Filo pastry with cheese and spinach is my all time favourite Turkish pastry. This saturday I wanted to make a pie but I couldn't be bothered with making a dough, chilling it, cooking it blind and so on. Instead I used the miraculous 'filo pastries'. By using these thin sheets I not only saved time, but also avoided using butter in the dough mixture. In this way we have a lighter -and equally tasty- savoury pie.You might argue that a 'pie' cannot be light, but believe me this is really not heavy on carbs because you can adjust the layer of filo. You can make the base thick or thin. This can be a vegetarian light dinner with some tomato salad on the side or you can toss some chicken breast with spices to complete your protein in your meal (as I did here). Serve when warm or directly out of the oven -my mouth is watering just thinking about the smell!
Ingredients:
2 sheets of filo pastry
3 eggs
3 soup spoons of yoghurt
1 handful of shallots
400 gr of spinach (one big bunch)
1 sausage (or if you are in Turkey, sucuk)
300 grams of feta cheese
Salt, pepper
1 teaspoon of dried basil
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
Melting cheese to grate on top
Olive oil
How to:
1. I prepared this dish for two and my first preparation was to put some olive oil on a small round dish and turn the oven on 175 degrees Celsius.
2. After this I started to layer the sheets of filo pastry. The pastry I got from our 'yufka' shop were pretty big, so two of them made a 5 layer base and it was enough for us. You can decide how thick you like your pie base to be, just don't forget to lightly brush every layer with olive oil. It will make your pie filo yummy. Alternatively, you can add some milk, which will make the filo very soft. We do it inside some 'boreks' but I chose to put only olive oil for this recipe.
3. Next, whisk your eggs in a bowl. Add the shallots inside; cut the shallots into two depending on their size. If you don't have any shallots, you can also use white onion but with shallots, the onion taste is subtler.
4. Add yoghurt, salt, pepper, basil, nutmeg and feta cheese and mix all of them carefully. Finally, add the washed and dried spinach and mix.
5. Before you add the mixture on top of the filo pastry, there is an important tip here. As spinach contains a lot of water inside, it can get juicy while baking in the oven and it might make your pie a bit soggy. In order to prevent this, you can pour a handful of bulghur on top of your filo base. You won't notice or taste bulghur while eating the pie. If you don't do it, still it won't affect the overall result so much.
6. If you're a vegetarian, you can skip this step but I wanted to make my quick pie tastier, so I cut a piece of 'sucuk' (you can use a spicy beef sausage or a thin choritzo instead) into tiny pieces and dumped them on top of the mixture. Alternatively, you can add dried tomatoes instead. :)
7. Once you cover everything with any grated cheese you fancy (in this dish I used traditional Turkish 'fresh kasar' cheese), your pie is ready to bake in the oven in 175 degrees for 45 minutes.
8. This is a very practical recipe that you can prepare for tea time, afternoon snacks, for brunch guests or for a light dinner as I did here. Since it would be our dinner, I wanted to add some sautéed chicken breasts to go with it. Chop the chicken breasts into chunks, cook in with some garlic, tomato paste, milk and olive oil in high heat. They are ready in 15 minutes. Bon apetite!
Step by step, filo pie in the making.
My mouth starts to water...
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