Quiche may well be a tasty lunchtime option, but in its traditional form (made with eggs, cheese, milk or cream and served in a pastry crust), it can be rather high in both fat and calories.
Pastry comes in many forms (sweet, savoury, puff, shortcrust, filo etc) but there's a common denominator: all varieties tend to contain a significant amount of fat (often courtesy of butter or lard).
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With this is mind, the following recipe does away with the pastry base altogether. Whilst this means that it isn't exactly what you'd call traditional, the fat content is significantly reduced. Importantly, the gooey, cheesy, vaguely eggy flavour - which people tend to associate most with a slice of quiche remains.
This recipe is extremely simple and makes for a cheap and very tasty brunch or lunch when served with a large green salad on the side. You can vary the ingredients to suit tastes or availability: try flavouring the little quiche puffs with cream cheese and finely diced chives, finely grated parmesan and slithers of sun-dried tomato or goat's cheese with chopped black olives.
The recipe will produce approximately six mini quiches, which is enough to serve two, it can easily be doubled though. These taste best served warm, straight from the oven.
You will need a small muffin (fairy cake) tin.
Cheese, tomato and spring onion quiches (serves: 2)
Ingredients
5g butter, at room temperature
25g Cheddar cheese
1 tomato
2 spring onions
3 eggs
salt and black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C/fan 4. Lightly grease a muffin tin with the softened butter.
Grate the cheese as finely as possible (this means that a small amount will stretch further). Slice the tomato into quarters, remove the seeds and finely dice the flesh. Slice the spring onions thinly.
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Crack the eggs into a large bowl and whisk together lightly. Add the cheese, tomato and spring onions, season with salt and black pepper and stir gently until well combined. Pour enough mixture into six of the muffin cases to half fill them. Transfer to the oven and cook for 12-15 minutes, until puffed up and golden brown on top.
Serve with a green salad.
http://caloriecount.about.com/
Calories in quiche, per 158g serving:
Calories: 482
Calories from fat: 313
Total fat: 34.8g
Total carbohydrate: 23.7g
