A vegetarian feast of a pie, from PIE!

To celebrate the end of British Pie Week,  here's another sneaky recipe to share from my upcoming book PIE!, published very soon by Absolute Press. 

This is a big old vegetarian feast of a pie, and possibly my very favourite recipe from the book.

Enjoy!

G

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Harissa-spiced Borlotti Bean, Squash, Red Pepper and Chard Pie with Goat’s Cheese

This rainbow-coloured pie is magnificent to look at and it’s certainly fit for a vegetarian feast! It’s a pretty simple pie to make, but if there is a trick to be shared, then it is to make sure each distinct layer is really well seasoned and has plenty to offer in the taste department.

I love chard, to my mind the texture of the stalks, in particular, make it far more interesting than spinach, but you can use spinach if you can’t get hold of chard. It’s also a pretty easy vegetable to grow, so if you have a corner free in your garden you might like to give it a go. The bright red stalks and deep green leaves make it a very attractive plant to grow.

Serves 6 (generously) 

Takes 25 minutes to make (plus cooling), 1 3/4 hours to cook

6 tbsp olive oil

50g unsalted butter

2 onions, finely sliced

400g bunch rainbow chard, washed, stalks trimmed and chopped into 3–4cm pieces, and leaves roughly torn

1 large butternut squash (about 1.4kg), halved, deseeded and cut into 1cm-thick slices (I leave the peel on for texture)

2 whole bulbs of garlic

3 red, orange or yellow peppers, deseeded and cut into 3cm pieces

2 tbsp capers, drained and chopped

bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

2–3 tbsp harissa paste

400g can borlotti beans, drained and rinsed

plain flour, for dusting

double batch of Shortcrust Pastry (see page XX)

250g soft rindless goat’s cheese, crumbled

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 egg, beaten, to glaze 

cumin seeds and sea salt flakes, for sprinkling

Pour a tablespoon or so of the oil into a large frying pan, add the butter and set over a low heat. Once the butter has melted, stir in the onions, then cook gently, uncovered, for around 30 minutes or until very soft and lightly coloured, stirring from time to time. Add the chopped chard stalks, then cover and cook gently for a further 10 minutes, before adding the torn chard leaves and packing them down into a snug layer. Cover and let the leaves steam and wilt for about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then set aside to cool completely.

Whilst the onion and chard mixture is cooking, roast the squash and peppers. Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan/gas 7. Spread the squash out over 1 or 2 large roasting tins and drizzle over a little of the remaining oil. Season well with salt and black pepper and tuck in the garlic bulbs. Put the mixed peppers in another roasting tin and drizzle the remaining oil over them, along with a little grind of salt and black pepper. Put both vegetables in the oven to roast until cooked and lightly coloured in places, around 35–40 minutes. The squash may take a few minutes more than the peppers, which is why they are cooked in separate tins. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool completely. Once cold, stir the capers and parsley through the peppers. Separate the garlic into cloves and squeeze the soft flesh onto the squash, leaving the cloves as whole as possible.

In a small bowl, stir the harissa paste through the borlotti beans and season with a grind of salt and black pepper. Cover and set aside at room temperature.

Once the vegetables are all cold, preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6. Set a heavy baking sheet on a shelf in the oven to heat up. Grease and base-line a 23cm springform cake tin with non-stick baking paper and set aside.

On a lightly floured work surface, cut the pastry into two-thirds and one-third, rolling each piece gently into a ball as you do so. Roll out the larger piece into a rough circle, about 4mm thick (the pastry needs to be slightly thicker here as the filling is so robust it needs a sturdy crust to hold it in) and use it to line the prepared springform cake tin, bringing it up the sides of the tin and leaving a little excess hanging over the edge.

To construct the layers, start by adding half of the roast butternut squash in a neatly packed layer at the bottom of the pastry-lined tin. Follow this with the harissa-spiked borlotti beans, spreading them out evenly, then add the roast peppers in an even layer. Next, add the wilted chard and onions mixture in an even layer, followed by the other half of the squash, making sure you level each layer before you add the next. Finally, sprinkle over the goat’s cheese evenly. By now your pie will be full to the brim!

Brush the rim of the pastry with a little cold water to dampen it. Roll out the smaller piece of pastry so it is slightly bigger than the top of the tin and about 4mm thick and lay it over the filling, pressing down firmly and rolling and crimping the edges to seal. Make a couple of slits in the top of the pie to let the steam out. Brush all over with beaten egg and sprinkle over a few cumin seeds and sea salt flakes. 

