingredients and mix well (use a hand mixer with whisk attachment for best results).

Pour banana bread mixture into the loaf pans until they are ½ - ⅔ full. Pour half of the cream cheese mixture into each loaf pan on top of the banana bread batter, gently spreading it with a spoon or spatula to fill all corners. Top with the remaining banana bread batter.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Tent foil over the loaf pans after about 30 minutes to bake evenly and prevent the top and sides from cooking faster than the center.

 

Let the bread cool for about 15 minutes, then slice and enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea!

~Karla


Find us on Facebook
 

Zucchini Spiral Quiche

There are so many things to love about summer - long sunny days, fluffy clouds, beautiful sunsets, and weekend farmers markets! Farmers market is my prime motivation on Saturdays to get an early morning workout. Once I’m up and about, and feeling good about having burnt some calories, I head to the market for delicious breakfast crepes or tacos, and pick up fresh veggies and fruits for the week. Lately I’ve been seeing über bright yellow & green zucchini at several vendor booths. Last week I got one of each, and decided to make something that really highlights those lovely bright colors. I had seen pictures of spiral quiches floating around on the internet, and quiche being one of my go-to dishes when I can’t figure out what to make, I thought I’d give the spiral quiche a try! I added ricotta cheese to the custard to make it a bit dense so it could hold the zucchini. This quiche certainly required some extra efforts, but the eye-catching results were worth it, and it was absolutely delicious!

 

Ingredients:

2 large Zucchini (1 green, 1 yellow)

1 pie crust

3 eggs

¾ cup part skim ricotta cheese

¼ cup skim milk

1 Tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese - optional

¼ tsp Nutmeg - optional

Salt and ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 F.

 

Wash the zucchini and slice them very thin lengthwise?. You want the slices to also be of similar width so slices towards the wider middle might need to be cut in half lengthwise. Sprinkle a little bit of salt on the slices and let them sit for a half hour to release moisture. Use paper towels to squeeze out as much moisture as possible. If this step is skipped you’ll end up with a lot of liquid in the quiche as it starts baking. If this happens, don’t worry! Just use paper towels and soak up the liquid on top and continue to bake. You might have to repeat blotting a few times during the total baking period.

While the zucchini slices are resting, lightly grease a 9” baking pan and line it with pie crust. Add pie weights (or dry beans, rice etc.) and bake the crust for 10 min. Increase the oven temperature to 375 F.

 

Make the custard by mixing the eggs, ricotta cheese and milk in a bowl. Add nutmeg and season with salt and pepper (remember there’s salt on the zucchini slices!!).

Assembling the quiche:

Add the custard to the semi baked pie crust.

 

Start rolling one zucchini slice with the skin side on top. Roll it really tight! Then take another slice of different color and roll it around the first one. Keep doing this till you get a tightly wound disk about 5-6” in diameter (or as wide as you can hold securely). While you are rolling it is best to have someone assisting or use heavy objects to hold the ends of the zucchini slices in place. I had a few glass bowls helping me with this.

 

Once you have a 5-6” disk, gently pick it up and place it in the center of the pie crust with the custard. Continue adding zucchini slices till you reach the crust. You’ll get custard all over your hands but trust me, it’s totally worth it!

 

Transfer the baking pan to the oven and bake for ~45-50 min until the custard is well set. As I mentioned earlier, don’t worry if you see liquid pooling on top. You can just soak it up with a paper towel. Once the custard is set to your liking, sprinkle grated cheese on top and broil on high for a couple minutes until the cheese is browned.

 

If at any point you feel like the crust is getting too dark, you can cover the crust with Aluminum foil. This will allow the rest of the quiche to continue baking while reducing the intensity of heat transferred to the crust.

 

Once baked, let the quiche cool for ~5-10 minutes, then slice and serve!

~Gayatri

Find us on Facebook:

Baked Chicken Mini-Empanadas

One of the fun things about cooking is figuring out what to do with various leftovers that at first glance don’t appear to go together at all. Being adventurous with how you mix all those seemingly unrelated ingredients can turn out delectable results...but just as often you might think Wow, I’ll never try that again! On a recent forage into my refrigerator, I happened across some leftover barbecue chicken, brown rice, cheese sticks, and pie crusts. What to do? Previously, I had made these siopao snacks with barbecue chicken, but I didn’t have any biscuits. The pie crust made me think of strudel, but the chicken would have barely filled one. However, the idea of stuffed pie crust led me to think of a childhood favorite - the pasty, pronounced PASS-tee. A hearty filling surrounded by a pastry crust - yum! Then I thought, why not make miniature versions? And then I thought Ooh, maybe I’ll call it an empanada...sounds fancier! The two dishes could actually be considered cousins, as they both are essentially dough or pastry stuffed with a variety of meat, cheese, vegetables, etc., with pasties originating from Cornwall, England, and empanadas originating from Portugal and Spain. Pasties are baked, while empanadas can be baked or fried. Bolstering my resolve to consider these treats as empanadas is the fact that pasties typically contain vegetables - which I did not have. So, “empanada” it was!

