Artichoke, Butterbean & Olive Pie

I hadn't shopped for over a week, and if I'm honest the thought of driving to the supermarket and then walking round the busy aisles did not appeal to me today! So, once again I raided my store cupboards and fridge of things that I could use and needed using up. I do like a challenge. My cupboards were opened and the items that I chose included, a jar of sundried tomatoes and a tin of butterbeans. Next stop was the fridge, and it was rather bare to say the least, but I found a small jar of black chopped olives, a jar of artichokes, a lemon, 6 garlic and lemon olives, a packet of filo pastry and some bedraggled salad.

The next bit was the interesting bit, what could I make with these ingredients plus any herbs or spices that I had. If I was to use the filo pastry it needed to be a pie type dinner, but I didn't want anything rich and heavy, so a squeeze of lemon should help with that I thought.

After staring at the ingredients for what seemed like an age I decided that the butterbeans would be the main ingredient of the pie as this was the ingredient I had the most of, and the other ingredients would perk them up. And so artichoke, butterbean and olive pie was born.

Ingredients

2 small onions

1 Can of butterbeans

6 Sundried tomatoes

6 garlic and lemon olives

3 Tsp chopped black olives

120g Artichoke pieces

½ Lemon

1 Tsp garlic granules

Leaves from 3 stems of basil

Salt and Pepper

2 Sheets filo pastry

Method

Saute the onions in a little olive oil, until translucent, about five minutes. Whilst the onions are cooking drain the butterbeans and put ¾ of the tin in a food processor and blitz. The other ¼ of the tin cut each bean in half. This gives a little texture to the filling.  Add the beans and lemon juice to the onions and stir to combine thoroughly. Cut the sundried tomatoes into slithers, the garlic and lemon olives in half and dice the artichokes. Add to the butterbean and onion mixture with the chopped black olives and stir to combine. Finely shred the basil leaves and add to the mixture with the garlic granules, salt and pepper. Take off the heat and mix so every ingredient is distributed evenly throughout the mixture. 

Spray a small oven dish with a little oil and place 1 sheet of filo pastry over the dish, pushing the pastry into the sides and bottom of the dish but leaving the remaining pastry hanging over the side. Spray this sheet of filo with a little more oil and place the other sheet of filo pastry on top but at a 90° angle, so you have a cross and there is filo pastry hanging over each of the four sides of your dish. Transfer the butterbean filling into the dish and fold the pastry over the top to incase the filling completely.

Bake the pie in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes or until the filo pastry is golden and crispy on top. Serve with a garden salad, I used lettuce, rocket, cucumber, tomatoes and avocado drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Enjoy.

A Successful Meal Out

Hubby and I went out the other night, which is a rare treat these days! We had bought some tickets way back to see Al Murray and decided to go out for a meal before the show. Now like most of you who live outside London, Brighton or a big city, it's normally very difficult to find a restaurant that caters for vegans. This is especially true, where I live!

My local town doesn't have many independent restaurants and mainly consists of fast food chains, pub food or other restaurant franchises, like Bella Italia, Pizza Express and Pizza Hut. However, fairly recently one of the popular hotels which also has a restaurant, bistro and bar decided to hold a vegetarian and vegan night once a week which has proved to be fairly popular. 

The menu also includes options for vegans which are even labelled and when asked the chef is more than willing to 'veganise' a certain dish on the menu. You are never treated as a "freak" and you never get asked the standard question "a vegan! What do you eat?".

Over the last few weeks through Birthday meals at work and girly get togethers I've eaten there 4 times! The first time I was able to chose something from the specialised vegetarian/vegan menu and I chose hummus and roasted red pepper babaganoush with chargrilled flatbread as a started followed by Sri Lankan sweet potato, coconut and pea curry with cashew nuts and basmati rice. Both dishes were extremely delicious and far too tasty to stop eating and take a photo! 

The second time I went I chose from the main menu which had two vegan options, yes two, I was spoilt for choice! I chose sun blushed tomato and artichoke risotto. This time I took a photo!

The third time I went I chose again off the main menu but this time I asked if something could be "veganised". It was no problem as everything is cooked from scratch, which means that you do have a bit of a wait compared to your bog standard pub food grub but its worth it! I chose four bean and coconut curry with saffron scented rice. This isn't something I would chose normally but I was willing to give it a try as all previous choices had turned out well. I wasn't disappointed, it was delicious.

The fourth (and by no means the last) time I visited I chose the four bean and coconut curry with saffron scented rice again as I was blown away with it the first time I had it. Once again it was no problem to "veganise", but what did surprise me was that it was different to the first time I had it which just proves that each meal is cooked from scratch. This time I did take a photo of it.