Pumpkin Black Bean Broccoli Quiche

I had been out of town and came home to a fairly empty kitchen that contained a few promising items: frozen broccoli (that I had bought fresh but couldn’t use in time) a can of black beans, and a can of pumpkin. When I googled those three items, it gave me a recipe from Calorie Count for quiche! While I’m not typically the calorie-count type, it turned out I also had some eggs in my fridge and half a thing of Gouda, so it looked like my best bet!

This was definitely an experiment. I didn’t have or want to use eggbeaters, so I just added an extra egg for a total of 5. Also other recipes seemed to call for milk in addition to eggs, but I thought the pumpkin might compensate for that.

I used most of a can of pumpkin, most of a can of beans – rinsed this time because I wasn’t sure what it would do to the color of the quiche, forgetting that the predominant color would be orange!

I sautéed my frozen broccoli with some garlic and olive oil and a chopped up dying Serrano pepper – mainly because I didn’t want them to be too watery when they melted in the quiche.

I grated up the Gouda, and then mixed everything together with salt, pepper, and paprika.

Then I decided that I didn’t really want a crustless quiche, so I lined my baking dish with corn tortillas that I found in the freezer (defrosted them first). This worked really well, and I didn’t have to worry about greasing the pan or really about cleaning it afterwards!

I baked the whole thing at 350*f. The recipe said it would take 40 minutes, but for any number of reasons it took an hour. I covered it for the first half with tinfoil, and then let it breathe.

I was worried that the egg ratio was off and it wouldn’t solidify, but it did, especially the portion that made it into the refrigerator over night.

All in all, a total success, and one more piece of evidence that loosely following something but basically doing whatever you want will totally work out!