Nigella Inspired Rag Pie
We're all watching Nigella's new series aren't we? How great did her 'Old Rag Pie' look this week?! She said its a way Greek bakeries use up bits of spare filo, so as soon as I saw her scrunching up all that pastry I sat up and took notice as I knew I had half a pack of filo in my fridge that needed using after I made this tart:
Nigella's recipes are famously indulgent and true to form she was off slathering the pastry in melted butter and packing it full of feta and honey. It looked great and its totally doable if you're only having the little squares that she cut it into, but I knew I wanted to adapt the recipe a bit.
My adaptations were to lose the initial sheet or so of filo to line the dish - only because my pastry was so far past it that it was no longer in sheet form! And to substitute much of the feta for some kind of veg. Spinach would be great (cooked and well squeezed of liquid) but I had some ready roasted pumpkin to use, and I love the combo of sharp salty cheese and squash. I also had some homemade chimichurri in the fridge which I thinned out with olive oil and used to moisten the pastry instead of butter.
Quite simply, I then rammed as much salvageable flaky filo pastry into the bottom of a bread tin, layering repeatedly with feta (about 100g), half the flesh of a small pumpkin, chimichurri and so on. Then I baked it all for about 20 minutes - burning the edges in the process.
To my surprise it emerged whole and intact from the tin despite the lack of base sheet, and a slice or two made a lovely little weekday lunch.