Carefully slide the tin onto the hot baking sheet in the oven and bake for about 50–55 minutes or until the pastry is cooked through and deep golden brown. 

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before sliding a knife around the inside edge of the tin and releasing the springform. Carefully transfer the pie to a serving plate or wooden board. This is a solid pie – I find the best way to get it off the base is to lay a plate over the top of the pie and turn it over quickly so it is upside-down. Peel off the paper and base of the tin before covering with a serving plate and inverting it quickly so it’s now the right way up. Serve hot (it keeps its temperature very well) or warm, cut into thick slices. This pie is packed full of veggies so doesn’t really need anything to accompany it, but a big green leafy salad will add a nice bit of crunch.

A frugal soup for a dull day

I hear this morning on Radio 4 that Britain is officially out of recession. But as we creep slowly, slowly upwards from the trough of the double dip I find myself thinking that for most ordinary citizens this news will bring very little joy. Ever rising food prices and wages that are static at best, but shrinking in reality, mean that most of us find our wallets squeezed ever tighter. And as we lurch towards the end of the month I thought it would be timely to share an exceedingly cheap but nevertheless very tasty recipe for spinach soup.

It comes from my second book, SOUP!, in which I devoted a entire chapter to the cheap and the cheerful. These 'humble soups' are the soups of my childhood, the steaming pans of warming deliciousness that mum used to rustle up seemingly out of nowhere. Many of them are made from frozen veg, or tins of tomatoes and beans. Ingredients that are so handy to have lurking in the freezer or back of the cupboard. This is just the sort of dish that brings me huge satisfaction, the making-something-great-out-of-not-much school of cooking brings me far more pleasure than splashing my cash on luxurious ingredients. 

Spinach & nutmeg soup, taken from SOUP! (Absolute Press, March 2012)

Frozen spinach is so easy to use and cheaper than the fresh stuff, so I often have some lurking in the freezer for adding to soups or risottos.  This delicious soup, with its vivid green hue, exudes health and wholesomeness but tastes great too. Like many of the milk based soups in this book I like to thicken it with a little flour - it just seems to hold the whole thing together creating a more cohesive texture which I like.   

Serves 4-6

Takes 5 mins to make, 10-15 mins to cook

25g butter

1tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

500g frozen ‘bricks’ of spinach (no need to defrost)

1 litre milk (or half milk, half water if you prefer)

½ nutmeg, freshly grated

1 tbsp plain flour

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

to serve:

A little single cream (optional)

Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large saucepan. Gently sweat the onion and the garlic for a few minutes until slightly softened. 

Add the blocks of frozen spinach and pour over the milk. Grate over the nutmeg and season with a little salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 5-8 minutes, stirring from time to time to break up the spinach as it defrosts. 

Once the spinach has broken up, transfer the soup to a liquidizer and add the flour. Puree until completely smooth, then transfer back to the pan and simmer until thickened, stirring all the time.

Serve piping hot with a swirl of cream if you have some.

Freezes well.

Baghdad Eggs - possibly the perfect breakfast?

These spiced fried eggs made for a really fresh and interesting brunch dish and they were a welcome change from the more usual scrambled or poached. Eggs go so well with herbs and spices and this dish used both in abundance.

Pitta crisps are easy and delicious, and so useful that I often make a double or even treble batch. They store brilliantly in an airtight tin for a week or two and are great with all manner of dips or just for snacking on when you feel peckish. So much tastier and healthier than reaching for a bag of regular crisps. I normally add chilli flakes as I can’t resist the opportunity to spice them up a bit them but do leave them off if you prefer.  

Served 2

for the pitta crisps:

3 pitta breads

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp dried chilli flakes

sea salt & freshly ground black pepper 

for the herb yogurt:

160g greek yoghurt

a generous handful of mixed fresh herbs, finely chopped (coriander, mint, parsley & chives are all great)

a little salt & freshly ground black pepper

for the Baghdad eggs:

2 tsp cumin seeds

50g unsalted butter

a splash of olive oil

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1 tsp paprika

4 eggs

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Slice the pittas into 3cm wide strips and peel apart the 2 layers of each strip. Lay in a single layer on a baking tray, drizzle over the olive oil and scatter on the cumin seeds, chilli flakes and a generous seasoning of flaked sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until completely dry and crisp. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack

Make the yoghurt sauce by stirring through the herbs and seasoning to taste with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. Spoon onto two plates and set aside.

