This is a guest post I wrote for Just Bento last month. Now that it’s up, I figure it’s OK to post on my ow blog as well!
(If you don’t know Just Bento yet, check it out – it’s a lovely site!)
“Go ahead, bake my quiche.”
As a pescetarian leaning heavily towards full-time vegetarianism, finding the right protein for my bento is often a strain. I’m not a fan of soy meat replacements to boot, so often I look to eggs as a handy protein packet to put in my bento. Luckily, scientists now say that eggs are good for you again, so I’m not worried about cholesterol.
These mini-quiches are a tasty and healthy freezer staple for those times when boiling an egg or making tamagoyaki seems like too much effort. Each one of them contains about 1-2 tablespoons of egg-vegetable mixture, equivalent to about half an egg (plus a bit of milk).
Here are a few bentos I have used them in:
Now, how to easily make bento-sized quiches? It’s actually quite simple – I bake them in a silicone muffin tin!
You can technically use any dough for it. I used premade butter dough (that’s a local type of puff pastry) for a mediterranean flavour and because you can buy it in handy little rolls that fit 8 muffins :).
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius.
Cut the dough into 6 squares and line the muffin form with the pieces.
Hint: Put some aluminium foil (or, as my old-fashioned cookbook recommends, dried peas) along the edges of the dough to prevent it from shrinking into the moulds.
Put them in the oven to pre-bake and poof up a little for 5-10 minutes. The dough shouldn’t get brown yet, just a little poofier!
Mix together the filling ingredients and stir well. Spoon 1-2 Tsp. of the mixture into each muffin.
Here are some of my favourite filling recipes:
Vegetarian Quiche Lorraine (makes about 12 muffin-sized pies)
3 eggs
2-3 Tsp. Greek yoghurt or sour cream
1/3-1/2 zucchini, shredded and drained on a towel
1 cup of grated cheese (anything yellow and tasty)
1 cup of chopped leek or spring onions
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Salt, pepper, thyme to taste
Feta-and-tomato quiche (makes 6)
3 eggs
125g feta (or more), crumbled
4 pieces of sundried tomato, cut into small pieces
fresh herbs, e.g. thyme, basil, oregano, rosemary (I used all 4, and it got really spicy!)
Salt, pepper to taste
Turn down the oven to 200 degrees Celsius for baking the egg mixture. They bake in 10-15 minutes (do a test to see if the egg has solidified completely).
Let them cool thoroughly on a wire rack so that no moisture can form underneath and ruin their crispyness.
You can stack them in plastic boxes and freeze them after cooling. They warm in the microwave in just 1,5-2 minutes.
Happy bentoing!
PS: It’s pronounced keesh, not kishay. The quote above always gave me troubles in Lords and Ladies. ;)
[…] my new batch of Puff pastry zucchini quiches for bento is cooling in the kitchen, here’s a bento with the last of the old batch. Also in the box: […]
I just wanted to let you know that your recipe for quiche was so good when I made it for my youngest sister and myself (eating fun bento meals makes her much more likely to try new foods), that I have been commissioned to make a whole passle of them for my mother’s graduation from grad school party.
Thank you so much for posting such an adorable recipe that can so easily be made in bulk!
I’ll be making this. thank you :)
[…] with the camera! Plain onigiri, homegrown cherry tomatoes and a toffee in the big compartment, a mini quiche, broccoli and a carrot heart in the small one. I was so glad for bento staples in this one – […]
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I just made these tonight (running out of bento staples around the house!) and I had some difficulty with the recipe.
I think that 250 degrees was too low for my oven–it took me about 6 minutes for the pastries to firm up and even then they were still not even cooked and very wet. I tried cooking the pastries (when filled) for 30 minutes at 200 and they still weren’t fully set.
Also, I used a regular pan and put silicone muffin cups instead of aluminum foil to hold the shape and the dough stuck to the muffin cups *and* the muffin tin when I was removing them after they were cooled. Any ideas as to why this happened?
I used Pillsbury pastry dough by the way, which had a similar recipe on the container (http://www.pillsbury.com/Recipes/ShowRecipe.aspx?rid=46242). I was really conflicted which one to use, but I followed yours instead. They also say “ungreased muffin tin”!!
Are you sure you used 250 degrees C? That’s a bit higher in F (about 400 I’d say).
(Sorry, I’m used to metric and since my readers are from all over the world… well, I just use the measurements on the oven. I did write C up there though)
;)
[…] are all looking similar this week… ah well. It’s the taste that counts! Broccoli, a mini quiche from a new batch, more homegrown cherry tomatoes, basil and a croissant with a surprise filling! […]
Ah! Bliss! Bless Wererabbits!
Gorgeous. Thank you for recipe.
I absolutely love its child-friendliness.
( I agree with Tricia, up there )
best regards
mahesh
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[…] White Rabbit Burrow Spinach and Eggs wrapped in pastry […]
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