Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Pie July: Spanakopita that! I know that I ended my last post by saying I couldn't be bothered with spanakopita, but truth be told it was the tedium of assembling paper-thin leaves of filo pastry that I was really dreading. I managed to get around that by forgetting about the filo and making it with puff pastry instead. It's just as good!
I used this recipe as a jumping-off point, but I probably got all the proportions wrong. Here's how I made mah pie.
Ingredients
600g (1 small bunch) silverbeet
1 brown onion, chopped roughly
3 spring onions, trimmed and chopped finely
400g fetta – recipe calls for Greek but I used Danish
dill in a tube (or a bunch of real dill, chopped)
garlic in a jar
pesto in a jar
1 handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
rind of 1 lemon, juice of 1/2 lemon
4 eggs, lightly whisked in a cup
2 sheets puff pastry
olive oil
Put your pastry sheets out to defrost and pre-heat your oven to 180°C. Wash silverbeet and don't worry too much about drying it. Chop roughly. Put on the stove in a large dry pan and sprinkle with more water. You're basically steaming it. (I had to do this in batches because, man, it was a lot of silverbeet. When it starts to wilt, decant it into a large bowl.
Now add some olive oil to the pan and fry up your onion and two generous spoons of jar garlic. When they're soft, add to the bowl. Add the chopped spring onions and the lemon rind and juice. Now add a generous squeeze from your dill tube. I went a bit crazy and decided to add some basil pesto too, plus some parsley from my garden.
Add your whisked eggs to the bowl, and crumble the fetta in too. I was all, "Shit, 400g is a lot of fetta!" but it was okay. Mix everything well together.
Get a square or rectangular cake tin or lasagne tray and grease well with oil. Line with one pastry sheet and brush well with oil. Tip filling on top, then top with second pastry sheet. Lightly score pie top in a criss-cross pattern. Brush with more oil. Put in oven until pastry looks golden.
As you can see I used a square cake tin, which meant that I ended up with quite tall spanakopita slices, with lots of filling. If you prefer a flatter, pastrier spanakopita you might want to use a shallower dish and spread the filling thinner.
Even though my quantities of spinach to fetta ratio were pretty much even (as opposed to the recipe which called for heaps more spinach), it still tasted pretty good, and not nearly as salty as I had been expecting, considering the amount of cheese.
The lemon gives it a zingy, astringent quality which I found a little offputting in the fresh pie. But once it had sat in the fridge and I ate it for lunch yesterday, I found the citrus quite tangy and delicious. Also, the refrigeration means the pie's structural integrity remains, as opposed to when it was freshly cooked and pretty much fell apart.
In other Pie July news, my mother was horrified to learn of this initiative. She thinks I will get fat(ter) and that it will have deleterious, Morgan Spurlock-style effects on my nutrition. She was not even comforted by the fact that this pie is full of healthful greens.
I used this recipe as a jumping-off point, but I probably got all the proportions wrong. Here's how I made mah pie.
Ingredients
600g (1 small bunch) silverbeet
1 brown onion, chopped roughly
3 spring onions, trimmed and chopped finely
400g fetta – recipe calls for Greek but I used Danish
dill in a tube (or a bunch of real dill, chopped)
garlic in a jar
pesto in a jar
1 handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
rind of 1 lemon, juice of 1/2 lemon
4 eggs, lightly whisked in a cup
2 sheets puff pastry
olive oil
Put your pastry sheets out to defrost and pre-heat your oven to 180°C. Wash silverbeet and don't worry too much about drying it. Chop roughly. Put on the stove in a large dry pan and sprinkle with more water. You're basically steaming it. (I had to do this in batches because, man, it was a lot of silverbeet. When it starts to wilt, decant it into a large bowl.
Now add some olive oil to the pan and fry up your onion and two generous spoons of jar garlic. When they're soft, add to the bowl. Add the chopped spring onions and the lemon rind and juice. Now add a generous squeeze from your dill tube. I went a bit crazy and decided to add some basil pesto too, plus some parsley from my garden.
Add your whisked eggs to the bowl, and crumble the fetta in too. I was all, "Shit, 400g is a lot of fetta!" but it was okay. Mix everything well together.
Get a square or rectangular cake tin or lasagne tray and grease well with oil. Line with one pastry sheet and brush well with oil. Tip filling on top, then top with second pastry sheet. Lightly score pie top in a criss-cross pattern. Brush with more oil. Put in oven until pastry looks golden.
As you can see I used a square cake tin, which meant that I ended up with quite tall spanakopita slices, with lots of filling. If you prefer a flatter, pastrier spanakopita you might want to use a shallower dish and spread the filling thinner.
Even though my quantities of spinach to fetta ratio were pretty much even (as opposed to the recipe which called for heaps more spinach), it still tasted pretty good, and not nearly as salty as I had been expecting, considering the amount of cheese.
The lemon gives it a zingy, astringent quality which I found a little offputting in the fresh pie. But once it had sat in the fridge and I ate it for lunch yesterday, I found the citrus quite tangy and delicious. Also, the refrigeration means the pie's structural integrity remains, as opposed to when it was freshly cooked and pretty much fell apart.
In other Pie July news, my mother was horrified to learn of this initiative. She thinks I will get fat(ter) and that it will have deleterious, Morgan Spurlock-style effects on my nutrition. She was not even comforted by the fact that this pie is full of healthful greens.
