In the end, tired of missing out on the aspargus love-in going on various food blogs I follow, I caved in and opted for an Asparagus, Broccoli, Mushroom and Blue Cheese Pie. Unfortunately, our veg box still hasn’t supplied any asparagus so we had to opt for the supermarket stuff which was passable – nowhere near as tasty as the farm shop stuff we tend to get this time of year.

As when making any form of pie, I tend to turn to Pie Minister for inspiration. This one was loosely based on their great Wildshroom and Asparagus. I read somewhere in an interview with one of the PM guys that his top tip would be to experiment with the pastry, in this I decided to try it with a twist of Nutmeg.

Ingredients

When I made this, I did it all by eye so I’m not entirely sure of the amounts I used. If I’m honest this probably could have fed 3-4 adults. I won’t tell you how many it did – ‘We only had salad with it’ was Jenny’s defence though.

• 8 oz Purple sprouting broccoli
• 6 Asparagus Spears, 1″ long chunks
• 8 Button mushrooms, sliced
• 4 Shallots, sliced
• 2 Garlic Cloves, sliced
• 2 oz Butter
• 2 tbsp Plain flour
• Soya Milk (Unsweetened)
• 2 oz Blue Cheese
• Ready made pastry
• 1 tsp Ground Nutmeg
• 1 Egg, beaten

I tend to use soya milk because I prefer the slightly nutty taste in cooking, cow’s milk would be fine too. We ended up using Danish Blue cheese since we didn’t have a huge selection and it’s not quite as strong as some of the other choices.

Method

1. Heat just less than an oz of Butter in a pan, add the Shallots and Garlic for a couple of minutes.
2. Add the Broccoli, Asparagus and Mushrooms, cook for ~8 minutes or just before the Mushrooms get juicy.
3. Meanwhile, make a roux with the remaining Butter and Flour. If you’ve not made roux before, heat the Butter until fully melted then add the Flour gradually until fully blended (stir thoroughly!).
4. Make sure the mixture isn’t too hot before adding the Milk, mix in.
5. Crumble the Cheese slowly into it. You may need to play with the portions of milk/flour to get the right texture and amount.
6. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C.
7. Get Jenny to roll out the Pastry for you, telling her to mix in the Ground Nutmeg (you can see some in the photo above). Separate into two pieces – one for the base and one for the lid.
8. Lay the slightly bigger one on the bottom of your dish, add the filling, brush some beaten Egg around the edge to help it seal, cover with lid. Make pretty patterns around the edge with your fingers.
9. Get child/Jenny to make decorations out of remaining pastry for the lid. Glaze with Egg.
10. Cook for ~25 mins or until golden.

Although, the recipe wasn’t particularly revolutionary, Jenny’s unique mushroom and ‘asparagus’ pie decoration certainly was.

The filling was just right – the veg still had some sort of texture to them rather than turning into mushy pulp, there was plenty of the cheese sauce to keep it moist without being overly blue-cheesey. The pastry was pretty good, the nutmeg worked well but was still some way off from a PM pie.

Sundried Tomato, Spinach & Feta Filo Pastry Pie

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Vegetable Mousakka with Greek Salad, accompanied with Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread.

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Orange Passover Cake with Orange Cheesecake Topping

The night went really well and when the guests arrived, we were able to sit and drink the vino while the oven did all the work!

Sundried Tomato, Spinach & Feta Filo Pastry Pie

I picked up this recipe from BBC Good Food online.  It was very easy – just mixing feta, sundried tomatoes and spinach with whisked egg.  You then line a tin with pastry, add the filling and fold over the top.  Those of you who have read my previous blogs about pies will realise that my version (see photo) does not qualify as a pie as it does not have a complete lid.  I made the mistake of overlapping the filo pastry too much so it would not close completely.  However the guests commented about how pretty it looked, so all was not lost.  This pie is served cold, so can be baked in advance and chilled.

Vegetable Mousakka with Greek Salad, accompanied with Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread.

The vegetable Moussaka recipe came from a Greek cook book – the Olive and the Caper which to be honest, is not a very good book.  I find the recipes a little bland and the text a little wordy.  The book is by an American not a Greek and all the ingredients are listed in cups and farenheit.  A translation is below.

