Planet Veggie

I went to London VegFest the other week and for once, I actually came out looking forward to the next year’s event. On the previous years I’ve been, it’s been cramped, overcrowded and I hadn’t been able to get anywhere near the stalls, let alone try anything or buy anything. This year, although it was in the same space and I’m going to assume they weren’t turning stallholders or customers away, there was plenty of room to walk around and to see and sample everything, and sample things I certainly did.

Follow Your Heart were selling all their stuff at a discount, so I got some of their Vegenaise (which is absolutely gorgeous like a proper thick, creamy European mayo) for £2, their VeganEgg (which has an eggy texture but not much of an eggy taste – but that can easily be remedied with a bit of black salt) for £5 and some of their Vegan Gourmet Pizzeria Blend Shreds (I haven’t tried it on a pizza yet but it went well with the VeganEgg in some toasted pitta bread) for £2.50.

I splashed out on a couple of tins of Nutcrafter Creamery‘s wonderful nut cheese. When I say ‘splashed out’, that should probably be ‘tsumani’d out’, as a 200g tin of their Extra Aged Gomasio Cheddar Style and a 200g tin of their Air Aged Sun Dried Tomato cheese cost £10.50 and £8.50 respectively. Ouch.

After spending too much money on vegan cheese, I went to find Susanna and Adam on their Tofuture stall to tell them in person how much I love their tofu press. They were so pleased to see me, they gave me and my friend Tracey some mini quiches. I loved the quiche so much, I wanted to make some and, lo! they had a recipe for caramelised onion quiche on their website. I’m not a fan of caramelised onions but I thought it would be simple enough to base a mushroom and tofu quiche on it, but luckily enough, by the time I got round to making the quiche, they’d added the mushroom quiche recipe to their website. In fact, the recipe had only been added to their website that day, so when I posted a pic on Twitter of the quiche I’d made, shortly after the recipe had been added to their website, I made myself look like a weirdo tofu stalker as well as a weirdo tofu press fangirl.

Anyway, back to the mushroom quiche. To be honest, it’s not particularly quiche-like but it’s savoury and tasty and anyone – whether they’re a meat-eater, a tofu-hater or a fussy homeless person – would enjoy these (unless they’re allergic to mushrooms and will die after eating one. Then again, they’d enjoy the bit before dying, so it’s not all bad and there must be plenty of worse ways to die than by eating quiche).

As usual, I’m going to post the recipe here as I made it and not how it is in the original recipe, although, except for cheating and not even using ready-made pastry, let alone making my own (shudder), and using ready-made mini pastry cases instead, it’s pretty much as you’ll find on the Tofuture website.

Also as usual, I blended everything to smooth and creamy perfection in my Froothie power blender – if you haven’t got a high speed blender, your quiches will still be fine but you’ll have to blend everything for longer unless you don’t mind them a bit grainy (and if you’ve got the time, soak your cashews for longer too).

5.0 from 8 reviews

Vegan Tofu & Mushroom Mini Quiches

 

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Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

40 mins

 

Adapted from a recipe at Tofuture

Author: Cathy @ Planet Veggie

Cuisine: Vegan

Serves: 9

Ingredients

• 9 ready-made pastry cases, 1 sheet of ready-made shortcrust pastry, or make your own pastry
• 2 tbsps olive oil
• 3 shallots or ½ an onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2½ cups chestnut mushrooms (about 5 mushrooms), roughly chopped
• 1 chestnut mushroom, thinly sliced for decoration
• ½ x 400g pack tofu – lightly pressed and crumbled
• ½ cup cashew nuts, soaked for 2 hours or for 10 mins in hot (boiled) water
• 1 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• ½ tsp mustard
• ½ tbsp soy sauce
• ½ tsp sea salt
• freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180℃ (350℉).
2. Fry the garlic and onions in 1 tbsp of the oil on a low heat in a large pan until soft.
3. Add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until they've softened and reduced. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
4. Drain the cashew nuts, place in a blender or food processor and whizz for a few seconds until finely chopped.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients along with the mushrooms and onion mixture.
6. Blend until the mixture is smooth, scraping down as needed and adding a bit more olive oil if necessary.
7. Place the pastry cases onto a baking tray and spoon in the mixture (or cut out rounds of pastry and place into muffin tins and then spoon in the mixture).
8. Place a slice of mushroom on the top of each mini quiche and spray with a little olive oil to prevent burning.
9. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.
10. Leave to cool to help them firm up (if you can wait that long).

3.5.3208

Disclosure: I am an Ambassador for Froothie and any links to their products in this post are affiliate links which, if purchased through, won’t cost you any more but will earn me a small commission. I only endorse products I am happy with and I have not been paid for this post. For more information about the Optimum G2.1 blender mentioned in this post, you can read my review here.