We call this one Greek mezze, but it’s really just an excuse to have lots of smaller dishes all at once. Inspired by Greek cooking but without the use of cheeses like Halloumi or Feta. Definitely no meat.
Ingredients:
- Filo pastry
- Liberal use of extra virgin olive oil to your taste
- 1 bag spinach
- Olives (Kalamata, large green any really)
- Pitta bread
- Can of butter beans
- Two cloves of garlic
- Tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, oregano
- Pickled red peppers
- Houmous/hummus
- A glass of white wine
Method: prep time 10 minutes, cooking time <40 minutes
For the pie; wash spinach and layer in filo pastry in a glass dish with olive oil dripped on it, bit of oregano too if you like. Traditional spanakotiropita also has crumbled feta but we don’t use this anymore in order to make it plant-based. I know during lent they make a cheese-less version called Spanakopita Nistisimi. Cook in 200° oven until golden on top layer. Make individual slices per person. Keeps for three days afterwards and tastes even better I think.
For the butter beans; chop half an onion and a few tomatoes and add a glass or two of wine and two cloves of garlic. On the stove add a can of butter beans and cook on low heat for 20 minutes. Gigantes plaki or ‘big beans’ are a slightly different variety of bean in Greece but hard to find here in the UK. Butterbeans make a nice alternative. Serve as they cool down rather than steaming hot.
Greek salad; roughly chop tomatoes, red onion, cucumber and add olive oil and oregano. Sometimes a little white wine vinegar and always a choice of your favourite olives. Mine are kalamata olives. In traditional horiatiki there is usually feta cheese (Violife do a vegan one) but we leave that out now and still love bowls of it.
We eat all this with pitta bread and houmous, sometimes making a version of tzatziki with unsweetened soya yoghurt, garlic, mint and cucumber. Lidl have started doing an occasional vegan gyros and Tesco offer Oomph vegan ‘kebab’ that also go well with this style of meal.
@damoward 