This pumpkin and spinach quiche is perfect for a seasonal breakfast or weeknight dinner! And the leftovers make a great option to fill your lunch box for school or work.
This pumpkin and spinach quiche is packed with vegetables. You can eat it whenever you want: breakfast, lunch or dinner. That's up to you!
Well, for those of you who might already have visited France, quiche is a real staple here. And gosh, I have to admit that I really miss the tradional quiche Lorraine. But between the gluten in the pie crust, the dairy and the eggs that's quite a lot of reasons for me to stay away from it!
But you know the feeling when so many things that you love are suddenly forbidden? Well, even when you are in remission thanks to your diet change, it doesn't stop the craving and the frustration of not being able to eat what you want. So I definitely had to create a compliant quiche recipe.
The hardest part in the recipe creation was "how do I replace the eggs"? If you've already made a traditional quiche, you know we use eggs to bind everything. So it's a pretty important ingredient. I finally got the idea last year, when pumpkin season started. I had some leftover cooked pumpkin and didn't know what to do with it and then came this idea.
Ingredients
For the crust
I do try to stay away from premade stuff as much as possible because I don't trust how healthy they are. Though, from time to time, it's great to have a quick and easy solution. So, if you can find a gluten free pie crust or puff pastry at the store near you that fits your intolerances, go ahead. If you can't have one of those, here are the ingredients for the homemade crust :
- Cassava flour
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Water
- Pinch of salt
For the filling
- Cooked pumpkin or butternut. You can actually make this pie with any kind of pumpkin. My personal favorite though is butternut squash. I usually cook a butternut squash and then make several recipes with it.
- Fresh baby spinach
- Mushrooms
- Onion
- Pinch of salt
Optional filling ingredients if you are not vegan :
- bacon cubes
- goat cheese or Feta (only if you are not on AIP or paleo and of course if you can tolerate it)
Other pumpkin / butternut recipes
If you are looking for other pumpkin / butternut recipes you can check those:
- Pumpkin muffins (Coconut free, AIP, paleo, vegan)
- Butternut Squash Breakfast Bowl (AIP, paleo, vegan)
- Butternut squash and chickpea salad (gluten free)
Pumpkin and spinach quiche (AIP, paleo, vegan)
Ingredients
For the crust
- If you are not on AIP or paleo diet you can use a store bought gluten-free pie crust or puff pastry instead of what's following.
- 125 g cassava flour
- 4 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 4 Tbsp + 2 tsp water
- 1 pinch of salt
For the quiche filling
- 300 g cooked pumpkin or butternut (click here to find out how to cook a butternut squash)
- 90 g baby spinach
- 5 medium mushrooms
- 1 onion
- 1 pinch of salt
Optional (if you are not vegan)
- 50 g bacon cubes
- a few cubes of goat cheese or Feta (only if you are not on AIP or paleo and of course if you can tolerate it)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 390°F (200°C)
- In a large bowl mix together the cassava flour and salt. Then add the olive oil and water and mix until you get a dough.
- Roll out the dough between 2 parchment papers, using a rolling pin. Remove the top parchment paper and transfer the dough to a 24 cm / 9.44 inches diameter pie tin on the other parchment paper.
- Prick the pie with a fork to prevent it from inflating. Put it for 10 minutes in the oven to precook it.
- In the meantime, peel and dice the onion. Heat a little bit of oil in a skillet and transfer the diced onion to the pan (if you choose to add bacon cubes to your pie, cook them along with the onion, without adding any oil). Clean the mushrooms, slice them and add them to the pan along the spinach. Let the whole thing cook on medium high heat until the spinach reduce by half.
- Put the pumpkin (or butternut) in a large bowl and puree with a fork. Add all sauted vegetables to the bowl, season with salt and mix all the ingredients together. If you can have goat or sheep cheese, add some cheese cubes to the mix.
- Pour the mixture onto the crust and bake for about 25 minutes or until cooked through. To add a little glow to the pie once cooked, lightly brush or spray a little bit of olive oil. And voilà! Serve immediately!Bon appétit !
Becky
Made this for lunch today and it was so good!!! Really nice to have something similar to a quiche again. Thank you for the veggie-packed recipe!
gohealthywithbea
Bonjour Becky! Thank you so much!! This is so nice to hear that!! You totally made my day. ????
Valerie Williams
Can we use canned pumpkin purée?
gohealthywithbea
Although I haven't tried with canned pumpkin purée, I really don't see why you couldn't use it. Have a great day!
Lea
Can you sub the cassava flour with tigernut? If so, would the rest of the ingredients and measurements be the same for the crust? No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to master baking anything with cassava flour lol
gohealthywithbea
Unfortunately no. Because cassava flour has a gummy texture, whereas tigernut flour has a crumbly texture. So it won't hold together if you use tigernut flour. Though I do have a pie crust recipe using tigernut flour. But this one is sweet. You can find it on my apple pie recipe. Remove the cinnamon and replace the maple syrup with water from the tigernut flour crust recipe in order to use it for this quiche. One thing though, I'm not sure how the tigernut flour pie crust will pair with the pumpkin and spinach quiche as it has a much sweeter taste than cassava flour pie crust. Also the texture of the 2 pie crusts are very different. The one with tigernut flour reminds me more of a cookie whereas the one with cassava flour is more neutral and closer to bread crust. Hope these explanations will help! Do not hesitate to give me and the other readers your feedback.
Delia
Is the nutritional information displayed per serving (i.e., per slice of quiche) or for the entire quiche? Thank you!
gohealthywithbea
Bonjour Delia. Thank you for your question, I've added this detail in the title as it was confusing. So as you can see now, the nutritional information is displayed per serving. But please, note that I have considered that this quiche is a 3 serving dish as I often eat this with lettuce as a main dish. So if you eat more or less than a third of this quiche, the nutrition facts will defer from what is displayed. Also, the nutrition facts for this particular recipe differ greatly depending on whether or not you choose to add the optional ingredients (bacon and/or cheese).
Diane Litsey
I don't kinow what I or my oven did wrong but I made this exactly as the recipe said to, it looked beautiful as I took it out, but when I went to cut it 5 min later, I could barely get a Cutco knife thru the crust!!! The filling was delish but the crust was rubber!!! What do you think went wrong? It is back in the oven hoping the crust texture changes without overcooking the insides.
gohealthywithbea
Hello Diane. I'm so sorry to hear that this recipe didn't work out for you. Did you precook the pie crust before adding the filling? Maybe you could precook it a little bit more than the recommended 10 minutes. Also, the diameter of the pie tin is important because it means that in order to fill the pie tin completely you need to roll out the dough very thinly to avoid the gummy texture of the cassava flour. I hope these tips will help you.
KT
Hello! Thanks for this recipe. I love quiche and am really looking forward to being able to eat it while following the AIP diet. Is it ok to use canned butternut or pumpkin? I’m thinking maybe it’s too thin as my quiche wouldn’t cook or set even after cooking it 35 mins longer than the recommended cook time. I used canned butternut squash.
gohealthywithbea
Bonjour KT. When you say your quiche wouldn't cook, I'm guessing you're talking about the crust. If so, maybe you could precook it a little bit more than the recommended 10 minutes. Also, the diameter of the pie tin is important because it means that in order to fill the pie tin completely you need to roll out the dough very thinly to avoid the gummy texture of the cassava flour. I hope these tips will help you. I can't answer you about canned butternut or pumpkin as I have never cooked with it because it doesn't exist here in France.