Saarvoir vivre – The cuisine of Saarland.
Do you know, what I miss most from home?
The food. (Okay, and the wine. You got me on this one).
We Saarländer are well known food enthusiasts and our local dishes combine the best of German and French cuisine. A very popular dish in this area is the quiche Lorraine. It’s probably not only me, but all of us Saarländer, that we get a warm feeling and childhood memories while sensing the lovely smell of a fresh quiche Lorraine.
The recipe itself reflects in a typical way the traditions of the border region and the areas tremendous history.
So…to cure my most recent period of homesickness, I decided to make a vegan quiche Lorraine.
We’re usually not food bloggers, but this time it came so good out, that I decided to tell you in a blogpost, how I did it, because after all I needed quite a lot ingredients and I prepared it in three different steps.
But…it was worth it!
It’s a spin on the classic quiche Lorraine and I used tofu instead of eggs, filled with broccoli, spinach, mushrooms vegan cheese and vegan bacon.
I will also share later in the text a variation with ready to use French pastry, if you think it’s too much work to make your own crust and you would like to ease it up a bit.
We enjoyed it so much, that we prepped already the second one this week!
It bakes up firm, it’s easy to slice and a delicious and savoury dish for a Sunday Brunch.
But now let’s start with the shopping list!
You can use any vegetables you want, we decided to go for greens and mushrooms.
Sometimes it’s recommended to combine firm and silk tofu, but we found out, that silk tofu becomes almost like firm tofu if you just press it to squeeze all the water out, and firm tofu can easily be softened up by adding some extra water or plant based milk.
So don’t be bothered to buy two kinds of tofu.
You may also replace the oat milk with any other plant based milk, as long as it’s not sweetened or coconut.
But be really careful and only add enough milk so the tofu gets smooth, but it still has to stay solid.
And why guess what?:
This recipe is completely plant based, nut-free and can easily be made gluten-free too!
It’s perfect to prepare ahead of time and tastes even better re-heated the next day.
Instructions
You start with the chickpea flour crust:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Mix flour salt and water. It should get easily the consistency of play dough.
Oil a found form (30cm) with olive oil, including the sides of the form and your hands.
Now spread the crust into the form including the sides and bake for about 15-20 min until it turns golden.
The veggies:
Dice the onions and chop all vegetables very small and sauté them in a pan with a little oil. Spice them, add the miso paste and be careful with salt, since the crust and the miso paste are already salty.
Add the spinach in the end and make sure not to overcook them.
The sauce:
Melt the cheese together with the oat milk (slowly add 1 tbsp at a time), the nutritional yeast, the plant based butter and add pepper and herbs. Make sure you stir until it’s a smooth consistency without clumps.
Break up the tofu into smaller pieces, so it fit’s into the food processor and blend with the sauce to a combined mixture. Add it to the veggies and combine it to an even mass. Add the vegan bacon as last.
Now pour the combined tofu-veggie filling into the pre-baked crust and bake it for another 15min on 180 degrees. Let it cool for about 10 minutes before you serve and cut it, so it can firm up and settle down a bit.
Finish:
You can pimp your quiche by adding an extra spoon of melted vegan butter on top, to give it a shiny finish.
Alternatively you may use a vegan pre-made pie crust, so you don’t have to make your own dough.
In this picture we used a pre-made French pastry crust. It’s also a yummy version, but be aware, that the pastry isn’t as solid and your vegan quiche Lorraine runs danger to get too soggy. Plus the already rich quiche Lorraine becomes a little more heavy due to the French pastry. The chickpea flour crust is compared a bit dry, but overall a lighter version for the base.
For us, it has been a total game changer, once we found out, that you can swap out nearly every ingredient from any classic dish and make it a vegan version that tastes almost like the original. Since then we hardly ever look into vegan recipes, we just make spins on the original recipes. So far, it always worked out perfectly!
Plus it saved us so much time and also money to buy any crazy special vegan foods!
If you try this vegan quiche Lorraine or any other of our recipes, we would love to hear how it goes!
Leave us a comment or tag us (@lena_and_aga) in a picture with your dish and share it on Instagram!
So we won’t miss your post!
Happy cooking!
