Cooking with Neocate - Quiche revisited...

I've posted about our efforts with Quiche before both here and here. I've used two pie crust pastry recipes over the years, but we are now gluten free so I stick to the Juvela Harvest White mix recipe on the back of the boxes. It works well for us - BUT it isn't egg free.

Eggs serve to enrich a dough because of their fats. So anything with a certain amount of fat would work like condensed milk or extra butter or oil. However, keep in mind that though eggs are liquid when you add them to a recipe they change into a solid when they are heated. So if you are adding an ingredient such as milk or oil that does not solidify on heating, you must remember to add a little more flour to your recipe to act as a binder.

The other reason egg is used in pastry is to make it more malleable, you can use milk or water to replace egg but your pastry will not be as delicate as milk and water release the starch out of the flour and make it stretchy. So it will be perfectly edible but not as delicate.

It IS a dilemma, but given that THIS post is about quiche - or EGG PIE as we have to call it in this house - and given that quiche needs egg I'm going to gloss over this. Sorry. However, I do feel this a bit lame, and have tried backing an eggless quiche once. The Vegg can be used to make the filling and an eggless crust IS possible, just not as easy to work with. There is a list of egg substitutes here.

I would LOVE to see some of your egg free success stories, (especially the savoury ones) and will test and feature any I'm sent on the Recipe Resource.

Now for the Neocate part....
My children are nutritionally deficient without Neocate, as are many children on restricted diets. It is an elemental formula "milk" based on basic amino acids. It is a nutritionally complete formula and onr youngest son was exclusively tube fed Neocate for almost a year.Our Neocate is a prescribed medication from Gt Ormond Street. Although my children CAN eat egg in limited quantities, there are so many other foods they cannot have that getting as much Neocate into them as possible is a great way to boost their nutritional status.

Neocate is pretty easy to cook with, I've made rice puddings, custards, white sauces etc with it. It's best to eat it on the day of cooking, but now my children are older and although immunodeficient not immunosuppressed I often keep the quiche a couple of days in the fridge.
(NB this is NOT medical advice, this is personal choice, please check with your healthcare professional for individual advice which WILL vary with the age of your child and reason for prescribing.)

So. Today's recipe is for our Thompson Family Favourite - EGG PIE. (shhhhh!!! It's NOT "quiche"!

Ingredients

Now I messed up here a bit. My small 8" flan dish (we can't eat more in 2 days and I don't want it lingering longer) needs 3 eggs for the recipe, BUT the Harvest White pastry needs one too - so that's FOUR EGGS total.

• 1 sachet of Neocate (whichever you have, although Advance is meant for tube (enteral) feeding and honestly tastes pretty awful...)
• Something to mix it in.
• Free from margarine
• FOUR eggs
• Juvela Harvest White mix - or your choice of pastry crust.
• Salt and Pepper to season.

Method

• Mix up the Neocate and leave to cool. if you don't - you will set the eggs on mixing, NOT advisable.
• Mix up the pastry as per instructions and press into pie dish. You will have some left in an 8" pie dish btw - but it does freeze well. Or make some jam tarts with the leftovers?

TIP I put my hand in a small plastic bag to press the pastry round the dish, otherwise it sticks to my warm hands and I cannot make it work effectively.

• Bake the crust for 5 mins at 180C to part bake it.
• Then whisk up the remaining 3 eggs with approx 200ml of the Neocate mixture. You can add anything else you fancy to the "pie" - but we are purists and stick with the plain version. I have tried vegetables, tuna and sweetcorn... but all get rejected! (We are a little limited with our options being slightly more than dairy, soya, wheat and gluten free but I always think it's worth trying!)
• Add salt and pepper to taste
• A good way of thickening the mixture up is to add a little rice cream, or Oatly cream, or more Neocate powder. It works without - but the texture will be slightly more "creamy" with either of these.

Bake for around 25 minutes at 180C (NB lower if you are using a fan oven!)

The results :-

Works great in a packed lunch for school too! It's really palatable, especially with a little rice cream. I have been known to eat some too - and today, my 12 year old who is only gluten free and has never tasted Neocate enjoyed his.