• 2 medium aubergines
• Olive Oil
• 1kg white potato, peeled and cut into 1/2cm thick slices
• 150g fresh breadcrumbs
• 2 large tomatoes
• 3 egg yolks
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• 600g grated kefalotyri cheese (we used Pecorino as we couldn’t get this cheese)
• 100g butter
• 100g plain flour
• Generous pinch of freshly ground nutmeg

If you’re cooking this straight away, preheat the oven to 180°C.  Cut the aubergine lengthways into 1/2cm slices.  Fry the aubergine in a pan until golden – take care not to overload the pan; do this in several batches.  Continue adding oil with each batch, as the aubergine soaks up so much of it!  Repeat the frying process with potato slices.   To free up that all important vino time, you could prepare the white sauce (see below) whilst frying the aubergine and potato.

Prepare the “besamel sauce” by melting the butter until foaming.  Add the flour, whisking briskly as you do so, until you get a smooth paste, or as the French would say, a rue.  Continue whisking for 2 mins until the mix turns golden.  Whisk in the milk and season with salt (if you add pepper, the black flecks can spoil the look of the sauce).  Cook over a medium heat for 12-15 mins.  Whisk in the nutmeg.

Grease an oven dish and sprinkle the breadcrumbs into the bottom.  Arrange half the potato in a layer and place a few tomato slices ontop.  Add a layer of aubergines.  Repeat the sequence. Nearly there.  Whisk the egg yolks and cumin into the sauce and pour over the vegetables.  Sprinkle grated cheese over the top.  Bake in the oven for 1 hour.  Allow 15 to 20mins to rest before serving.

We prepared this early on, to allow us to bake just before we needed it.  To be honest, I was a little disappointed.  I felt that although it looked quite authentic, it was a little plain and could have benefitted from some other flavours.  It would perhaps been  better with one really thick layer of aubergine s and tomato, and one of potato.  I might try mashing the potatoes next time.

We served this up with a greek salad (Kos lettuce, white salad onion, feta, olives, cucumber, red pepper, dressed with olive oil and oregano).  Yum.

 Black Olive & Rosemary Flatbread

This was a flatbread by nature, but with no yeast was a little dense.  The idea was that the bicarbonate of soda and “acidic” olives would react to lighten the bread.  I don’t really feel this worked.  However, it was golden, fragrant and delicious -everyone enjoyed it.  The smell of fresh baked bread was great.

I wanted something a good deal lighter than this bread turned out.  I would welcome any suggestions/alternative recipes to achieve this. 

Orange Passover Cake with Orange Cheesecake Topping

The astute amongst you will have spotted that my Greek Feast includes a rather Jewish sounding dessert.  Apparently Orthodox Greeks always celebrate Easter after passover has occurred, because Jesus is supposed to have celebrated Passover before the events of Easter.  Given that we cooked and ate this cake before Easter, I suppose we can get away with it!

We opted to bake this cake, which we had made before, as it is straight forward and it would seem, reliable.   It is one of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes Recipes and uses ground almonds not flour.

• 2 oranges
• 6 eggs (medium)
• 225g caster sugar
• 225g ground almonds
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• Icing Sugar for dusting

For the Citrus Cheesecake Cream topping

• 200g cream cheese (e.g. Philadelphia)
• 50g caster sugar
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1 small orange
• juice of 1 lemon
• 300ml double cream

To make the cake is quite straight forward.  Boil the oranges for 3 hours. Make sure they are covered with water and use a lid.  After 3 hours drain the oranges and allow to cool.  Remove the flesh and blitz in a food processor to make a smooth puree.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until thick and moussey beore folding in the ground almonds, the orange puree and baking powder.  Pour into a lined and greased tin and bake at 180°C for 55 to 60 minutes until cooked. Leave to cool.

To make the topping, beat the cream cheese with the sugar, lemon zest, orange zest and lemon juice.  Whisk the cream into soft peaks and gently fold in.

This recipe makes a lovely light and moist cake.  It’s straightforward and quick.  although I didn’t get a pic of the finished cake, you can see one here.

The meal was a great success – the plan of preparing in advance so we could have time with the guests worked brilliantly.  A good time was had by all.

