How to cook with leftover food (how to repackage leftover food as a pie or a quiche (the pie/quiche method)

  July 27, 2020

Tofu quiche featuring leftover bok choy and ham
served with hard boiled egg and fresh salad

Hello World!  What do you do with leftover food in your fridge?  Are leftover dishes becoming a source of stress for you because your children don’t want to eat leftover food?  I’ve been facing the same issue for years and have been thinking about how best use them.  I have been writing a post every Monday in July about how to repackage leftover food.  Last week I talked about how to repackage leftover food using the soup / stew method.  Please click the link to find more about it.  

In today’s post I would like to show you how to repackage leftover ingredients (can be meat or veggies) into a pie or a quiche type of dish!  I love pies and quiches.  I love pies and quiches because they contain many different layers of flavor and textures in one dish!  Typically, a pie or a quiche has a crust bottom made of flour and butter and an egg-based custard filling.  In today’s post, I would like to share two recipes that use up leftover veggies with some twists to the traditional versions.  So please stay tuned!! 😊

Recipe #1:

Tofu quiche with leftover bok choy, ham and onion with sunflower crust

Tofu quiche showing textural detail of vegetables, ham and the crust

Ingredients: 

Leftover bok choy (you can use any cooked veggies, ½ cup), leftover ham (1/2 cup), onions (2 med size, chopped roughly), sunflower seeds (3/4 cup), saltine cracker (5 pieces, optional), eggs (3), tofu (1 lb., well drained of water), cream of mushroom soup (300 g, optional), ground pepper, kosher salt, garlic powder. 

How:

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1.  Take out cooked bok choy and leftover ham.

2. Sautee onions in oil until fragrant and caramelized.  Add bok choy (or any cooked veggies) and ham with the onions.  Season to taste with ground pepper, salt and garlic powder, if desired.

3. While onions are cooking, make the crust by processing the sunflower seeds and the crackers in the food processor (process just enough to break up the seeds and crackers). 

4.  Process the eggs and tofu until smooth and mix it with the soup.  (you can divide the soup so that half goes into the vegetable filling and the other half goes into the egg tofu mixture).  Season to taste with salt and ground pepper

5.  Now assemble the quiche in the order of: the crust, onion mix from step 2. 

6. Pour the egg tofu soup mixture on top. 

7.  Bake quiche at 350 degrees for about 60 min. until the top layer is cooked and set with golden brown color.  Cooking times will vary depending on the moisture content of the filling and the tofu egg soup mixture.  Adding cream of soup adds more moisture, and this will require more baking time but will generate more flavor.  

Recipe #2
Tofu chard pie with sunflower seed and saltine crackers crust

This recipe was featured in my recent CSA cooking post (July 11, 2020). So please click to find the recipe.  It is a similar recipe as Recipe #1, using slightly different ingredients.  😊

Swiss chard tofu pie served with fresh greens and sauteed dino kale

 

 So, there you have it: how to repackage leftover food using the pie / quiche method!  :)

Hope you enjoy your creation! 

Thanks for visiting my blog.  Please share your thoughts and ideas with the rest of the world!!  😊