Eggless chickpea and kale quiche
Thought you had to use eggs in order to make a quiche? Well, the yolk’s on you.
There are lot of ways to replace the different properties of eggs in plant-based recipes, and this one makes use of three of them. If you’ve been following Planticize, you’ll recognize the use of freshly ground flax seeds that were also in my vegan powerhouse cookies. The main reason for using ground flax seeds is due to their binding properties when mixed with water. But if we are going to planticize a quiche, we’ll need more than that.
And that’s where chickpea flour comes in. Chickpea flour has a whole lot of names, and is also called garbanzo bean flour and sometimes besan, gram, chana and more! It’s a fantastic egg simulator in more ways than one. It too, when combined with water, acts as a binder, but it’s much more than that.
When cooked, the flavor and texture of chickpea flour give dishes like quiches and omelets, a special, egg-like flavor. These days you should be able to find it in most larger supermarkets, sometimes in the ethnic food section. If you can’t find it there, you might have to head to a whole foods store or a shop specializing in Middle Eastern foods.
So, we’ve got freshly ground flax seeds, we’ve got chickpea flour, but we’re not going to stop there. The secret ingredient that is surprisingly missing from many plant-based recipes hoping to be egg-like is kala namak. Kala what? Kala namak – which is a kind of rock salt that is commonly used in the cuisines of India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.
Lucky for us, kala namak is often referred to as black salt (which isn’t the most appropriate of names as it has a pale pinkish color.) But its color and name are not really important. Black salt has a very special odor due to its especially high sulfur content – eggs, sulfur, odor… see where I’m going here? If you want to recreate any dish that actually tastes and smells of eggs, than you should absolutely, positively use black salt!
So there we have our triple-pronged attack of flax seeds, chickpea flour and black salt. Adding a little turmeric tops off our v-egg-iness with just the right color!
Our other key ingredient here is kale. Kale is a fantastic winter source of vitamins A, B6, C, as well as, manganese, fiber, copper, calcium and potassium! In fact, I can’t even begin to tell you how incredible kale is, but Helen Nichols over at Well-Being Secrets, is someone who can. Take a look at her article 23 Science-backed Health Benefits of Kale – it’s a great, informative read and you’ll run out of fingers and toes counting all the reasons for you to start including more kale in your diet!
Personally, I find raw kale to be a little tough. I like to chop it into smaller pieces (Or cut it using kitchen scissors! I just tried this and it worked really well, and it was so easy to trim away the leaf from the harder, thicker stalks.) Then, I sauté some onions in a bit of plant-based margarine and throw the kale on top – just as I did for this recipe.
Let’s get cookin’ and make an eggless, chickpea and kale quiche – Planticize style!
Ingredients
-
Crust
- 1 cup (2.4 dl) - graham flour
- 1 cup (2.4 dl) - all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp (2.5 ml) - salt
- ½ cup (1.2 dl) - olive oil
- 1/3 cup(.8 dl) - water Filling
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) - flax seeds, freshly ground + ½ cup (1.2 dl) water
- 1¼ cups (3 dl) - chickpea flour (also called gram and besan)
- 1½ tsp - black salt (also called Kala namak)
- 1 clove - garlic
- 2 tsps (10 ml) - dried rosemary
- ½ tsp (2.5 ml) - turmeric
- ¼ tsp 1.25 ml) - black pepper
- ¼ tsp (1.25 ml) - nutmeg
- 1½ tsps. (7.5 ml) - baking powder
- 1 cup (2.4 dl) - water
- 7 oz (200 g) - kale
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2-3 medium potatoes, peeled and grated
- 2 medium carrots, grated
- 1cups (2.4 dl) - eggplant, peeled and cubed
- 6 sun-dried tomato pieces - chopped
- Add the flours, oil, salt and water to a small bowl and mix. You can either use a rolling pin to flatten the dough a bit first, or using your hands from the beginning, push the dough into a round pie form about 11 inches (28 cm) in diameter.
- Pre-bake the crust for about 15 minutes at 350° F (175° C).
- Grind the flax eggs, mix with the water let gel for about 15 minutes.
- Add the chickpea flour, black salt and other spices, baking powder and water in a large bowl and chill.
- Sauté the onions in a little margarine or oil until they start to soften a bit. Add the chopped kale and cook until it softens/wilts and turns a dark green. (I find using kitchen scissors to cut the kale works really well, allowing you to trim away larger parts of the stalk.)
- Remove the chickpea flour batter from the refrigerator and add the kale, onions and rest of the vegetables to the bowl. Mix well so that all the vegetables are coated by the mix.
- Pour everything into the pre-baked crust.
- Bake in oven at 400° F (200° C) for about 45 minutes.
Niki March 1, 2016 (1:16 am)
“The yolks on you” ?. Too funny! This recipe looks delicious, I’m going to have to track down chickpea flour asap!
Chris March 1, 2016 (9:11 am)
Hi Niki! Haha, yeah, corny joke maybe, but I couldn’t resist 🙂 And thanks! Chickpea flour goes by a ton of different names: garbanzo bean flour, gram, besan… Someone else asked me what to replace it with, and well, I’d keep looking. It’s got a special flavor that works so well in vegan egg recipes. It’s fantastic for vegan omelets too! Good luck and thanks again for writing.