In a large frying pan, dry fry the cumin seeds for just a minute or so. As soon as you smell their aroma lifting from the pan tip them into a pestle and mortar and grind coarsely . Add the butter to the pan, along with a little drizzle of olive oil to help prevent it burning.  When it has melted and starts foaming, stir through the garlic, paprika and ground cumin and fry for a couple of minutes. Then crack in the eggs, and fry, basting in the spiced butter until they are cooked to your liking.

When the eggs are cooked use a fish slice to lift them out onto the serving plates, two per person, and drizzle over the butter. Serve immediately, with the pitta crisps to dunk in both the yolk and the herby yogurt.

Sticky beetroot & ginger muffins

This month, amongst a million other things, I have been developing a set of ten recipes for 'Love Beetroot', a campaign to promote English beetroot as a delicious and versatile cooking ingredient. They have specifically asked for a few baking recipes which has given me plenty of opportunity to use up quite a few of my plentiful eggs.

The girls continue to lay well, 3 or 4 eggs a day seems to be the norm. To protect the garden, they are still confined to their run and they are, rather reluctantly, getting used to the idea. And I am overjoyed that my garden is recovering. In Bristol its been a cold damp sort of week, but spring is in the air, and the shoots of daffodils and mini irises are nudging up through the cold soil. Much to my delight, the rhubarb crown I planted last year has also made an appearance though the soil. I didn't protect from the frost, and boy did we have frost, but it seems to have survived. Once it gets going and I can pick a few stems I shall treat you to a delicious recipe I conjured up last year - mini rhubarb & ginger pavlova's - a perfect treat with the first of the seasons champagne rhubarb.

But in the meantime, back to the beetroot recipes. I've devised a few that use eggs: The ultimate chocolate & beetroot cake, Beetroot & cheddar brunch bread, Beetroot, raisin & stem ginger pudding, Beetroot pancakes with smoked bacon & maple syrup, Beetroot & vanilla muffins with rose mascarpone icing, and these, Sticky beetroot & ginger muffins with lemon icing. The inspiration was the proper old fashioned sticky gingerbread we used to eat in big squidgy squares as kids.

Sticky ginger & beetroot muffins with lemon icing

Makes 12 large muffins

Preparation time:  15 minutes

Cooking time:  20 minutes

You’ll need:

For the muffins:

200g golden syrup

200g black treacle

150g unsalted butter

125g dark brown sugar

100g stem ginger, cut into fine dice

4tsp ground ginger

2tsp ground cinnamon

250g pack cooked beetroot

250ml milk

2 medium eggs, beaten

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

300g plain flour

For the icing: 

Zest 1 lemon, plus 1tbs juice

150g icing sugar

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4, line a 12 hole muffin tray with cases.

In a saucepan, add the golden syrup, black treacle, butter, dark brown sugar, stem ginger and both ground spices. Warm gently until butter and sugar have melted.

Puree the beetroot in a food processor, and blend with the eggs, milk and bicarbonate of soda. Once the butter and sugar have melted, take the saucepan off the heat and add the milk, eggs & beetroot.

Sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl and beat in the wet ingredients until they are smooth – batter will be quite runny.

Fill the muffin cases with the batter – this is easier if you use a jug – and bake in the preheated oven until firm but springy to the touch. Be careful not to overcook the muffins, they are nice a little sticky. Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a rack.

Whilst the muffins are cooling make the icing by beating all the ingredients to a smooth paste. Drizzle over the muffins when they are completely cold. These muffins keep really well for a few days in an airtight tin. 

An unauthentic but nevertheless delicious Kedgeree with poached eggs

January 5th 2011, in Bristol at least, was a pretty dismal day. It felt like it never really got light, we were shrouded in gloom from dawn to dusk. The chickens seemed to deal with it; I know of no evidence that they suffer from S.A.D. as we humans are inclined to. I fared less well to be honest and felt pretty out of sorts all day. What I needed was a wonderfully warm and comforting supper. Mildly spiced, carbohydrate rich and subtly smoky, kedgeree seemed to be ticking all my boxes. And what better way to serve it than topped with a wonderfully fresh egg from the garden, poached to perfection?

