What a beautiful rainy morning to cook breakfast! It felt like the kind of morning that needed to start with a cup of coffee, a good book, and some baking.
Enter: spinach and feta quiche with quinoa crust. I've been systematically going through all my old Cooking Light recipes (from about 8 years of subscriptions), and organizing them into three large binders stuffed with sheet protectors and ripped-out magazine pages. A few of these recipes that I've made are already marked, with a rating or comments for how I adapted them.
Most lay unread, and uncooked. As my mom and I worked our way through all three binders last night, Post-it-noting the recipes to cook this summer, we came across this quiche recipe. Eating a gluten-free and (mostly) dairy-free diet, among other things, means about half of my recipes are off limits to my taste buds; I keep them in the binder to cook for others, as cooking and especially baking easily gives way to magnanimity. There is something about making a dish too large for one that says, "come join me for breakfast!" It invites conviviality, generosity, community, love, the way cooking any dish should.
Anyway, the binder. About a half of the remaining recipes must be adapted for me to eat them: simple swaps such as exchanging cow's milk for an alternative or replacing butter with olive oil, or more involved changes, such as find the right gluten free flour for a baked good. This is one of those recipes with a simple (and perhaps unnecessary for you, my reader) swap: alternative milk for regular.
I had never made a quiche before, and this foolproof version is a great beginning, made with a quinoa crust. It is also relatively simple-- quinoa, eggs, milk, vegetables, and a few seasonings-- and can easily be updated to reflect what you have on hand, by switching out some of the vegetables and type of cheese.
But wait, you say, I've heard before that eggs aren't healthy, especially the yolks.
As Ive said before, I'm here to say: please eat more eggs.
While eggs are one of the cheapest meals you can buy, they cook quickly, and they are the much-loved subject of many horrible puns (I promise you won’t find any in this post), they are also the source of much confusion when it comes to their nutrition. Eggs are a great source of protein; in fact, they are a perfect source of essential amino acids, meaning they deliver all nine of the building blocks of protein that our bodies are unable to manufacture on their own. Eggs also contain nutrients that are essential to eye health; choline, which promotes normal development and improved memory and performance; and the vitamins folate, B12, riboflavin, A, D, and K.
With all this nutrition in such a small package, why haven’t we always been eating eggs? The answer to the ADA’s past restrictions on eggs comes from a few studies that mistakenly linked dietary cholesterol to heart disease, or atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis occurs when plaque builds up in the walls of the arteries, a condition correlated with high levels of LDL— or bad – cholesterol.
However, studies in the past failed to take into account saturated fat when they connected cholesterol in foods to adverse health outcomes, and often the foods that are high in cholesterol are also high in saturated fat. More recent studies have shown that saturated fat consumption is a much greater predictor for heart health than cholesterol consumption. One of the largest studies published in the The Journal of the American Medical Association in 1999, known as the Harvard Egg Study, reviewed questionnaires from over 100,000 people. Results for both men and women showed no correlation between egg consumption and risk of coronary heart disease or stroke. Recent findings such as these continue to exculpate the egg of its previous reputation. Though eggs do contain some amount of saturated fat, the amount is much below the recommended daily ADA guideline, meaning that an egg for breakfast each morning can be part of a healthy diet.
So... what exactly is in an egg, and why is it so culinarily useful?
According to Kenji Lopez-Alt, who wrote one of the best cooking science books (and blogs) called The Food Lab, "An egg is a vessel for a developing embryo." The yolk of the egg is the nutritive source, which is why it accounts for most of the calories and fat in the egg. It also contains dissolved proteins, and larger masses of protein and fat linked with lecithin, an emulsifier. The white is mostly water with a few proteins that allow the egg to set when cooked. You can tell a good egg from a bad one by submerging it in water. If it floats, it's time to throw it out; the freshest eggs sink to the bottom. This is because egg shells are actually very porous, so they lose water to evaporation while also taking air into the space between the shell and the inner membrane near the fat end. (If you have any questions about eggs that I didn't answer, post them in the comments section below!)
This quiche takes a little over an hour to make, which can be sped up if you cook the quinoa the night before. The flavors here are Greek, with feta, oregano, and garlic, but you can easily change those if you're so inclined: parmesan, fresh mozzarella, and basil for a taste of Italy, or sun-dried tomatoes, paprika, and even chorizo or ham for Spanish cuisine. Feta is a salty cheese so if you use another (other than parmesan, which is also salty), add more salt to taste.
Spinach and Feta Quiche with Quinoa Crust
Adapted from Cooking Light
Serves 4
Ingredients
Crust:
2 cups cooked quinoa, chilled (you should chill the quinoa so when you mix it with the egg it doesn't cook the egg.)
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
Filling:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 5oz bag spinach, or other baby greens (I used this), chopped
1/2 milk (any kind)
4 eggs
2 egg whites
Salt and Pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1.5 oz feta
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Make the crust. Combine the first 4 ingredients and press quinoa mixture into a greased 9 inch round pie pan. Bake for 20 minutes until browned.
3. While crust is baking, sauté onion in olive oil for about 5 minutes until translucent. Add garlic and greens, and stir until onion is browned and greens are wilted. Remove from heat.
4. Beat together milk, eggs, salt and pepper, and oregano.
5. Spread the vegetable mixture evenly onto the quinoa crust. Pour in egg mixture. Sprinkle with feta (or another cheese).
6. Bake for 35 minutes. Let cool for five minutes before serving.
Most of the information on eggs in this post came from here.
