Pies and tarts, sweet and savoury, are comfort food and so versatile. Pot pies don’t require a pastry base, just a crisp lid and shepherd’s pie don’t need any pastry at all. Pies and tarts are a great way to let your inspiration run free and use up whatever you have on hand to make a deliciously comforting meal.
Spinach & Cheese Triangles Like this recipe? You’ll love my online Greek cooking class inspired by Janni Kyritsis! Fillo pastry forms a delicious case for all sorts of fillings, meat and vegetable alike. Use this recipe as a starting point for your own creations – combine ricotta, haloumi, akawi or any Middle Eastern white cheese […]
Tarte Flambée Forestière Like this recipe? You’ll love my online French cooking class inspired by Damien Pignolet! While restaurants in France and abroad add all sorts of toppings to tarte flambée (flammekueche) these days, the traditional toppings I’ve always seen in Alsace are crème fraîche and onion with either speck or mushrooms (or both). So […]
Bensone Ripieno Taste Bensone in Modena on my Small Group Italian Food & Wine Tour Bensone is a specialty of Modena, where it’s also called balsone or ciambella Emiliana. Ciambella means donut in Italian and also refers to any ring-shaped cake. Ciambelle appear all over the country with different flavourings and textures, there are even […]
Salmon Wellington Traditional beef Wellington is a series of parcels – beef wrapped in mushroom, wrapped in crêpe, wrapped in pastry – and the method can easily be adapted to other proteins, especially salmon which looks very pretty with its orange flesh contrasting against the golden pastry. When making salmon Wellington there’s no need to […]
Salmon Bisteeya Bisteeya is a classic Moroccan pie, traditionally made with pigeon and other poultry. It lends itself beautifully to seafood too, especially gorgeous pink salmon – and a seafood version is even quicker and easier to make as there’s no need to poach the fish before assembling the pie. Traditionally the egg is scrambled […]
Seafood Pot Pies I love pot pies as there’s no pastry base to fiddle around blind baking, just a flaky golden pastry lid. You can bake them in a ramekin, ovenproof bowl or soufflé dish and fill them with virtually anything you like so, with a roll of Carême sour cream shortcrust pastry in the […]
Swiss Pastetli(Vol-au-Vent) Discover more delicious dishes on my small group Swiss food & wine tour! In Switzerland, pastete means pie and in Swiss adding an “i” to the end of a word forms a diminutive – so a small pie is a pastetli. Pastetli in Switzerland are what we know by the French name vol-au-vent, […]
Mushroom & Cheese Pies Like this recipe? You’ll love my online British cooking class! Thanks to chef Simon Sandall who rattled off this suggestion on the spur of the moment when we were making beef Wellington together and wondering what to do with leftover mushroom duxelles and pastry off-cuts. You could always make the duxelles […]
Spungata (Ligurian Apricot Tart) This delicious fruit tart, called spungata in Liguria and spongata in neighbouring Emilia-Romagna, is similar to what other Italian regions call crostata. In Liguria spungata are often given as a gift when visiting friends and family. Apricots are a common filling, but it’s also made with apples, pears and other fruits; […]
Savoury Künefe I love the flavours in the pastirma börek in our Month of Turkish and am impressed by how deliciously easy the sweet kunefe is. So I wondered what would happen if we combined them. Here’s the answer: a simple, crunchy, messy, delicious savoury kunefe! Be inspired to vary the filling – as long […]
