Spinach Quiche Recipe by Maya Corrigan

You can serve this crustless version of quiche as a side dish or for lunch or brunch. Rolling pins and I don’t play nicely together, so I’m always on the lookout for recipes that don’t involve rolling out dough. Without a crust, this dish is gluten free and has fewer calories than quiche with a crust. The photos show how to make it in a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Alternately, you can use an 8 or 9-inch square pan.  

INGREDIENTS

1 pound rinsed fresh baby spinach
1 medium to large onion, chopped
2 large eggs, beaten
10 ounces low-fat ricotta
10 ounces freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4  teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg 

1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)

NOTE: You can substitute low-fat small curd cottage cheese for the ricotta. There is a health trade-off in choosing which to use. The ricotta has more fat, the cottage cheese more sodium. If you make it with cottage cheese, don’t add the salt.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Spray the bottom of the tart pan and set it on a baking sheet with a rim.

Combine the eggs, cheese, Parmesan, chopped onion, and spices. Fold in the spinach. Stir to blend all the ingredients and put them in the tart pan.

Bake until the edges are slightly brown and the center is set.

Check the quiche after 40 minutes and return it to the oven for 5 minutes or more, if needed.

Remove it from the oven and wait 5 minutes before taking it off the baking sheet. 

Here’s an easy way to separate the bottom from the rim of a tart pan. Turn a glass with a flat bottom upside-down on your baking sheet or serving platter. Place the pan on top of the inverted glass and then lower the pan rim. The photo below shows the quiche and pan bottom resting on the glass after the rim is detached. I like how the photo makes the quiche look as if it's floating in air.

Holding the quiche by the metal bottom, take it off the glass and put it on a platter. The metal bottom remains with the quiche for serving.   

Wait at least 15 minutes before cutting the quiche into wedges and serving it.

Do you enjoy rolling dough for crusts and cookies or do you avoid it if you can?

📚

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Five-Ingredient Mysteries in Order

1. By Cook or by Crook: Val and Granddad adjust to a new life spiced with a local murder.

2. Scam Chowder: Granddad is in the soup after a scammer targeting retirees goes face down in his chowder.

3. Final Fondue: Val, Granddad, and their house guests plumb the dark side of love.

4. The Tell-Tale Tarte: Murder among Poe fans leads to a local “House of Usher” and Poe’s grave in Baltimore.

5. S’more Murders: The Titanic memorial dinner Val caters aboard a yacht has a fatal outcome.

6. Crypt Suzette: A haunted house and a haunting manuscript help Val solve a murder among aspiring writers.

7. Gingerdead Man: Someone dressed as a "Christmas Carol" ghost commits murder during a Dickens of a holiday festival.

Visit Maya's website for book news and discounts, easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story. 

📚