I have been consulting my cookery bible frequently over the last few days. Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is the heavy tome every food lover should have in their kitchen. As a trained biologist I have more than a passing interest in science, and to my mind this book is one of the most fascinating things ever written about food. I urge you to seek out a copy, if you have not done so already.

There is wonderfully generous chapter on eggs and egg cookery that I'm sure I will be thumbing time and time again over the coming months. Poaching eggs the proper way, that is freeform in a pan of gently boiling water rather than in a poaching cup, is something I have long been nervous of. Luckily then that the rules, and reasons therefore, of poaching eggs are explained in detail in Harold's book. To summarise; use the freshest eggs you can lay your hands on (thanks to the girls, mine were literally a few hours old), not to have the water bubbling too fiercely (just a mere gentle simmer is best) and to crack the eggs as low to the water as possible so they don't spread out of sheer velocity on hitting the water.

So here is the recipe. It was completely what I wanted and cheered me no end. A shame then that today has started in much the same way; dark, dreary, damp. Oh well, time to start thinking about tonights comforting supper.....

Kedgeree with poached eggs

Serves 2, generously

350-400g smoked haddock fillet, preferably undyed

50g unsalted butter

2 bayleaves

250ml milk (whole or semi)

1 leek, washed and finely sliced

1 tsp each of cumin seeds & coriander seeds

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

3 cardamon pods, lightly bruised

200ml stock (vegetable or chicken)

150g basmati rice

2 generous handfuls spinach leaves, washed & drained

2 eggs, as fresh as possible

loose handful flatleaf parsley, roughly chopped

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200/180 fan/gas 6.

Lay the fish in a snug single layer in a baking dish, dot with half the butter, add the bayleaves and pour over the milk. Season generously with freshly ground black pepper, but no salt at this stage as smoked haddock can be quite salty. Cover tightly with foil and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until the fish is just cooked through - this could vary a little depending on the thickness of your fillet.

Whilst the fish is cooking add the remaining butter to a heavy bottomed saucepan and melt over a low heat. Add the leeks and cook very gently until soft - about 5 minutes. An even slightly burnt leek is a foul bitter thing so you must take care. To facilitate gentleness I take a piece of greaseproof and scrunch it up into a ball under running water, unscrunch it and lay it over the leeks, tucking it slightly under at the sides. This creates a damp steamy lid which creates moisture and keeps the leeks from getting too hot.

In a small dry frying pan, toast the spices for no more than a minute then tip into a pestle & mortar and coarsely grind. This may seem like a bit of a faff for literally a few seconds cooking but believe me it makes all the difference and wakes up your spices no end. Add the spices to the leeks and fry for another minute or two - this time without the greaseproof lid, which you can discard. Stir through the rice and mix well to coat in all the spiced juices.

Remove the fish from the oven and carefully drain off the milk into a jug. Top up with the stock to give you about 450ml of liquid and pour over the rice. I used chicken stock as I had a little in fridge that needed using - it worked fine and tasted great, but I guess vegetable stock would be the more obvious choice. Bring up to the boil, stir well and cover with a tight fitting light. Turn the heat as low as possible and simmer for 10 minutes, resisting the urge to peek!

Flake the fish carefully checking for any little bones that may be lurking, and set aside in a warm place - back into the switched off and cooling oven is ideal.

After 10 minutes throw in the spinach - don't stir but leave as a deep green leafy layer on top - recover and cook for a further 2 minutes. The spinach should now be wilted but not a total mush. Gently fold it through the kedgeree, along with the flaked haddock, and taste to check the seasoning. Now is the time to add a little salt and possibly a touch more pepper. Turn off the heat, cover again and leave to rest while you poach the eggs.

To poach the eggs fill a wide, deep frying pan with cold water and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and very carefully crack the eggs into the water. Leave pretty much undisturbed until they are cooked to you liking. I like mine to be cooked quite well with just a tiny bit of 'run' in the yolk, not too runny, not too dry. Its very difficult to give you times for this as it depends on the size of your egg - the eggs form my girls are still pretty small and it took literally a couple of minutes. I find a good way to check is to touch the surface of the yolk gently with your finger to see how much 'give' it has. If its soft it will give a lot, the less it gives the firmer the yolk will be. Like so much of cooking it pays to rely on your judgement to give you the results that suit you best. Trust yourself!

Serve the kedgeree in warm bowls, topped with an egg and scattered with the parsley.