Herby Greens Pie

Serves 4 as a main, 6 as a side

Ingredients

70ml olive oil

1 large onion, peeled and diced

500g Swiss chard, stems and leaves thinly shredded and kept separate (you could use spinach if that’s what you’ve got or a combination of both)

150g celery, thinly sliced

50g spring onion, chopped

30g parsley, chopped

30g mint, chopped

20g dill, chopped

200g ricotta, crumbled, if you fancy making you’re own we’ve got a recipe here

150g feta, crumbled

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 free-range eggs (or 6 tbsp aquafaba)

⅓ tsp salt

½ tsp coarsely ground black pepper

½ tsp caster sugar

250g filo pastry (8 sheets)

Sesame seeds, nigella seeds, poppy seeds (for sprinkling)

Summary

If you’re anything like us, then you often find you’ve let a bunch of silverbeet/celery/spring onions get a bit wilted and bendy in the fridge. Next time that happens, turn to this herby greens pie and make use of them all!

Filled with hearty greens, vibrant herbs and salty cheeses (which you can sub/omit if you’re taking a vegan route), this dish is a scrumptious way to eat a fridge full of good stuff that otherwise runs the risk of being turfed.

We have Yotam to thank for introducing us to the idea of this pie – he took inspiration from all kinds of Sephardic pastries from Turkey and the Balkans. Serve with a simple green salad and perhaps some of the new season asparagus – YUM!

 

Herby Greens Pie

Heat the oven to 180C. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a deep pot and, on medium heat, sauté the onion for eight minutes without browning. Add the silverbeet stems and the celery, cook for four minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the silverbeet leaves or any other greens you’re using, raise the heat and cook, stirring, for four minutes, until wilted. Add the spring onion and herbs, cook for two minutes and transfer to a colander. Once cool, squeeze out as much liquid as you can, then pop it back in the pot you were previously using and mix in the cheeses, lemon juice, zest, eggs, salt, pepper and sugar.

Brush the base of a 22X30cm pie dish with olive oil, lay a sheet of filo inside the pie dish and brush it with more olive oil. Cover with another sheet and repeat until you have four layers of filo brushed with oil. Fill the dish lined with four layers of filo with the pie mix.

Cover the top of the pie with another four layers of filo as before. Fold the edges facing into each other to seal it off; you could trim them down if you like, but for us, the more flaky filo, the better! Brush the top with more oil, sprinkle with sesame/nigella/poppy seeds and bake for 40 minutes until the filo turns golden brown.

Serve warm or at room temperature with a leafy green salad.

 

Hints and Tips

This pie is wonderfully accomodating; you can swap up ingredients to suit what you have/your taste; as long as you’ve got 500g of greens and a good few handfuls of herbs, you’ll be right! We put in some parmesan last time; if you’ve got some rocket, that could go great in it too; we’ve heard broccoli and leek does delicious things!