Recently, I became aware of a campaign called ‘Meatless Mondays’. It encourages us to have at least one meat free meal a week, for a variety of good reasons.http://www.meatlessmonday.com/about-us/why-meatless/ With a garden full of vegetables, it would be remiss of me to ignore. At the moment, the silver beet is ready to go, so that is where my inspiration came from.

Silver beet, flat leaf parsley & beetroot leaves

From my garden, I gathered roughly a bunch of silver beet leaves, some beetroot leaves for colour and parsley for flavour.

Cut silver beet at base of stem

When gathering your bounty, it’s wise to be careful. I have a large bowl and a pair of scissors ready, then cut the leaves off at the base of the stem. This prevents you from pulling the whole plant out and also allows the plant to keep ‘coming back’.

Pie ingredients

1 bunch of silver beet ( and beet leaves if handy ), roughly chopped

250 grams of fresh ricotta

1 brown onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

3 eggs

Filo pastry

Mix of ingredients

First, sweat off the onions and garlic. Cook these until they are soft and translucent. Add the chopped silver beet leaves and stems and cook these together with the onions until they are wilted. Season it with a little sea salt and pepper. Take off the heat and allow to cool.

Once cooled, drain off any excess liquid to make the silver beet as dry as possible. Put the wilted silver beet into a mixing bowl, then break the eggs into the mix and crumble the ricotta in as well. Chop the fresh parsley and combine into the mix. Using a spoon or your hands, roughly mix all the ingredients together. I would try to leave the ricotta chunky.

So now we have a basic mix. If you were feeling creative, you could add anything to this mix, from more veggies ( pumpkin, sweet potato, capsicum, etc.) to proteins such as chicken, bacon or salmon. Some spice such as cumin wouldn’t be out of place either.

Filled pie casing

Next layer about 4-5 sheets of filo pastry together. Lay one sheet down, spray with olive oil then lay the next sheet on top. Repeat this for all sheets. Spray a baking dish, then line with the filo pastry. Tuck the sheets into the sides and corners. Then place the silver beet and ricotta filling inside. You can repeat the layering of filo pastry sheets for the lid. Place the lid on and trim the edges, then pinch together the base and lid. Brush the lid with an egg wash.

Bake in the oven at 180° for 25-30 mins. Serve with a salad or sweet potato chips.