A vegetarian pie with winter salads

OK, so a cheese-filled pie is probably not the healthiest start to the New Year, but this was for a special occasion when my brother- and sister-in-law and nephew came round for an after Christmas dinner.

However, I'm a great one for winter salads, and the 2 below are a nice way of using raw winter veg. I felt a little smug about the amount of vegetables I'd bought so thought I'd take a picture. 

 Before

Thanks to Nigella we all know that a messaluna means 'half moon' in Italian and is a semi-circular double blade for chopping herbs.

 Messaluna pie ingredients

• 1 pack filo pastry (approx 300g)
• 5 eggs
• A 200g pack spinach
• 2 leeks
• 1 stick celery
• 2 small handfuls rocket
• 1 large red onion
• 1 bunch dill
• 1/2 bunch parsley
• 3 spring onions
• 150g ricotta
• 100g feta
• 75g cheddar
• Oil, for frying and brushing

2 things I forgot to put in this pie but should be added:

• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 small bunch chives or 1 tablespoon freeze-dried chives

  How to make vegetable pie

1. Chop the red onion and celery finely and fry gently in some oil for about 5 minutes till beginning to soften without browning.
2. Meanwhile rinse the spinach in water.
3. Heat a large pan and add the spinach. Keep moving the spinach round till it is wilted down to almost nothing. 
4. Tip out of the pan into a colander and allow to cool.
5. Put the spinach into a clean cloth and squeeze out as much liquid as possible, then chop finely.
6. Break the eggs into a large bowl and beat.
7. Crumble in the feta and ricotta into the eggs and grate in the cheddar.
8. Grate the lemon zest into the mixture. 
9. Add the chopped spinach and the rocket.
10. Finely chop the spring onions and add to to the egg and cheese mixture. 
11. If using, add the finely chopped chives and the dried oregano.
12. Chop the herbs and add these to the egg mixture.
13. Season well with salt and pepper.
14. Brush a baking tin which is slightly smaller than the sheets of filo pastry lighly with oil. I used a 30x20cm tin.
15. Lay a sheet of pastry in the dish so that the ends hang over the outside of the dish then brush lightly with oil. It doesn't matter if the pastry breaks; just patch it up so that the dish is covered.
16. Repeat till half the sheets of pastry have been used.
17. Pour the filling mixture into the pastry.
18. Fold the overhanging pastry from the pie bottom on top of the filling.
19. Top with the remaining filo sheets, brushing each with oil before laying the next on top. Brush the final layer of pastry with oil too.
20. Bake at 190 degrees C for 30-40 minutes or till golden. 

Serve with chilli jam.

After

Red cabbage salad

Do not be tempted to make a larger quantity of this salad as it takes a lot of chewing, so you will probably get bored halfway through your leftovers.

• 1/8 red cabbage
• 1 pear
• 1 small handful walnuts
• A few pieces blue cheese
• Walnut oil
• Lemon juice
• Chopped parsley
• 1 dessertspoon mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon yoghurt

To assemble the red cabbage salad:

1. Mix the mayonaise, yoghurt, lemon juice, walnut oil and chopped parsley in a bowl.
2. Shred the red cabbage finely and add to the mayo mixture.
3. Lightly toast the walnuts in a small frying pan over a low heat for about a minute.
4. Add the toasted walnuts to the cabbage.
5. Peel the pear and cut into thin slithers.
6. Add to the slaw and mix gently so the pears do not break but so everything is coated in the yoghurt mixture.

Leaf and root salad ingredients

• The rest of the rocket left over from the pie
• A handful watercress
• 1/4 grated raw parsnip
• 1/4 raw grated courgette
• A tablespoon sesame seeds, lightly toasted
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice

How to make leaf and root salad

1. In a bowl, dress the rocket and watercress with a drizzle of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice.
2. Arrange on a plate, and top with the grated courgette and parsnip.
3. Sprinkle the toaste sesame seeds over the top. 

Smoked salmon and new potato salad

Heaven, Courtney, Kate, Danielle, Yuki, Andrea, Gina, Joyce

The problem with writing up Salad Club recipes is that quantities are rarely specified. This means they can be little vague, although generally the quantities seem to work out fine.

This week, however, we had a large turnout, and thought a few extra potatoes were needed. We 'steamed' these in the microwave by cutting them in half, placing in a large tupperware container, covering with boiling water and cooking on a high setting for 10 minutes. I have to say they worked well. Thanks to Kate for the instructions on microwaving potatoes. . 

Smoked salmon and potato salad with horseradish ingredients

Enough for 12

• 3 packs smoked salmon
• New potatoes, boiled
• 1 cucumber, cut into matchsticks
• String beans (aka green beans or French beans)
• 2 avocados, roughly chopped
• 1 red onion, finely sliced
• 3 bags watercress*

Creme fraiche and horseradish dressing ingredients

• About 500ml half fat creme fraiche
• 1/2 large bunch dill
• Small amount chopped fresh parsley
• 1 bunch chopped chives
• Rind of 1 unwaxed lemon
• Juice of half a lemon
• 2 tablespoon hot horseradish sauce
• Salt and pepper

How to make fraiche and horseradish dressing

1. Chop the herbs finely and mix together with all the other ingredients.
2. Season to taste, adding more lemon and horseradish till the dressing has the right balance.

A word on watercress

*I watched some rubbish programme last week where James Martin annoyed me about how watercress was underused. Rubbish! Watercress is ubiquitous!

