Skinny Christmas Quiche Recipe

   This week I've been endeavouring to serve up some more festive meals for the family, and it's been quite difficult to find 'Christmas recipes' for anything beyond a full Christmas dinner or something to do with left-overs. So, in the end, I took normal recipes and tried to festive them up - unfortunately I struggled beyond 'pork', 'turkey' and 'cranberries', but I managed. I managed...

   I don't actually like quiche, but I so often make things that appeal to me specifically that I thought I'd cater to everyone else this time around - but in fairness it's also been years since I've had quiche, because I don't like it. This one, however, I rather liked. Perhaps my taste has changed, perhaps I've simply grown up, or, perhaps, this was the nicest quiche I've ever had. Who knows?

   But this isn't a normal quiche. It's a crustless and 'skinny' quiche to save calories (like we really need to pile on any more at this time of year). Now, I stress, 'skinny' doesn't mean 'healthy', it just means low-fat, and while you do need fat in your diet, at this time of the year, when you eat a lot more than usual and are sure to get fat from other sources, cutting it out of a few dishes and lowering the calories in the process doesn't hurt. Which is why I broke my rules of nutritional balance and made a skinny, crustless Christmas quiche instead of a typical one.

   Also, allow me to apologise for the picture. This was taken just before serving it up, and I have yet to perfect the art of camera settings for photographing under a kitchen light. It's been through a lot of colour changes to filter out the excessive yellow, which was especially difficult with an already yellow dish...

Ingredients:

Makes 8 slices - 100 cals with mushrooms, 200 cals with pork sausage

200-300g steamed & drained spinach 

200g cooked & chopped mushrooms or pork sausage

100g low-fat cheese (split into 25g, 25g & 50g)

6 eggs

250ml skimmed milk (or almond milk)
salt & pepper

Handful of cranberries (about 25g)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F /190 C/gas mark 5 and lightly grease a glass pie dish - non-stick spray or coconut oil.

2. Make sure you've removed as much of the moisture from the spinach as you can (it's easiest to have prepared the spinach earlier in the day) and then scatter it across the base of the dish. It won't completely cover it, but it won't have to. Then scatter the sausage or mushroom over the spinach in the same manner, and then 25g of the cheese.

3. Mix the eggs, milk & 50g of cheese in a bowl and pour over the mushrooms/sausage and spinach. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top, along with the cranberries.

4. Set the dish in the oven for 1 hour, then allow to cool slightly and cut into 8 slices. Serve with a leafy salad, or more festively, roasted sprouts and cherry tomatoes.