Pumpkin, Spinach and Caramelised Onion Quiche

It's been a while since I made a quiche for myself. You see, I've kinda been fascinated by millet - my new favourite ingredient (a post on millet will soon be up) which I cook for myself almost three times a week, sometimes five. :) Yeah, I guess I am obsessive that way - I find an ingredient I love, eat it till I'm sick of it and then, move on to the next best thing.

But I was reminded of how much I actually love quiche after Ivy of hungryc.com showed me photographs of a slice of quiche she had in Sydney recently.  It was a pumpkin and mushroom quiche - she sent me photos of the quiche through instant message while she was having it - talk about the wonders of technology, huh? - and all she said about it was was: "so yumm!". Now that speaks volumes, surely.

What a brilliant idea - pumpkin in quiche.

I wasn't going to Sydney anytime soon, so I decided I just had to make a quiche with pumpkin in it myself.

I resisted adding mushrooms to my pumpkin quiche though. I tend to use mushrooms as my go-to ingredient many of my dishes as it's a sure-thing, really - how can you go wrong with mushrooms, right?

Well, unless you're my husband who hates not only the taste but the smell of 'shrooms. So yes, I omitted them so that he could (and would) taste the quiche too.

I used spinach and caramelised onions instead. Sure, that meant more prep time as caramelising onions does take some time - but I roasted the pumpkins as the onions were slow cooking and also sauteed the spinach with garlic.

For the crust, I added some finely chopped hazelnuts - you should try this too (in any other quiche you may make) cos it added not only texture but flavour to the buttery pastry.

The result? It was, as Ivy puts it, so yumm.

* Check out this earlier post for a basic quiche recipe and replace the fillings with roasted pumpkin and anything else you fancy. For cheese, I used mozzarella.

Tricky treats for Halloween

Horrifically healthy pumpkin patch - pic by Yap Chee Hong

We don't celebrate Halloween here in Malaysia. Kids don't walk the streets in their neighbourhoods for candy and adults don't decorate their houses to look like something out of a horror flick. It's not that we don't love our share of horror -  practically everyone has a ghost story or two (real, mind you) to share, whether it's something they'd heard from a friend or an experience they've had themselves. I've got a few myself which I will re-tell upon request :)

Nevertheless, my colleagues at work and I decided to create some Halloween-inspired food for a fun spread (any excuse to eat!) and I was initially stumped for ideas on what to make. I'm not good with decorating cupcakes (my colleague Yuha did an amazing job though - check out her cupcakes below) and I wasn't too keen on making cake eye balls (Ann Marie did that gory job). Julie made a mummy (and yummy) vegetarian lasagna and Jane of The Wayward Oven made a giant spider bread with a creamy, cheesy and bloody dip. Check out some of the photos below.

I settled on making something horrifically healthy instead. Candy? No way! I made a pumpkin patch. The pumpkins were made from ... err... pumpkins. Well, pureed roasted pumpkins, roasted cauliflower and tempeh to be precise. The soil was made from tri-coloured quinoa, minced mushrooms and black sesame seeds. And the leafs? Rocket. 

It wasn't a visual masterpiece, I have to say. But it was a whole lot of fun to create and it tasted pretty damned good. I discovered that pumpkin, tempeh and cauliflower go really well together and, well, you can't go wrong with quinoa and mushrooms.

Halloween Pumpkin patch

For the 'pumpkins'

500g pumpkin, cubed 

60g tempeh, cubed fine

200g cauliflower, cut into florets

handful of parsley, leaves only

breadcrumbs - between 1/2 to 1 cup

salt and pepper

olive oil

Drizzle some olive oil on the pumpkin and cauliflower and toss to coat. Roast in a preheated oven (180C) for about 30 mins. 

Fry the cubed tempeh until they're brown and cripsy. 

Once the pumpkin is cool, puree with half the tempeh. Roughly mince the cauliflower. Add to the puree together with the parsley, breadcrumbs (use as much as needed to bind the pumpkin) and remaining tempeh. Season. 

