Canadian Tire Kitchen Crew Mission 2: Vegetarian options for Thanksgiving

Quiche Dijonnaise recipeNext up in my Canadian Tire Kitchen Crew series of missions? Test out the Black and Decker Convection Rotisserie Toaster Oven.  Yes, you read that right – a “rotisserie toaster oven”. Sounds like an oxymoron, no?  I was quite intrigued to test the rotisserie part of the oven.  Since my Mission was as follows:

Thanksgiving. For some, just hearing the word makes them shudder, especially thinking about all the work creating a Thanksgiving feast for your family entails. Your mission this week is to get inspired and take a new view on old Thanksgiving classics. From side dishes to the main event – anything goes!

I wanted to see if I could change things up a little and roast a chicken instead of a turkey for the perfect Thanksgiving meal for two people (it’s hard to buy a 3lb turkey!).  Even though I owned a couple of different toaster ovens when I lived in Paris and had NO counterspace, I never had one big enough for roasting a chicken.

Well here’s the thing, this one isn’t really either.

Neil makes a mean roast chicken (the secret is BUTTER!) so I set him to work, first of all finding a small chicken that would fit in the oven. Our 3lb chicken fit but there was no room for it to turn on the rotisserie. Kind of defeats the purpose, so our chicken cooked (beautifully considering it was a small appliance) just sitting in the pan.  Maybe a cornish hen could fit but that’s about it.. So if you don’t need your bird to turn, this oven does a pretty good job.


One thing we didn’t much like about this was the digital controls.  Instead of simply having one button for temperatures, there are a bunch of presets that you have to look up in the book to see what they are as 1. it’s not immediately obvious what the pictures are of and 2. what Black and Decker recommend for cooking temperatures doesn’t necessarily fit with my ideas.

The digital controls played into one big problem we had which was that the oven gets hot. REALLY hot. So much so that during the preheating stage, we had to turn it off and move it off the table where we had put it, we were worried about it damaging the wood.  When we plugged it in after stetting it in on the stove, it took nearly 20 minutes to “pre-heat” to 425, even though it was clearly already at that temperature. I’m not a fan of the digital controls and settings but I think once I get to know them a little better it would be easier. But note to manufacturers: digital does not always equal easier.

So I gave up on the idea of the “mini” Thanksgiving for 2 and decided to focus on something that often gets left unattended – options for vegetarians.  If we are around on Thanksgiving weekend (early October in Canada), we always plan a meal with our next door neighbours, Lois and Orest.  Lois is a strict vegetarian so the idea of turkey and all the trimmings doesn’t really do it for her. She always brings wonderful veggie side dishes but I often think I need to broaden my repertoire of appropriate dishes to serve so that Lois doesn’t feel left out.  Enter our recent trip to France where I discovered pre-rolled butter puff pastry and experienced a lot of success making savoury tarts Ă  go-go – they are an excellent way to use up whatever’s in the fridge when you are leaving a rental house 🙂  I bought a small recipe book of Burgundian classics and the recipe I wanted to try out in this mini oven is a take on the classic “Tarte Dijonnaise” – basically a tomato, onion, cheese and mustard tart. I’ve added some eggs for some extra protein which makes this more of a dinner meal than a light lunch, though I have actually eaten this for breakfast, lunch and dinner (and would again, quite happily) and it’s perfect.

Even better than how good it tastes, is the fact that it takes about 15 minutes to prepare, then you just put it in the oven and forget about it. This is where having a second (even tabletop) oven is really useful. It means you can get the vegetarian main course on the go whilst the turkey does its thing in the main oven. In this sense, it’s a bit of a lifesaver – we always struggle to serve hot side-dishes because of the oven being taken up for so long by the turkey (or chicken or whatever..)

Of course, you can make your own pastry but if you’ve got a ton of stuff on the go on Thanksgiving morning, store-bought pastry might be the way to go…

I have to say I was super surprised at how well this worked. Dare I say the colour was nicer on this pie than on the one cooked in the regular oven (no pics, sorry, we ate that one first!)

Yield: 4

Quiche Dijonnaise

Quiche Dijonnaise

A quiche inspired by a trip to Burgundy that's perfect as the vegetarian option at your holiday table.

Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 35 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 sheet frozen puff pastry (approx 250g), thawed
  • 6 tablespoons Dijon mustard
  • 1 onion, finely sliced into rings
  • 1 large tomato, finely sliced into rounds
  • 1/2 cup cheese, grated
  • 3 eggs, beaten
  • 1 egg, beaten for egg wash

Instructions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 350˚F
  2. Roll the thawed pastry into a pie dish (greased if it is not non-stick). The pastry will hang over the edges, that's ok.
  3. Spread the mustard evenly on the bottom of the pie pastry.
  4. Lay the onion rings, tomato slices on the mustard.
  5. Spread the cheese evenly over the tomatoes and onions.
  6. Pour the egg over the filling and swirl the plate around to make sure it's evenly distributed.
  7. Fold the edges up over the filling (it will definitely not completely cover the pie, that's ok) and brush with egg wash.
  8. Bake for 35 minutes.
  9. Serve warm as a main dish.

did you make this recipe?

please leave a comment or review on the blog or share a photo and tag me on Instagram @eatlivtravwrite !


