Quiche turned casserole!

Well, this is what happens when you don't read the full recipe before you start.  So I wrote in the last post that I was going to make this mini-quiche.  I never had a quiche or much less, even know what one is so I figured I'd try this out.

So I soak cashews and start chopping everything, I don't have any tart cases or any small dishes for the oven, so I made a foil bowl thinking this was going to be a small quiche (I should have known, I can never limit myself with ingredients and always make too much of everything...).  I didn't have what the recipe called for so I lined the bottom of the foil bowl with sliced tomatoes, lots of parsley, cilantro, spinach and arugula, a sliced portabella mushroom (have you noticed yet that I'm obsessed with these?), broccoli and white onion.  I eliminated any spices the recipe called for because the base has lots of flavor.

I made the cashew base only changing the flax oil for olive oil (you can eliminate the miso but since I had some in the fridge, I used it-and it made a difference.  If you don't have any you could just add more nutritional yeast for a more cheesy flavor.)

I poured the base over the veggies (I made mine one layer, unlike the recipe which is many layers of alternating veggies and base) and topped it with sliced everything and lots of arugula!

Ready to bake!  Blah, blah, blah, "dehydrate for 24-45 hours..."  WHAT?

I'm all for dehydrating, if only I had a dehydrator...

When recipes are to be dehydrated for a couple hours, I usually get away with pretend dehydrating, which is just putting the oven on the lowest temperature (mines 200 degrees) and keeping the door open a little while the foods cooking (you have to keep an eye on it because it will cook faster than the recipe because your temperature is higher).  But keeping my oven on for 24 hours is not really an option, plus I was starving.... So I cooked this baby at 350 degrees for an hour, turned down the temperature to 200 degrees and let it sit another hour and a half with the door ajar.  The top started to get nice and quiche-like, but the middle was nowhere near.  Realizing this was going to take forever, I turned up the temperature to 450 degrees, baked for 30 minutes and ate it like a casserole.  It was actually really good and I'm sure I could have just baked it at 450 for an hour or so instead of all that.  (Although, if you want the tomatoes on top dried out a little and the arugula to be crisp, you need to fake dehydrate on 200 degrees for at least 1 hour... it's worth it, just saying..)  Also, if you have small tart cases, it would bake a whole lot faster than one huge casserole.

When I get a dehydrator though, I'll definitely make the recipe as-is because I'm sure it's amazing!  But with my love (obsession) with casseroles, this didn't disappoint!