I don’t love the cold, or the short days of late autumn. But they’re almost worth it for the amount, and the variety and the lusciousness of the leafy greens in the garden and for foraging at this time of year. This morning on my picking walk, I picked silver beet, lucullus, chives, spring onion greens, nasturtium leaves, dandelion leaves, chickweed, scurvy weed, aragula, leaf amaranth, sweet potato leaves, lemon basil, dill, oregano, parsley, sorrel, curly kale, dino kale, rocket, warrigal greens, molokhia.
And you couldn’t tell where they had been taken from.
So I made a last minute pie to take to a picnic lunch, and by the time it was cooked I was rushing out the door with a board, a knife and a cake slice, and the pie. No plates or forks, and I even forgot to bring napkins, but it went round eight people with seconds and no washing up.
So for everyone there who asked for the recipe, here goes my best attempt at remembering.
The Recipe
Make the pastry first. There’s a post about making basic shortcrust pastry here. It’s really fast and easy to make shortcrust, even faster if you have a food processor, and it’s just flour, salt and butter or cream or oil, so you will usually have all the ingredients you need.
This was a big pie – I used my big 28cm (11 inch) pie dish – so it needed 1 1/2 cups of flour, and I used 100 grams of butter as the shortening. I blind baked it for 10 minutes while I made the filling.
The Filling
Whatever greens you have, lots and lots of them, and it’s hard to go wrong. I think in this one, the flavours that came through were the rocket, the dill and the sorrel, a kind of peppery, lemony tang with a hint of anise from the dill.
Chop them fairly small, then wilt them in a little butter or olive oil, just for a couple of minutes to reduce the volume and dry them off a bit. A hot, wide-mouthed pot like a wok is ideal for this.
While they’re wilting, beat together some eggs, feta, yoghurt and lots of black pepper. I used 4 eggs, a big spoonful of home-made Greek yoghurt and a whole block – 200 grams – of Danish feta.
Tip the greens into a bowl and let them cool a little, just so they don’t turn into scrambled eggs with greens when the eggs hit them. While they are cooling, halve some cherry tomatoes, or slice large tomatoes, and grate a bit of parmesan cheese for the top.
Mix the egg mix into the greens and pour into the pastry case, cover the top with the tomatoes and the parmesan, and bake for around half an hour till the top is browned and the eggs are set.