Watercress is a great salad ingredient but doesn't hang around in a good condition for very long. If you get it mixed with other leaves in packets from the supermarket its always the first one to go soggy. You end up either throwing out the whole lot or picking out the rotten watercress to salvage the rocket and spinach. Packs of just watercress from the greengrocer need using up within a day or two before they turn slimy and unusable.

Of course, watercress doesn't just belong in salads. Its peppery taste and vivid green colour can be turned into a cracking sauce to go with fish, or, my favourite, fishcakes.
 

 

 

Salad Club: Tastes of Morocco

From left: Kate, Peggy, Yuki, Danielle

I've been on holiday for a week and in my absence it seems that Salad Club was also on a break.
On my return, we have a Moroccan themed Salad Club.

I am responsible for the hummus and roasted red peppers. I do my usual hummus recipe.

For the roasted red peppers, I do some online research, and find that controversy rages as to the best way of doing this. Some roast the peppers over a naked gas flame. This seems like a tedious and slightly dangerous method to me. So then. Oven? Grill? Whole? Quartered? Who cares? Does it really make that much difference? The answer is probably yes. Having cut and deseeded the peppers and roasted them in a hot oven for about an hour, I took them out and put them straight into a tupperware box with a clip lid, thinking this would make the skins easy to peel off when cool. Wrong. After about half an hour I ended up with an incompletely peeled pathetic little heap of pepper pieces.  I swear, next time I buy them in a jar.

Sorry for cutting your head off Danielle

The rest of the Salad Clubbers brought in the following:

• Cooked chickpeas
• Steak
• Tomato salad
• Artichokes
• Lemon couscous
• Halloumi
• Cucumber, cut into chunks
• Salad leaves
• Steak 
• Chopped dill
• Chopped parsley

For the couscous (Yuki)

Add the rind of half a lemon, some thyme and Moroccan spice mix to the couscous then cover with boiling water and leave to soak for about 10 minutes.

For the tomatoes (Kate)

• Dice tomatoes and add the following:
• Garlic
• Parsely
• Dill
• Spring onion
• Lemon peel
• Cumin
• Ras el hanout
• Curry powder
• Nutmeg
• Red wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper

 
As for the quantities, you're on your own here - this is Kate's secret recipe and She. Will. Take. It. To. The. Grave. 

For the steak (Peggy)

• 1 kg steak
• 2 cloves of garlic, pressed or very finely chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, or more to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon chili pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cliantro (coriander)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons olive oil  

How to make the steak (as dictated by Peggy)

1. Stab the steak all over repeatedly with a knife. Pretend its that inconsiderate person that was taking up too much space on the tube this morning*
2. Dunk the steak in the 'marinade'. Apparently you are supposed to actually marinade the steak, though I have to say it worked perfectly well without marinading.
3. Make sure you poke some of the pieces of garlic into the holes made by stabbing the steak.
4. Fry the steak in the marinade for a while, then turn it over and fry the other side. My guess is as good as yours as to how long 'a while' is. The marinade will evaporate, leaving a paste.
5. Leave the steak to cool in the paste, then cut up into slices. 

*author's own addition.

All the homemade ingredients this week were exceptional, but the star Tosser had to be Peggy for the steak.

With thanks to article contributors Yuki, Kate and Peggy.  
Additional thanks to Yuki for HTML formatting help.

Prawns, sardines and chicken on the barbeque

Halfway through September, and summer finally arrived. I  wished I hadn't left the barbeque exposed to the elements for a year, it would have saved my nails from splitting cleaning it with wire wool.

To start, large shell on prawns, marinaded in crushed garlic and lemon juice. Delish.

Next, sardine fillets that the fishmonger somehow convinced me to buy. These were marinaded in olive oil, dill and lemon juice.These only took a few minutes each side  to cook on the barbie.

To go with this, a potato salad, based on several of Nigel Slater's recipes.  

Potato salad ingredients

• 1/3 cucumber
• 6 cornichon
• baby new potatoes - about 300g
• 1/2 bunch dill
• 1/2 bunch chives
• 2 tablespoons half fat creme fraiche
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard  
• I tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• I teaspoon cider vinegar 

How to make potato salad

You need to prepare the cucumber by halving then quartering it and then cutting out the slimy jelly seedy bit in the middle or else it will make your potato salad go soggy. Its not really the best bit of the cucumber in any case. 

Mix together all the ingredients apart from the potatoes in a large shallow dish.

Then you just need to cook the new potatoes by putting them in a pan, pouring over some boiling water and adding a good pinch of salt. Turn down to a simmer then cook till tender - probably about 20 mins depending on the size and variety of the potatoes.

Once the potatoes are tender when tested with a skewer, drain and then toss in the dressing straight away while still hot. This allows the flavours to be absorbed and prevents your potatoes from drying out.

By the way, don't ever add boiling water to floury potatoes (they type you would use for mash or roasties) as they will fall apart in the water.

As you can see, we also had a cheeky little corn on the cob with our sardines and potato salad.

Finally, chicken kebabs. 

Chicken breasts were cut into largeish pieces and marinaded in olive oil, thyme leaves, lemon juice and garlic for a couple of hours. 

I then threaded them onto wooden skewers, soaked for a few minutes in boiling water so the chicken doesn't stick to them, interspersed with pieces of red onion, yellow peppers and cherry tomatoes.

This threading of different vegetables and the meat turned out to be a mistake: the tomatoes were cooked within minutes and started to drip off the skewers. After a little reassembly job the chicken and peppers cooked at the same time, with the onions taking a little longer. This didn't matter, as it gave the chicken a few minutes to rest while the onions finished cooking.
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