Ingredients: (makes ~18 empanadas)

~1 cup chicken, cooked and shredded

~½ cup cooked rice

~¼ cup shredded cheese (I had a Colby-Jack cheese stick, which turned out to be about ¼ cup after it was chopped up to small pieces)

2 9” pie crusts

1 egg

Heat oven to 350°F.

Mix chicken, rice, and cheese together. Roll out pie crusts, and cut them each into thirds both vertically and horizontally.

In a small bowl, whisk the egg. Brush egg along the edges of each piece of pie crust to help seal the empanadas. Place ~1 TBSP of the chicken mixture on each piece, then fold the dough over diagonally and pinch the sides together. Use fork tines to crimp and seal.

Place on a parchment  lined baking sheet and brush tops with egg.

Bake ~20 min until golden brown. Let cool before munching...you might have a hard time stopping with just one!

 

~Karla

Find us on Facebook

Spinach Artichoke Souffle

Our hands-down favorite breakfast item to get at Panera is their Spinach Artichoke soufflé. Though it has both spinach and artichoke and lots of protein from eggs, it is not necessarily the healthiest breakfast choice Panera offers - it has roughly 25% of a day’s worth of calories and 33g of fat - but oh boy, is it tasty! Since we usually end up indulging in one just about every weekend, I figured I ought to try making it at home - hopefully helping both our waistlines and our wallets!

Ingredients: (makes 4 soufflés)

4 large eggs

¼ cup shredded Parmesan cheese

2 TBSP reduced fat sour cream or Greek yogurt (I used yogurt)

½ tsp baking powder

Salt to taste

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup frozen spinach, thawed (can use fresh chopped, packed)

2 artichoke hearts, chopped

1 TBSP chopped red bell pepper (I didn’t have bell pepper, but I did have pimentos, so I tried those instead)

~4 TBSP additional shredded Parmesan cheese for topping

1 frozen puff pastry sheet, thawed (I used Phyllo dough, it came in a box with 2 large rolls - I ended up using about half of one roll)

Heat oven to 400F.

In a bowl, beat 3 eggs. Add yogurt (or sour cream), baking powder, salt, garlic, bell pepper (or pimentos), and ¼ cup Parmesan cheese, and mix well. Add spinach and artichoke and stir to combine.

In a small bowl, beat remaining egg. Roll out pastry on parchment paper or Aluminum foil and cut into 2 squares/rectangles about 3-4 inches on one side (this ended up being about half of one roll of the Phyllo dough).

Each square will have about 20+ sheets - separate them into stacks of about 10 each, to end up with 4 squares/rectangles of pastry with about 10 sheets in each stack. With each square, gently separate the layers of pastry one at a time to brush with the egg wash. (Note: you can also do the egg wash first before cutting the sheet into squares.)

Carefully lift each pastry square and lay in soufflé cups or baking pan. Spoon 3-4 TBSP of the spinach artichoke mixture into each cup and top with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Fold the pastry corners over top of the egg mixture and brush the tips with extra egg wash.

Bake 20-25 minutes, until pastry turns golden brown. Let cool 5-10 minutes before removing from pan.

Dig in and enjoy the Panera-style deliciousness!

~ Karla

Find us on Facebook
  
     
 

Pesto Filled Scones

On a lazy Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was in the mood for some baking experimentation - as well as a savory snack to munch on. A fairly quick and easy option was scones, and it had been some time since we tried out any new scone flavors - so I decided to put a new twist on our original savory scone recipe!

These scones might look like any other savory scone at first glance, but there is a surprise center that oozes with basil pesto deliciousness once you bite into it! If you’d like to make it more indulgent, add a small ball of Mozzarella cheese along with the pesto filling. I topped them off with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese, and these tasty tidbits definitely hit the spot!

Base ingredients: (makes ~20 small scones)

Click here for our base ingredients

Add-ins

~½ cup pesto sauce (I used our spinach walnut variety)
~3 TBSP freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Follow the same steps as the spinach feta scones (link) to prepare the dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to about ½ inch thick, then cut into approximately 2 inch squares.

Place about 1-2 tsp of pesto on each piece of dough, slightly off-center. Fold the dough over and pinch shut, sealing with some water if necessary.

Place on a baking sheet, leaving about one inch of space between the scones. Brush the tops with buttermilk, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Bake 12-15 minutes until the tops turn golden brown. Let the scones cool before storing in an airtight container. They can be enjoyed at room temperature, or slightly warmed up.

These scones make a great anytime snack!

~Karla

    
Find us on Facebook