Ingredients

Needs ingredients

Method

1. First off, get your block of silken tofu pressed. This is to remove some liquid from the block. The traditional way involves wrapping the block of tofu in kitchen towel to absorb the water, placing it on a plate with something heavy on top (usually  a balancing act of books) and leaving it all in the fridge for a while.
2. However, the clever people at Tofuture have invented a nifty Tofu press that is absolutely worth its weight in saffron. It’s a clever contraption that allows you to pop your tofu into the tofu block sized press (told you it was clever) with the water draining into a separate compartment. It’s small enough to leave in your fridge and works a lot better than the book/kitchen towel method. Anyway….whichever way you do it, get your silken tofu in a press while you do everything else.
3. Press silken tofu in the fridge
4. Butternut squash into oven to bake. I use half a 750g bag of frozen squash because it’s so easy but fresh is fine too. Bake it until soft.
5. Fit a ready made roll of shortcrust pastry to a 10” flan tin. Don’t worry if you only have puff pastry – it works perfectly well, just with a flakier finish. Leave the pastry on its greaseproof paper to stop the pastry sticking to the tin. It might take a bit of cutting, folding and shaping but it will fit!
6. Poke holes in the bottom of the pastry with a fork. This is to stop pastry bubbles rising. Add another layer of baking paper and ideally a tub of baking beans to weigh the pastry down. I used a heatproof mug in my video but its not the best.
7. Blind bake the pastry for around 10 – 15 minutes at around Gas Mark 5. Until the pastry edges are a pale golden colour. Take out and allow to cool slightly. I occasionally use the pastry as soon as it’s out of the oven and haven’t noticed any difference whether it’s used  hot or cold.
8. Take your pressed block of tofu and scrape it into a mixing bowl. Discard the tofu water. Break up the tofu with an electric stick blender, but if you haven’t got an electric blender you can just use a fork like I’ve shown you in the video
9. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of Rosemary, 1 teaspoon of thyme, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper and 1/2 cup Nutritional Yeast to the tofu and mix. An electric blender is so much faster but be prepared to have an arm like Popeye if you’re using a fork.
10. Add a Tablespoon of Caramelised Onion Chutney if you have it. Or balsamic vinegar or caramelised onions if you haven’t. Mix again
11. Mix in a cup of  fresh spinach. I used half a cup of frozen and then defrosted spinach as it’s really easy to store but fresh spinach is good too.
12. Add the baked butternut squash and mix again.
13. Scrape the filling into the pastry base and smooth over.
14. Pop quiche back into oven at Gas mark 4 or 5 (170C – 190C) for around 20 minutes. When ready the pastry edge should be golden and the tofu should be set.