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Courgette pie with spinach

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Greek Courgette Pie with Whole Wheat Pastry – Super healthy vegetable pie recipe, packed with grated courgette, spinach and cheese, wrapped in whole wheat filo pastry. Great for a light vegetarian lunch or dinner, or a fantastic packed lunch or picnic. By @deliciouscratch | deliciousfromscratch.com
This courgette pie is packed with courgettes, spinach and olives in a whole wheat filo pastry crust – nutritious, vegetable-packed and super tasty!

In my recent post about homemade, whole wheat filo/phyllo, I teased you with a sneak peek of the delicious courgette vegetable pie I’ve been making with this great pastry. Here it is!

Vegan-isable

I have a few of these vegetable pie recipes up my sleeve – they are absolutely fantastic for cramming huge quantities of lovely, fresh vegetables into a very moreish pie format. It is very hard to stop eating these pies and absolutely no reason whatsoever that you should – there are two standard portions of vegetables in every slice! See also my Aubergine Pie with mushrooms & halloumi… Healthy nom-tastic as well!

Today’s recipe uses fairly similar seasonings to the one I posted to fill börek, though that one was much more cheese-heavy and had a spinach and mushroom base – you can certainly use that to fill a pie if you fancy. This filling crams even more vegetables in and stars both spinach and courgette.

Grated courgette is one of my favourite ingredients – its moist, silky strands melt beautifully into a huge range of dishes. Soufflés, soups and stews, curries, risotto, pasta, all kinds of stuffings… And most definitely pies.

Greek Courgette Pie with Whole Wheat Pastry – Super healthy vegetable pie recipe, packed with grated courgette, spinach and cheese, wrapped in whole wheat filo pastry. Great for a light vegetarian lunch or dinner, or a fantastic packed lunch or picnic. By @deliciouscratch | deliciousfromscratch.com
This Greek courgette pie recipe also offers another opportunity for me to bang on about my fantastic filo/phyllo pastry. Look at those flaky layers! Homemade filo is a whole other world of pastry joy, just waiting to be discovered. It really isn’t like its shop-bought counterpart at all. Whereas that pastry is very crisp and crunchy, shattering into sharp pieces at the touch of a fork, homemade is soft, moist and happily retains its shape. All this while still being wafer thin and baking into those lovely, lovely layers.

Get my whole grain filo pastry recipe with full rolling and shaping instructions here.

I have baked these kinds of pies in a few different pans, including a glass baking dish, a heavy bottomed (but thin sided) frying pan and a cast iron skillet. The cast iron was definitely the best – it held its heat really well and the thick sides crisped up the edges beautifully. The glass baking dish came in second. But these are minor tweaks we’re discussing here – it’ll taste great baked in whatever pan you have available!

With the two bird’s eye chillies I have included in the recipe, this pie is pretty spicy. Adjust as you feel necessary.

Moist, savoury, garlicky, lemony… Addictive and incredibly healthy. What a great combination! Do you have any go-to healthy dishes that you just can’t stop shovelling into your mouth? Do share!

Print Recipe

Courgette pie with spinach

A super healthy, vegetable-packed courgette pie with Greek flavours and whole grain filo pastry.
Servings: 8

Ingredients

Spinach-Courgette Filling

  • 450 g frozen spinach or a whole lot more of fresh!, defrosted
  • 600 g fresh courgette
  • 1 medium onion diced about 0.5cm
  • 20 black olives pitted and roughly chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic crushed
  • 2 hot red chilies I used bird's eye, finely chopped
  • 1 lemon juice and zest
  • big handful of basil leaves roughly chopped
  • 4 heaped tablespoons Greek yoghurt substitute soy yoghurt for vegan
  • 1 egg substitute flax egg for vegan
  • sea salt
  • freshly ground black pepper

Whole Grain Filo Pastry

  • 1 recipe whole grain filo pastry dough
  • 50 g butter use olive oil for vegan
  • 2 heaped tablespoons Greek yoghurt substitute for vegan
  • 1 egg substitute for vegan

Instructions

Filling

  • Grate the courgette, sprinkle with salt and leave to drain in a colander for at least 30 minutes. Squeeze out as much of the moisture as possible - this is best done by putting it in the centre of a clean tea towel and twisting the ends.
  • Squeeze the spinach dry as well. If you are using fresh you will also need to wilt the spinach beforehand - either in a hot covered pan, or by dipping it briefly in boiling water.
  • Mix the vegetables with the rest of the ingredients until fairly well combined.

Pastry

  • Preheat the oven to 200c. Roll out and arrange the bottom layers of pastry, using the butter between the layers - get full directions here. Add the filling. Roll out and arrange the top layers of pastry.
  • Beat together the egg and Greek yoghurt and brush half of it over the top layer of pastry. Bake the pie for about 30 minutes, then take it out of the oven, brush with the rest of the glaze and return to the oven for a further 30 minutes. If the pie looks like it is browning unevenly, turn the pie when you add the second layer of glaze.
  • When the pie is well browned all over, remove from the oven. This tasty-ass pie can be eaten hot, warm, lukewarm or cold. I have said the pie serves 8 because it slices into that amount of reasonably sized slices, but I could eat three slices of this pie, no problem at all.

Notes

To make the filling vegan, use a flax egg (1 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with 2 tbsp water) instead of the egg and substitute soy yoghurt for the Greek yoghurt. To make the glaze vegan, use soy yoghurt or soy milk instead of the egg-yoghurt mix.

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