And the result?

We really love this dish and have eaten it many different ways since I discovered how to make it (not like there’s a secret recipe but still…). It’s useful for breakfast, lunch or dinner and so so easy and versatile. Does it need to be made in the Black and Decker Convection Rotisserie Toaster Oven? Of course not. But it you are serving it as a vegetarian option at your holiday table, it would be handy to have a second oven so that everyone’s meal would be served hot.

You might also like: Chez Loulou’s Tarte Dijonnaise

Disclaimer: I was provided with compensation as well as a  Black and Decker Convection Rotisserie Toaster Oven in exchange for writing two posts about the product. All opinions are 100% my own.  The Kitchen Crew series highlights my stories, recipes and tips with promotional consideration made possibly by Canadian Tire. If you want to uncover your kitchen’s true potential, stay tuned to the Kitchen Crew for my weekly missions.

39 thoughts on “Canadian Tire Kitchen Crew Mission 2: Vegetarian options for Thanksgiving”

  1. Neat oven but not so good since it was not easy to get it to work. new technology does not necessary mean it works better.

    Reply
  2. Yes, I have to say the rotisserie option seemed more a sales pitch than useful feature. I douibt quail is on the menu for most people…

    And the controls are beyond didgety: there is a clear fault in the temperature readings. It was all over the map, and often “off”. (Reinforced by online feedback, it seems.) Assuming B&D fix that, it’s a good little oven.

    As for our current savoury tart fixation…well the unit did that to a charm. 🙂

    We paired the tart with a Tawse Sketches of Niagara rose, as we eeek out these last few days of summer.

    Reply
  3. We bought an older condo and it came with a crappy cook range / oven that is so old that it takes double time to cook and bake stuff! Argh! Add to that, our lack of counterspace…So, I am currently searching the market for a good convection toaster oven or something like that…Your post really came at an opportune time! I can’t help thinking, “what a coincidence!” So…would you recommend this B & D product to me?

    Reply
    • Jen, I would not recommend it in place of a regular oven, especially with a family. This is pretty small (only fits one tray of cookies, for example and not even a full sized one) and also takes up quite a bit of counterspace. As I say in the post, it’s more useful as a second oven.

      Reply
  4. Sounds a great gadget and ideal for small kitchens. We could have done with this one in our first doll’s house apartment in Paris! Love the look of your quiche.

    Reply
  5. Your photos of the roasting chicken bring back some fond memories… before The Boy and I bought our house, I lived in a little one-bedroom apartment with a tiny galley kitchen that lacked an oven, which meant everything got baked in a countertop toaster oven like this (sans rotisserie, mind you, and with very simple non-digital controls). That said, I much prefer my full-size normal oven. 🙂
    Your Quiche Dijonnaise, on the other hand, looks absolutely fabulous. Love that buttery, browned puff pastry crust!

    Reply
  6. Yes, this oven is what I like to call a glorified toaster, right now anyway. We’ll see what happens when I try baking in it again, but so far I am not impressed either.

    Great looking tart though, pretty much anything with Dijon in it is a fav of mine!

    Reply
  7. This is wonderful. It can be varied in so many different ways. I think the last time I made puff pastry was in culinary school.

    I have a small convection oven too. It’s so useful in the summer when I don’t want to heat the apartment too much

    Reply
  8. The store bought pastry in Europe is just so much better- sigh. Since everything is closed on Sunday in Italy, I used to keep packages of pastry on hand for emergency hangover-cure meals- I’d just fill it with everything in the fridge and wait for it to work it’s magic. That toaster is about the size my oven was over there too;)

    Reply
  9. The quiche looks amazing! I did a roasted chicken and Thanksgiving for 2 for years when hubby and I were newlyweds and lived far from family. A roasted chicken – to this day – is the most special of dishes!

    Reply
  10. The quiche looks amazing, vegetarian or not! By the way, have you ever posted Neil’s recipe for his famous roast chicken? I checked under your *Chicken* category but didn’t see it.

    Reply
  11. Mardi, this quiche recipe sounds great, though I would have to make a substitution for the mustard. I can’t believe they are suggesting the rotisserie when all you can use it for is a cornish game hen. That is crazy.

    Reply
  12. I have to admit, the idea of a rotisserie toaster oven makes me giggle. lol. Can’t help it. I don’t really see the point of the rotisserie part but then… well..
    Anyhooo… the tart looks fantastic. I am so hooked on frozen puff pastry and savory tarts. I’ve made a tomato sausage one and am going to do a tomato basil one tomorrow. This one looks very tasty too!

    Reply
  13. Brilliant! In our little condo, we only use the oven for making large quantities of food, usually for dinner parties or if we have guests staying over.

    Otherwise, we use our convection toaster oven, which we store in our pantry and place on the counter when we need it. Similar to your experience, we are afraid of roasting larger joints of meat or whole poultry in it as it will likely erupt into a fireball, melting through the sheet pan we always place it on, the coasters under the sheet pan, and likely the counter itself.

    Great idea with the quiche! I may use this recipe to add a vegetarian option to our Thanksgiving dinner this year.

    Reply

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