Flans and "quiches": retro food 80s style!

I sometimes fondly remember the days of my early adulthood in the 80s and those trendy vegetarian cafes like Cranks: those were the days of quiche and salads with iced Perrier and a carob flapjack for lunch, discussing our latest anti-Thatcher demo or hunt-sabbing exploits... before Subway, Starbucks and Greggs took over every high street in England every town seemed to have its little independent veggie cafe tucked away down a sidestreet where everything was served in earthenware bowls and the salad bar was bigger than the seating area. There would always be a large noticeboard with adverts for yoga classes and alternative gigs and a stack of fanzines, flyers and leaflets to peruse. Am I the only one who misses these places with their DIY-culture sincerity and their wholesome fare? One day recently I decided to revive the "quiche and salad" lunch idea, and was gratified that my family received it so well bearing in mind they do not necessarily share my predilection for small, old-fashioned wholefood cafes. Of course, my "quiche" does not contain any egg. I've included a vegan option in the following 3 recipes, made with tofu, which is actually my favourite.

All these recipes make 8 portions, in a 10"/ 25.5cm loose-bottomed flan dish.
Broccoli and cheese flan:
50% wholemeal shortcrust pastry, made with 175-200g butter and 300g flour
About a cupful (250ml) of gram flour (garbanzo/chickpea/ baisen) and cold water to mix
1/2 a head of broccoli (calabrese), cut into small florets
About a cupful sweetcorn 
3-4 tomatoes, sliced (or halved cherry tomatoes)
100g (or more if you like!) grated Cheddar cheese
A few black olives  
salt, black pepper, paprika, turmeric, hing, dried oregano

• Roll out the pastry to about 5mm in thickness and press into the oiled flan dish. Blind-bake at 200C until just solidified.
• Steam the broccoli until just tender.
• Meanwhile, mix the gram flour with the water, salt, paprika, hing and a generous pinch of turmeric with a balloon whisk until it is smooth and not lumpy. Stir in the cheese, sweetcorn and broccoli.
• Fill the pastry case with the mixture and top with the sliced tomatoes and the olives. Sprinkle the oregano and black pepper on the top.
• Bake at 200C until the filling is set and the tomatoes tender
• Serve with your favourite salads and oven-baked saute potatoes/ steamed new potatoes.
• After you have offered it to Krishna, pour yourself a large Perrier or Shloer, and eat while listening to "Meat is Murder" by The Smiths for an authentic 80s experience!

Broccoli, cheese and sundried tomato "quiche"
Pastry as above
4oz grated cheddar cheese/ vegan "cheese"  (such as Scheeze or Cheezly) plus extra for topping
61/2tabs (30g) Orgran "No Egg"/ gram flour and soya flour
150-160ml milk/ soya milk 
A handful of broccoli florets, blanched
10 sundried tomato halves, soaked and coarsely chopped
A pinch each of salt, black pepper and turmeric

• Spread the cheese onto the pastry case (which has been blind-baked, as before).
• Add the sundried tomatoes and broccoli.
• Beat together the rest of the ingredients and pour on top.
• Sprinkle with the extra grated cheese
• Bake for 30 mins at 180-190C.
• This goes well with a good chutney and a green salad.

Tofu and roast vegetable "quiche" : vegan
Blind-baked pastry case, as above, but made with vegan unhydrogenated margarine (you can use oil, but it's harder to handle the pastry)
1x250g block of firm tofu
250-300g sweetcorn
a handful of roasted vegetables such as peppers, courgettes (zucchini) and aubergine 
200ml soya milk
2x tabs lemon juice
black pepper, hing, herbs
1 tab soy/tamari sauce/ liquid aminos
turmeric 
sunflower seeds and/ or pine nuts 

• Line the pastry case with the roasted vegetables
• Reserve a handful of sweetcorn and the seeds/ pine nuts and whizz everything else in a blender until quite smooth.
• Add the rest of the sweetcorn to the blended filling.
• Pour into the pastry case and top with the seeds and pine nuts
• Bake for 20 mins at 200C (or 225C if you don't have a fan oven).

Ekadasi Mozzarella Burgers- gluten free

Burger and chips... a children's favourite!

Usually we make veggie burgers with some sort of beans or grain like rice flakes, oats or quinoa, but it' also good to have a burger recipe for days when you're not eating grains (like Ekadasi) or if you are cooking gluten free. I made these variations on the veggieburger using mozzarella cheese and I must say they have a great texture; crispy outside and soft inside- and refreshingly free of potato. They hold together very well too. Having just acquired a deep-fryer, I couldn't resist serving them with chips made from our organic home-grown potatoes; as you can see if you look closely at the picture above, I don't peel them. The quantities given below make seven good-sized burgers:

1 large courgette
230g vegetarian mozarella cheese (drained weight)
100g ground almonds
a handful or two of buckwheat flour to bind
turmeric powder (haldi), seasalt and black pepper to taste

This is the sort of consistency you need the mix to be for shaping.

Two Luscious Eggless Birthday Cakes- white chocolate fudge and toffee fudge

When two of my stepsons celebrated their birthdays within days of each other, they  both asked for very different cakes: A turned 15 and asked for "Toffee Fudge" and Yadu turned 24 and asked for "A white cake of some sort..." so I had my work cut out! Here's how I made them:

 Y's White Chocolate Fudge Cake. An ordinary vanilla sponge filled and topped with white chocolate fudge icing, which consisted of equal quantities of buttercream icing and melted Belgian white chocolate (400g of chocolate in all went into this cake!) I didn't have quite enough to  cover the sides of the cake, but next time...the decorations were dried strawberries, which I coated in white chocolate.

A's Toffee Fudge Cake. This time I adapted my basic cake recipe to be more caramel-y by using dark brown sugar and swapping 1/8 of the sugar for golden syrup, added with the liquid ingredients. The filling was a jar of dulce de leche (Argentinian spread of boiled down milk and sugar- they also have it in Normandy,  France, where it's called confiture de lait) but you could make your own by boiling a can of condensed milk unopened for a couple of hours; when you open it, you should get virtually the same thing. The frosting is chocolate fudge icing, made like the first cake only with milk chocolate. The decorations are fudge pieces. Suffice it to say you don't need a big slice of this one...!