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French pie with spinach & cheese

Servings 4
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 puff pastry
  • 500 g frozen spinach or 1.5 kg fresh spinach
  • 75 g fresh white cheese – if possible from goat or sheep or substitute with low-fat cream cheese
  • 2/3 tbsp wholegrain mustard
  • 3 tbsp pine nuts
  • 2 shallots or 1 small yellow onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 egg optional
  • 2 tbsp flour optional
  • 1 tsp sweet pepper
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp dill optional
  • A little grated cheese optional
  • Salt & pepper
  • Oil or butter

Instructions

  • Finely chop the garlic and shallots (or onion) and fry in a little butter or olive oil in a pan over a medium heat for 3/4 minutes.
  • Then add the pine nuts and toast them for 3/4 minutes. Set aside.
  • Preheat your oven to 180°C.
  • Prepare the spinach. If you are using fresh spinach, clean it and fry it for a few minutes (5 minutes max). Squeeze it gently in a sieve to extract some of the juice.
  • Put the spinach in a bowl, add the cheese, and mix with a fork to blend well. Then add the shallots, garlic and toasted pine nuts and mix again.
  • To make your filling a little more consistent, you can add 1 egg and 2 tablespoons of the flour of your choice at this point and mix in with a fork. Beat well the egg.
  • Season the mixture with nutmeg, sweet pepper, salt and pepper and dill if you like.
  • Take your puff pastry out of the fridge, line a pie dish with the pastry and prick the bottom. Brush with wholegrain mustard.
  • Then place your spinach and cheese mixture on top and sprinkle with grated cheese if you like.
  • Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, checking the pie is cooked after about 20 minutes (the pastry should brown well).
  • Enjoy this pie hot, warm or cold, with a small salad on the side.

Notes

You can easily adapt the ingredients in this recipe.
For example, you can mix spinach with chard leaves, nettles, or other leafy vegetables that you blanch for 2/3 minutes beforehand.
You can also replace the pine nuts with walnuts or hazelnuts... For the cheese, if you don't have fresh white goat or sheep cheese, you can use regular goat cheese or ricotta cheese (cow or sheep's) instead.
You can also use this filling to stuff turnover, brick pastry or why not lasagna! With a second puff pastry, you can also make a two-crust pie (in this case, prepare more filling and/or add large cubes of steamed potato).
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: French