East meets West with Ayah’s Spinach Pie
What’s been cooking this week in Ayah’s kitchen is Spinach Pie, a delicious baked dish filled with the goodness of spinach and topped with crusty mashed potatoes. I’ve said before that Ayah, well known as she was for her Chettinad food, was also known as the lady in a sari who could turn out an impeccable pie or a stew with an ease that belied her upbringing in a remote village in Chettinad. Aiyah, who had never stepped into a kitchen in his life, took credit for Ayah’s diverse culinary skills - the skill of the chef lies in the tastebuds of her critics was the mantra often heard at our dining table! Those rather critical tastebuds were, apparently, honed over years in anglicized boarding schools in Sri Lanka and India and college years in America.
And so, Ayah ran two kitchens at home – a western / Asian one for Aiyah and the darling daughters and an Indian one for herself. Of course, the western recipes had to be spiked to suit the anglicized Indian palate – after all, what is an Indian without a liking for spice? Our dining table was laden with dishes from more than one land and it was a common sight to see both idlis and pies coexisting peacefully – no themed dinner parties for her. However, while she’d take a mandatory taste of whatever she’d made for the gourmets in her life, she always ended her meal with at least a taste of her Indian food – a practice that we once laughed at, but are more understanding of now...
The tradition of running multicuisine kitchens continues in the homes of both darling daughters, a wee bit more in mine than in the kitchen master’s (aka my sister’s). My father-in-law’s constant grouse whenever he visits Singapore is that I run my kitchen like an a la carte restaurant... In comes child number one with her order of pasta with a creamy cheese sauce, then it’s child number two, the only real non-vegetarian child of mine, with a demand for prata and chicken curry, hold the spice please, and then, finally, it’s the turn of the lactose intolerant lil brat with a request for rice and palak paneer, hold the paneer if you will! My in-laws, having brought up three well trained sons, shake their heads and join their son in silently eating what has actually been served at the table... The lectures about the starving children of the world and the evils of sparing the rod soon follows, once the gastronomes are in bed... The apprentice’s reaction to his rather pampered cousins is to roll his eyes, while they wait to get their back at him!
Meanwhile, in the present day, the apprentice who is testing the recipe for Ayah’s spinach pie has progressed from his rudimentary kitchen skills to almost expert levels of chopping, albeit still with the occasional grumble, especially when he locks horns with pesky onions. The time taken in the pursuit of perfection, or rather his trainer’s pursuit of perfection, is another question altogether – one that would’ve caused Ayah to vigorously shake HER head! Considering that the rather staid kitchen master had never made a pie in her life, her son did rather well and according to his father, turned out his best dish thus far.
Image courtesy - various online shopping carts
A note about the spinach used in the recipe – in a pandemic restricted world, we did not have access to palak keerai, the common spinach, that Ayah used and so substituted with baby spinach that was readily available in our online shopping carts. Talking of which, I grew up thinking the common spinach was called pasalai keerai in Tamil, only to be disillusioned by the sticky, sliminess of real pasalai keerai which I’ve been told is not really a spinach but the leaves of a creeper known as Vine spinach or Malabar spinach or Ceylon spinach – incidentally said creeper grew abundantly in our garden and was often harvested by Ayah to make spinach soup. Does anyone out there know what palak keerai is really called in Tamil and what pasalai keerai is known as in Hindi?
So, with that, we present to you the recipe for spinach pie... We hope you have as much fun making it as we did.
Note:
1. The spinach that we used in this recipe is baby spinach, common in grocery stores outside of India, but Ayah’s recipe uses common spinach, also known as palak / palak keerai.
2. You can also substitute the spinach in this recipe with other parboiled vegetables like carrot, corn and mushroom.
3. While the traditional recipe calls for a mashed potato and bread crumb crust, the apprentice put his own spin on it and added some grated cheese to top off the crust – delicious by all accounts.
