I was hoping to take my best friend out for lunch today but she has fallen foul of the same lurgy that has felled several of our friends all ready. Get well soon guys!
This left me staring lunch in the face and I hadn’t been planning on trying to cook anything today. On a whim (and because I had got the ingredients in) I decided to try and tackle a spinach and ricotta pie and figuring it needed to be accompanied by something other than chips I made ribbon veggies too.
Ingredients
- Mild olive oil spray
- 1 medium chopped onion
- 2 crushed cloves of garlic/ 1 teaspoon of garlic paste
- 250g young spinach
- 1 egg
- 250g drained ricotta
- 1/2 teaspoon of grated nutmeg
- 100g feta cheese
- 4 sheets of filo pastry
First thing first, pre heat the oven to 200 degrees or gas mark 6.
Spray your frying pan or wok with oil and gently fry the garlic and onions for about 10 minutes, then add the spinach and cook for a further 5 minutes.
Spinach really is the incredible vanishing vegetable. Mine started off filling the pan like this:
To this:
Tip this mixture into a sieve and press the mixture with the back of a spoon until you have forced out as much moisture as possible.
In a bowl beat together the egg, nutmeg and ricotta until combined. Crumble in the feta and then add the spinach mixture and give it a stir.
Next you need to prepare the baking tin. I used a 20cm cake tin with a removable bottom. Spray the tin with oil and then take your first sheet of filo. You need to be fairly careful because it is easily torn but it is also meant to be crumpled up and messed about with. Spray each sheet with oil and then layer them around the tin so the base and the sides are completely covered. You will have a lot of pastry hanging over the sides. Don’t panic!
Pour in your bowl of cheesy yet rich in iron mixture and it should look like this:
Then pull the remaining filo over to form the top of the pie. Spray with oil as you go and then spray a bit more on the top once it is all done. Most spray oil is 1 calorie per spray so don’t give me that look.
The pie will take 25 – 30 minutes to cook. The top will brown quickly though so keep an eye on it and pop some foil over the pie to protect it from burning if needed.
Meanwhile you can prep and cook the vegetable. Pick anything you like and can easily cut into strips. I used pepper and courgettes. I sliced the peppers after de-seeding them and used a potato peeler on the courgette.
When the pie has about 5-8 minutes to go spray a little oil into the wok/pan again (no need to clean it in between) and cook the vegetables until they are done to your liking. I cooked mine for 5 minutes so the courgette was cooked and the peppers weren’t too soft. I mixed a little olive oil infused with basil in at the last minute.
Take the pie out of the oven.
And serve!
I haven’t tried this one on the girls yet – it has got green stuff in it which is still over riding everything else including their love of cheese. Mr FeeHutch however says it is cheesetastically awesome.
