Bread and Butter

Penny’s pie

                                  

Penny is my sister and this is her cheese pie. Of course she makes her own pastry. Truly, it takes less time that waiting for the ready made to defrost.
The fact that my sister is on diet all the time, won’t stop her from making cheese sauce and adding it to the pie which she later gives to unsuspecting relatives.
But because the pie is so delicious, I allow myself one piece for breakfast, from time to time. Then I watch buttons break loose.

We’ll need

For the pastry

• 5 cups all purpose flour

• ½ cup water

• ½ cup olive oil

• A bit of salt

For the filling

• 300 gr. Feta cheese, crumbled

• 200 gr. Gruyere cheese, grated

• 2 eggs

• Pepper

• Dill

• 2 cups cheese sauce

For the cheese sauce

• 2 tbsps quality butter  

• 2 heaped tbsps flour

• ½ lt milk

• 2 eggs

• 200 gr. grated gruyere cheese

 To coat the pie

• Some milk
• a beaten egg 

Mix all pastry ingredients and knead well. Make two balls. Leave it for half in hour to rest, in a bowl covered with a clean piece of cloth.
Meanwhile prepare cheese sauce (see below).
Mix all the filling ingredients in a bowl (don’t forget the cheese sauce!).
Roll the pastry in two sheets. Roll one pastry sheet in a well oiled baking tin. Pour the filling on pastry. Cover with the other pastry sheet.
In a small bowl beat some milk and an egg together. Coat the pie with this and bake in a preheated oven until golden at 180 C/350 F/Gas Mark 4. This usually takes 50-60 minutes. 

Cheese sauce
Melt butter in a pan. Add flour, stirring all the time with wooden spoon. Pour the milk (must be lukewarm) and cheese and keep stirring constantly over low heat, until thickened and smooth. The sauce is ready. Before you add it to the pie, sprinkle with grated cheese to make it crunchier.

Mushroom tartelettes

                                    

This recipe happened only because I had a spare pastry sheet in the fridge. But it was a success so it might become a classic. Where classic means, the food I prepare when I feel insecure and doubt my abilities and want to make something secure.
It takes no time at all, although the pious are going to want to make their own pastry, which I am all for, but we’ll discuss it some other time.

For 6-8 people as a starter

• 2 eggs

• 160 gr crumbled feta cheese

• 400 gr sliced button mushrooms

• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 sheet puff pastry (if you like puffy things) or 1 sheet shortcrust pastry (if you want less air, more food)

• 3 spring onions, chopped

• Some butter for the baking dish

• Salt and pepper

Whisk the eggs and add the feta.
Heat olive oil in a skillet and sautee onions. Add mushrooms and when they are cooked but still al dente, combine in a bowl with the eggs and feta. Sprinkle with pepper. If your feta is very salty don’t add any more salt.
Butter a 12 cup muffin pan (if you have a larger one, you’ll need more pastry and more of everything else) and roll out the pastry. We don’t want the pastry to have holes, so carefully, we press it inside the cups. When we are done, we separate the pastry with a knife, so that each cup is individually lined.
Fill with the mushroom mixture and arrange the extra pastry around, so that it encloses but doesn’t cover the filling. Don’t be too religious about it (as the photo testifies, I wasn’t).
Bake in preheated oven at 180 C/ 350 F/ Gas mark 4 until the pastry looks golden and the filling has set.