4. The crust, while similar in ingredients to the topping of a shepherd's pie, is much crustier because of the way it is piped onto the filling - in thin noodle shapes. For this, you will need a piping bag with a grass nozzle. Check out our recipe notes below for our rather creative alternatives.
Ingredients:
500 gm spinach / palak, washed, blanched and shredded (sliced thin)
4 pods garlic, minced
1 medium onion, peeled and minced
2 fresh green / red chillis, minced
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
2 large tomatoes (double the amount of onions), minced
½ cup of milk
½ cup of water
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 tablespoon butter for sautéing + ½ tablespoon butter (for greasing)
Salt to taste (about 1.5 teaspoon)
Pepper powder to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
For the topping:
2 large potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed
Salt to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
Pepper powder to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon butter
Optional: 50 gm grated cheddar cheese
Method:
1. Preparing the spinach:
500 gm spinach, washed, blanched and shredded (sliced thin)
i) Wash the spinach a few times to make sure there is no grit remaining
ii) To blanch the spinach - remove thick stems if any and immerse the spinach in a large bowl of hot water covered with a tight fitting lid.
iii) Drain the spinach and rinse in cold water - this helps the spinach retain its colour.
iv) Squeeze out all the water and chop the spinach roughly into strips
Note: Blanching the spinach is optional. I prefer doing it because it reduces the moisture content and also helps retain the colour of the spinach, however, you can just wash and shred the spinach without blanching.
2. Preparing the potatoes for the topping:
2 large potatoes, boiled, peeled and mashed
Salt to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
Pepper powder to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
i) Boil the whole potatoes (If using a pressure cooker, cook for 6 whistles. If using a pot with water, cook until the skin starts splitting, put a skewer into the potatoes to check if they are cooked through – if there is no resistance they are cooked).
ii) Drain, cool, peel and mash the potatoes well – make sure there are no lumps.
iii) Add salt and pepper and set aside.
3. Heat the oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a pan. Add the garlic and saute for a few seconds, then add the onions and chillies (if you want it less spicy, add the chillies in the end, not now). Saute till translucent.
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 tablespoon butter for sautéing
4 pods garlic, minced
1 medium onion, peeled and minced
2 fresh green / red chillis, minced
4. Add the plain flour and saute till the flour is cooked – it will colour slightly blond.
1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
5. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper at this stage and saute for about 5 minutes. After that add the spinach and saute till the spinach is wilted.
2 large tomatoes (double the amount of onions), minced
Salt to taste (about 1.5 teaspoon)
Pepper powder to taste (about 1 teaspoon)
6. Then reduce the flame to very low and add the water, Stir for a bit and then add the milk (if you add while the sauce is boiling, the tomatoes will curdle the milk). Cook until the sauce thickens slightly, but it should be quite saucy, like a thick crepe batter, as it will thicken further while baking. Add more water, salt and pepper as required. Remove from flame and set aside.
½ cup of milk
½ cup of water
7. Grease an 8-inch baking pan / pie dish. Transfer the spinach and sauce to the pan and let it cool for about 15 – 20 minutes.
½ tablespoon butter (for greasing)
8. In the meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F).
9. Transfer the prepared mash to a piping bag with a grass nozzle (so it can pipe in a thin noodle shape). Once the spinach is cool, pipe the mash all over the pie dish in a squiggly pattern. Make sure to pipe evenly – too heavy in places or too light will mean uneven cooking.
Note: Since we didn't have a grass nozzle, we used a murukku / chakli press to squeeze the mashed potatoes in squiggly shapes.
Another alternative is to use a Ziploc bag. Check out this video for some cool tips on piping using ziploc bags.
10. If using cheese, sprinkle on top of the potato crust
Optional: 50 gm grated cheddar cheese
11. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs in a thin layer over the mash. Dot with butter.
2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon butter
12. Once the oven is preheated, put the pie in and cook until golden brown, about 30 - 40 minutes. Serve hot with crusty buttered bread and a cup of soup - a delicious meal.
Serves: 4 persons
Apprentice Rating: Easy except for the piping of the potato crust which took some practice
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