Form the puree into balls and bake (180C) for about 20-25 mins. 

For the soil

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa

6-7 button mushrooms, roughly minced 

1 clove garlic, minced

2 tbsp black sesame seen, toasted

handful of walnuts, roasted, chopped roughly

salt and pepper

Wash the quinoa under running water to remove the bitter coating (as you would wash rice). Drain.

Heat a skillet with 1 tbsp olive oil. Add the drained, washed quinoa and gently toast it for about 2-3 minutes. Transfer into a saucepan. Add 1 cup water/stock and cook on medium heat. When the water starts to boil, reduce the heat and cover. Cook for 15 mins. Remove pot from the heat. Uncover, place a paper towel or kitchen cloth over the mouth of the pan and place the lid over (the cloth will absorb any remaining moisture). Let it sit for 15 mins.

Heat another tablespoon of olive oil in the skillet. Add the garlic and after a minute or two, the mushrooms. Cook till the moisture from the mushrooms leaves. Season and remove from heat.

Mix the mushrooms with the quinoa, black sesame seeds and walnuts. Drizzle in some extra virgin olive oil (or regular olive oil) and mix to toss. 

Roasted Vegetable Puff

Marty and I have been making sandwiches for sale for over a year. Every Monday for close to 16 months (save for the weeks we are both out of town), we deliver our Crazy Juliet sandwiches to our colleagues. It's been great. But lately we've been feeling a little sandwiched-out. We needed some time apart, us and our sandwiches. We needed something fresh. So, we started introducing pies, puffs and quiches to our weekly menus.

As such, I've been experimenting with various vegetarian puffs and pastries. It's been quite challenging, really. After all, how many types of vegetarian pies and puffs can there be? Pies and/or puffs that are substantial enough for lunch. Pies and puffs that won't go soggy by lunch time (we deliver them around mid morning). It's been a ride.

So my kitchen became a test kitchen for all kinds of vegetarian pies and puffs. The first one to graduate from the test kitchen is this Roasted Vegetable Puff. This is really a very basic vegetable puff. It has no exotic vegetables or cheese to boast off. In fact, as horrific as this may sound, I used processed mozzarella cheese. I don't usually buy processed cheese but I had a packet in my fridge from I can't remember when which I wanted to use up. 

Still the puff was really good, proof that the simple things in life are usually very, very good.

The secret? Good puff pastry and roasted vegetables. 

Puff pastry is rich, flaky, buttery and soft. It is good enough to be eaten on its own (think croissants) but is also lovely as a light crust to coat a pie, sweet or savoury. I tried making puff pastry once and it was awfully satisfying: I'm not gonna kid you and say it was easy. No, it was pretty laborious. The wonderful 

flakiness of the pastry comes from the many layers of dough and butter that is folded and folded and folded some more (sometimes more than a hundred folds go into a block of puff pastry). I made it because I was curious about the process and I wanted to see how successful my home made puff pastry would turn out. It was, thankfully, a success. But, I never have made it again because it's so much easier to buy good pre-packed, ready-made all-butter puff pastry. 

Now the other reason this vege puff is so tasty is because the vegetables were roasted. I don't know about you but I love the flavour of roasted vegetables. They taste sweeter as they caramelise so nicely in the oven. All you need is to coat them in olive oil and then season them with salt and pepper. That's it, really. That's all you need.

I selected my vegetables carefully. Potatoes would be an easy way to make the puff filling but I am not a huge fan of spuds and so I struck them off the list of possible ingredients. Spinach? Nah. Carrots? Next time. Red peppers? Nah. 

Here's what I ended up with: eggplant, broccoli, pumpkin, cauliflower and mushrooms. 

Oh! And the cheese, of course. 

ROASTED VEGETABLE PUFF

Makes 4

2 cups broccoli florets

1 cup cauliflower florets

1 cup pumpkin, cut into 2cm cubes

1 cups mushrooms (shiitake, Swiss brown, button..) halved or quartered (size should match the pumpkin)

1 medium eggplant, sliced, salted and drained.

