Last couple months we honestly cannot decide what diet we want to follow. Subconsciously we would like to come back to ketogenic eating because we simply felt great on it. But on the other hand having variety of pasta, rice and potato dishes, occasionally take aways or simple porridge to grab for your breakfast to work is so convenient! (or I shall say it’s too convenient so sometimes you make reckless decisions) There’s so many recipes I would like to try that are not keto friendly… And yes I know there are tons of recipes adjusted to keto, but as I already mentioned somewhere in my previous post – it’s not the same taste and texture. Pizza is pizza and cake is a cake. End of story. I can try to fool myself that it isn’t but it doesn’t work.
Last couple months I also started borrowing books from library again (after lockdown break when all the libraries were closed) and I managed to skip the shelf with cookery books a few times. But with my last visit “Davina’s sugar-free in a hurry” caught my eye and I decided to take it home with me for some inspiration. I’ve never heard about Davina McCall before but looks like her vision of food and healthy eating is close to mine. Not agree with everything but we have lots of thoughts in common. What attracted me in her recipes was that she uses a lot of wholewheat spelt flour and I felt tempted to try couple baking recipes. So I grabbed her book from the shelf and decided to try some of them. Or I rather say got inspired by the recipes in her book as I tend to change the original recipes to be more suitable for our taste and ingredients I have in my kitchen.
So this quiche/tart is inspired by her recipe. I’ve changed couple ingredients using what I already had in my pantry. Quiche came out really tasty – I like shortcrust pastry and this one was very crunchy and crumbly. Smoked salmon is delicious combined with green veg.
The best is you can eat it hot and cold and in both ways is great. So you can eat it piping hot straight from the oven for your dinner, but you can have the leftovers for your lunch next day with no loss of taste.
Honestly there’s not much to say about this quiche – great idea if you fancy something more sophisticated but easy to make. Light and nutritious meal made with veg, fish and whole grains.
If you want to adapt this recipe to a keto diet you can simply use this recipe to prepare the shortcrust. I will work good as well as Davina’s spelt shortcrust. I’ve used it many times in different baking recipes and it always work great.
smoked salmon & broccoli quiche
NOTE: my measuring cup is 250ml regular glass
INGREDIENTS for spelt shortcrust pastry:
- 2 cups organic wholemeal spelt flour
- about 150 g cold butter
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- 1 tbsp linseed (flaxseed)
- 1 tbsp sunflower seeds
If you would like to prepare ketogenic (gluten free) version of shortcrust pastry follow this recipe: linseed shortcrust.
INGREDIENTS for filling:
- 1 small broccoli
- handful of green peas
- 100g smoked salmon
- 3 large eggs
- 200g cream cheese
- chopped dill
- pinch of sea salt
- pinch of pepper
DIRECTIONS
Combine together spelt flour, linseeds, sunflower seeds, 1/2 tsp of salt. Add chopped butter and knead the dough. It will take a while for the flour to combine with butter, so don’t loose your patience if you feel like it takes ages. If you have a food processor, pop ingredients into food processor and pulse until the mixture comes together into a ball. Wrap the pastry into a cling film or plastic bag and place in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
In the meantime cook in salty water or steam your broccoli. Couple minutes will be enough, don’t overcook it – it will become soggy, watery and tasteless. Drain it and let it to cool down slightly. Then divide in florets.
Roll out the pastry to the size of your baking dish. If it sticks to the rolling pin dust it slightly with flour. You can also place slightly rolled out pastry in the baking dish and using palms of you hands and your fingers fill up the bottom and sides of the dish. Prick the base of the pastry with a fork.
Preheat the oven to 180°C and bake the pastry for about 20 minutes.
In the meantime prepare the filling: mix together eggs, cream cheese, pinch of sea salt and pepper.
Remove pastry from the oven. Arrange broccoli in the dish, sprinkle with handful of green peas. Pour over the egg and cream cheese, then place bits of smoked salmon pushing them slightly onto the egg mixture.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes. Serve hot or cold garnished with freshly chopped dill.
Eat Better Feel Happy 