Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Adventures in new food - quiche

The hardest thing about the Les Mills diet is the lack of starches from the diet.  I'm only allowed 4 portions of starches a day.  Now if these were SERVINGS it wouldn't be so bad, but as I said in my spaghetti squash post, it is 80 calorie servings of starches which is so minimal.  Also having to cook five meals a day from scratch was started to wear on me.  So I decided I would try to cook some quiche.  This way I could cook something once and have breakfast for four days!  Perfect!  Also quiche is essential eggs and cheese baked into a crust.  Another benefit of quiche is that you can mix in meats to up the protein and add vegetables to get that quotient in.  The down side of quiche is the crust (pie crust is very caloric) and the heavy cream.  So after some research I learned that it is possible to make crustless quiche and the greek yogurt is a perfect substitute for heavy cream.  Because I didn't have a pie tin, I decided to make quiche-cakes in cupcake tins.  Also I was leery about the greek yougurt substitute, but I had enough in my fridge so I decided to go for it.

Okay so they aren't the most beautiful things in the world, but I know that my second go will be better.  I decided to use zuchhini slices on the bottom of the quiche to aid in scooping the quiche out.  I put them in raw and the result was pretty watery.  I think I might try grilling them slightly or salting them to get the water out.

Another major benefit of quiche is the ability to adapt a basic recipe.  Here was my basic recipe and it filled 20 cupcake tins

3 eggs
3 egg whites
1 cup of greek yougurt
1 cup of shreded cheese
6 oz of meat (ground meat, or chopped deli meat work.  If you are doing ground meat, cook it with the onions first!)
1 tsp of oil
1 cup of chopped onions
3 cups of raw vegetables (mushrooms, bell peppers, squash, spinach, really whatever you want)

1. cook the onions and vegetables in the oil.  This releases the water in the vegetables and prevents soggy quiche.  If you are using frozen spinach, thaw it and strain it.  If you are doing ground meat, add it to this mix and cook it thoroughly.
2. Mix and blend the eggs, egg whites and greek yogurt.  Add the cheese and vegetable mixture.
3. Spoon into cupcake tins and bake at 425 F for 20 minutes until quiche is set.  Allow to cool and then spoon quiche out.

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