1 cup shredded Mozzarella Cheese (or 4 slices of the processed stuff that I used)

Olive Oil

Salt and pepper

1/4 cup vegetable stock

1/2 tbsp corn starch diluted in 2 tbsp water.

1/4 cup milk

Puff pastry

Preheat the oven to 200C. 

Mix all the vegetables in a bowl and coat them in about 2 tbsp of olive oil. (The vegetables should be cut around the same size so they cook equally.)

Transfer the vegetables to a rimmed baking tray: make sure they are laid out in one layer (to make sure they roast evenly). Season with salt and pepper. 

Bake for about 40 mins, turning them over midway.

Let the vegetables cool. 

Heat the stock in a small saucepan. Add the diluted corn starch and stir over low heat until the stock thickens — about 5-7 mins over low heat. Turn off the heat and add the vegetables into the thickened stock. Leave to soak/

Meanwhile, lightly flour your work surface and cut the puff pastry into 8 squares. My squares were about 8cm x 8cm.

Place one square on your floured work surface. Spread your cheese on the square ad then spoon the roasted vegetables onto the square (don't scoop out too much juice or the puff will get soggy), leaving about a 1/2 cm boarder on all four sides. Brush the boarder with milk. 

Take another  square and place it atop. You may need to gently (I stress, gently) stretch the pastry over the filling so that the top and bottom squares meet. Press the edges together and seal with a fork (this gives the puff a nice patterned edge).

Make a slit on the top of the puff for the steam to escape when baking. Now, brush the top of the puff with milk. 

(If you want to decorate the puff, use a small biscuit cutter in any shape you like: 8 cut outs in total/ 2 per puff).  Place the cutouts on the puff (how you arrange them is up to your artistic vision) and brush the shapes with milk as well.)

Repeat with the other 3 puffs.

Bake for 15 to 20 mins or till the the puffs and nice and golden and the flaky layers have risen. 

Pumpkin + sage + butter = yummy

[caption id="attachment_193" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The delicious pumpkin bread-cake. It's moist and not too sweet. And it smells divine"][/caption]

This marks another first for me. Have always shied away from making breads because it sounded like a lot of work -- kneading and kneading and more kneading? Urmmm, no thanks.

Plus, I have an inexplicable fear of cooking with yeast.

Then I came upon this fantastic recipe for pumpkin bread from Martha Stewart (yes, I do love her) in her magazine. It doesn't require kneading or yeast and just reading through the list of ingredients made me salivate.

And it sounded pretty easy to make.

Usually, Martha's recipes just need to be followed to a T. With this bread though, instead of dividing the mixture into 8 small loaf pans, I put it all in one big loaf pan and as a result I had to bake it for 20 mins longer than the 30 mins she prescribed. I also had no ground clove ( you need 1/8 tsp) so i omitted that. Otherwise, it was fantastic.

[caption id="attachment_192" align="aligncenter" width="150" caption="Straight outta the oven. "][/caption]

(Almost) Martha's Pumpkin, Sage and Brown-Butter Quick Bread

6 ounces (about 170gms) unsalted butter plus a little more to butter the pan

1 cup fresh sage, thinly sliced

1 and 2/3 all purpose flour plus a little for dusting pan

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I used powder as I did not have fresh nutmeg)

1 tsp salt

1 cup solid packed pumpkin (from can)

1 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

Heat oven at 180. Grease loaf pan with butter and dust it with flour.

Melt butter over med-low fire. Add sage strips and cook till butter turns golden brown -- should take about 5-8 mind. Let cool.

Sift flour, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg and whisk together with salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk pumpkin, eggs, sugar and the browned butter with sage. Once smooth and well mixed, add flour mix gradually till all incorporated.

Transfer to loaf pan. Smoothen top and bake for about 55 mins or till knife comes out smooth.

Let cool. Garnish with some  fresh sage leaves.