Filo Pie

I’ve been looking for recipes that will let me use my new casserole dish recently. When I came across this recipe for Creamy Green Halloumi & Chickpea Filo Pie, I knew I was onto a winner.

The dish started out by cooking some halloumi to develop some colour. Unfortunately, this is something I usually struggle with. Is my pan hot enough? Too hot? Should I be using oil? Does my halloumi need to be drier? Have you been involved in accident that wasn’t your fault? All of these questions often tend to get in my way, leaving my halloumi either stuck to the pan or looking pale and sad. For this recipe, I opted to cook my halloumi on a high heat with no oil in a stainless steel pan which seemed to do a pretty good job. I was still met with a bit of unwanted pan-stickage, but overall managed to get some nice golden-brown colour. I think I will use this same technique next time.

Once the halloumi was cooked, it was time to construct the rest of the pie filling. This began by frying some onions in the casserole dish, before adding the chickpeas and their liquid. The recipe called for 700g of chickpeas which seemed far too much to me, so instead I swapped out half for brown lentils for some variety.

After all this had simmered away for a few minutes, it was time to turn everything green! This was achieved by blending half of the spinach with some water, and a spoonful of the onion-lentil-chickpea mixture. Whilst this did turn green, it was quite a muddy green on account of the lentils. If I were to cook this again, I think I might try to make my green concoction out of spinach and water only. This got added to the casserole dish with the remainder of the spinach to wilt away, before reintroducing the halloumi, with some lemon juice, zest and dill.

Once the filling had simmered away for a while, it was time to take off the heat and add the pastry lid. This consisted of crumpled up sheets of filo pastry brushed with oil. I think I was ultimately too conservative with my filo, and the pie could’ve done with one or two more sheets. Nonetheless, this provided a great opportunity to test out my new silicon pastry brush. I’m very pleased to report that no bristles were lost in the process (which is more than can be said of my last brush), and I will be very happy to use it again in the future.

With the pie constructed, it was into the oven to get some colour the lid. I ended up baking for almost twice as long as the recipe stated, before giving up and accepting my not-quite-as-brown-as-I-would-like pastry.

Rating Link to heading

This was really tasty! The lemon juice and zest added a nice freshness and acidity which paired nicely with the saltiness of the halloumi. Additionally, it’s always good to get in some greens and some beans (or legumes, but that doesn’t rhyme). As I mentioned, it would have been better if the filo was crispier. It left me with plenty of leftovers which were prettier good warmed up, but not super great cold ― the texture of cold, cooked halloumi is not for me.

Overall a pleasant dish that I would be happy to eat again, but could be improved.

7/10