Short Crust Pastry

Normally, to make short crust pastry, you mix together plain flour with half it’s weight of fat (butter, lard or vegetable substitute like Trex) and bind it together with a little water (just as much as needed to make it clump together into one ball).

However, inspired by a great comment made by, Rob, in response to my banana bread, I opted to use a Nigella recipe (from How to Eat) where the water is substituted for the juice of half an orange. In fact, it was because the recipe did this that I wanted to try it.

Remember, you can vary the amount of pastry you make to suit the size tin you have.  This recipe had a very thin pastry base – I’d have liked it a little thicker. I suggest you make half as much pastry again if you’d like a thicker base to your pie.

• 140g plain flour
• 70g cold unsalted butter cut into small 1cm cubes (or ½ lard and ½ butter)
• Juice of ½ an orange (cooled in fridge)
• A pinch of salt
• Preheated oven to 200°C

I blitzed together the flour, fat and salt, before slowly adding the juice until the pastry bound together.

Nigella prefers to do the following:

1. Place flour and butter into a bowl and place it into the freezer
2. Transfer into the food processor and mix on slow speed until the flour and butter become blended and granular.
3. With the food processor on, gradually add the cool orange juice until the pastry came together.

I tried Nigella’s suggestion of rolling the pastry between two sheets of cling film (to cut down on mess and make the pastry easier to handle. However, I felt this was more hassle that it was worth – the cling film kept splitting into shreds which I had to pick out of the pastry.

Use the rolled pastry to line a greased 20cm pie tin.

Cover the pastry with tin foil or baking paper and add baking beads (or dried pulses as a substitute) to stop the pastry rising in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, remove the foil/baking paper and beads from the tin. Then use more foil/baking paper to cover the edges of the proto-pie (to stop them burning) and put back into the over for another 12 minutes.

Rhubarb Filling
• 800g rhubarb
• Juice of the other ½ of the orange used to make pastry
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 150g caster sugar
• 30g melted butter

This makes a lovely light sharp filling, with the rhubarb pretty much unadulterated. The rich egg yolk mixture sets the filling.

1. Trim rhubarb and chop into 1cm pieces, halving thick stems lengthways if necessary.
2. In a saucepan, very briefly heat the rhubarb with the orange juice (if you do this for more than a minute or two, the ensuing rhubarb mix will go completely mushy. Do it for less time and the rhubarb will stay more intact).
3. Strain the rhubarb mix, retaining the juices.
4. In a separate bowl, mix 150g sugar with the plain flour and melted butter. Add the beaten egg yolks and enough of the rhubarb juice to make a smooth runny paste.
5. Spread the rhubarb around the blind baked pie case and pour on the paste.

Meringue
I’m not a fan of pavlova but love soft gooey meringues, hot out of the oven.

• Two egg whites
• 120g of sugar
• ¼ tsp cream of tartar
• Whisk the egg whites top form soft peaks (I used an electric whisk).

1. Add the first 1/2 of the sugar (60g) and whisk together until glossy.
2. Add the second ½ of the sugar (60g) together with ¼ tsp of cream of tartar, folding them in with a metal spoon.
3. Spread the meringue mix over the pastry case and rhubarb, making sure that it is completely sealed and there are no gaps for rhubarb to bubble up through.
4. Use a spoon to make some pretty meringue type patterns on the top of the meringue.
5. Sprinkle a teaspoon of caster sugar over the top and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until the peaks are bronzy and brown topped.

This was a truly lovely pie. The orange in the pastry was subtle, but did make it beautifully light and fruity. The rhubarb filling was sharp and refreshing, with a lovely curd like texture – semi-set and gooey. The light sugary sweet soft meringue complemented tartness of the rhubarb and the subtle orange pastry set the whole thing off wonderfully.

Pie Debate:
After finding out that I’d missed national pie week, I’ve been researching pie technology a bit more. Now I may need to reconsider what I define a pie to be. I would say that this rhubarb meringue pie is a Pie because it has a pastry base and meringue lid to seal in the filling. So a pie has to have a pastry base (ruling out anything with just a pastry/potato top) with a lid to seal in the goodness.

That’s roasted sweet potatoes, turnip and potato wedges on the side, with some curly kale.