Crustless Quiche

This quiche is a quick, easy and delicious idea for dinner.  As long as you have milk and eggs you add just about anything to it.  The one I made below is diced ham, leek and cheddar, but any meat, veggie, cheese combo will work too!

ingredients:

6 eggs
1¹⁄₂ cups 2% milk
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese
2 leeks, white and light green parts chopped
1 cup diced ham
dash of tabasco sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil for the leeks

Preheat the oven to 400°F.  Lightly whisk the eggs and milk and set aside.  Sauté the leeks in some olive oil, over medium heat, until soft.  About 5 minutes.  Add the leeks and the rest of the ingredients to the milk and eggs.  Pour into a 9 inch pie/baking dish and bake for 30 minutes or until puffy and golden brown on top.

If you using other vegetables either roast or sauté them before mixing them in with the eggs.

Serve with some toast and a big green salad.

Serves 4

Shakshuka

This is one of those dishes that I had never heard about and then all of a sudden I started to hear about it in different places.  It's a North African egg dish - the eggs are cooked in a yummy tomato sauce with lots of spices and feta cheese.  The sauce freezes well if you want to make extra.  It's a little bit on the spicy side, but our kids don't seem to mind.

There are lots of different variations but the one we've liked and used is from David Lebovitz.

Ingredients:

 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
¹⁄₂ – 1 chile pepper, stemmed, sliced in half, deseeded, and minced
1¹⁄₂ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika, smoked or sweet
³⁄₄ teaspoon ground cumin
¹⁄₂ teaspoon turmeric
2 pounds ripe tomatoes, cored and diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons honey
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 cup (20g) loosely packed greens, such as radish greens, kale, Swiss chard, or spinach, coarsely chopped
4 ounces (about 1 cup, 115g) feta cheese, cut in generous, bite-sized cubes

cilantro (optional)
4 to 6 eggs

Heat the olive oil, in a large, deep skillet or sauté pan, over medium high heat. Add the onions and the garlic and cook for 5 minutes, until soft. Add the chile pepper, the salt, pepper, and spices. Cook for a minute, stirring to release their fragrance.

Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, honey, and vinegar, reduce the heat to medium, and cook for about 15 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened somewhat but is still loose enough so that when you shake the pan it moves around. Stir in the chopped greens.

Turn the heat down to medium and drop the feta into the tomato sauce. Make 6 indentations in the sauce. Crack an egg into each indentation.

Keep the sauce at a gentle simmer, and cook for about 10 minutes, taking some of the tomato sauce and basting the egg whites from time-to-time. Cover, and cook 3 to 5 minutes, until the eggs are cooked to your liking.  Top with cilantro, if using.

Serve with good bread to soak up the sauce.

Serves 4-6

Adapted from David Lebovitz