“This is one of the best dishes I have had for a long time”

Saucy Dressings’ chief taster

This is a sort of lamb version of the Cretan carnivale pork pie – I’ve fiddled about with it so it’s not strictly speaking Greek as such, but it incorporates filo pastry and Greek yoghurt so I classify it as Greek.

This is a very useful pie as you can make it ahead and then warm it gently and slowly before serving.

There is plenty of pastry, so you should have enough left over once you’ve sorted out the basic pie to divide into the number of your guests and then scrunch each up into a sort of crumpled handkerchief shape and put on top of the pie – it will make it look amazing and you can give one to each of your guests instead of any additional carbohydrates.

This is especially good with baby courgettes and feta (carrying on the Greek theme).

It uses lamb neck fillet which is quite surprisingly good if cooked long and slow. Because it’s not generally much rated it’s very good value. So although this looks like a luxury dish it’s really not expensive. You do, however, need to allow time for the slow cooking – the whole thing takes about half a day to make although most of the time you can go off and do something else. You can also make this pie with leftover lamb.

You will need a 20cm/8” springform, loose bottom cake tin – Lakeland does an excellent one.  If you use an ordinary tin the whole thing will collapse – it won’t look up to much but it will still taste great, and you can cover up a whole host of sins by using the scrunched handkerchief technique described above.

If you want to serve it with something a bit more interesting than just plain yoghurt, try adding oil, mint, garlic and salt; or flagellated feta with garlic, cucumber and pistachios.

Recipe for filo lamb pie

Serves six

Ingredients

• 500g/1 lb frozen chopped spinach – thawed and drained; or you can use a mix of spinach and peas
• 700g/1½ lbs lamb neck fillets, bought off the bone. Ask your butcher to remove the gristle and chop into dice. Or you can use leftover cooked lamb.
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 120g/4 oz/three fifths of a brick of butter…or you may find you need more
• 3 fat cloves of garlic, crushed with 1 tsp of smoked salt
• 2 tsp cumin seeds, if you have time ground in a pestle and mortar. Ideally you’ll have dry fried them first
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 medium red onions, peeled and finely chopped
• 100g/4 oz/⅔ cup raisins soaked to cover in rum, brandy or whisky; or Earl Grey tea
• 1 generous tbsp marmalade – Improper Marmalade‘s blood orange and black pepper might go rather well and it would be quite fun to experiment with some of the other flavours…blood orange and espresso maybe?
• 2 x 270g/1 lb 4 oz filo pastry
• Indonesian long pepper – about ten grinds
• 500g/1 lb Greek yoghurt – you may want to spruce this up a bit – if so, there are a couple of ideas in the text above.

Method

1. Soak the raisins in whatever hooch or tea you’ve chosen.
2. Preheat the oven to 180°C – use the aga baking oven if you have an Aga (you may want to do this about ten minutes before you stop cooking the lamb).
3. Heat the olive oil and a walnut of butter in a large lidded casserole, or if you are using leftover cooked lamb you can just use a big frying pan.
4. Add the onion and begin to fry gently.
5. Add the garlic, cinnamon and cumin and stir around for about a minute.
6. Add the meat and sear over a high heat (Why? Go here to find out).
7. Stir in the raisins (including the soaking rum or tea).
8. Cover the casserole, turn the heat down and simmer for a couple of hours (at least one). Use the simmering oven if you have an Aga, or you could use a slow cooker if you have one of those. If you are using leftover cooked lamb you don’t need to do this.
9. Take the lamb off the heat and stir in the pepper, marmalade and spinach and allow to cool.
10. Pour the lamb mixture into your pie container.
11. Make butter-brushed scrunched up handkerchief shapes from the filo and put on the top.
12. Bake for about fifteen minutes. If you are making this ahead of time, stop here – keep it in the fridge for a day or so, then when you are ready for it take it out and get it to room temperature. Check the filo isn’t burning (if it is cover gently with foil) and return to the oven for another ten minutes or so – the pie just needs to be heated through and the filo golden.
13. Serve with the yoghurt, which you have, of course decanted into a presentable bowl, and hopefully made a bit more interesting (see ideas in the introduction). Hang onto the tub and lid however, as you may not use all of it.

This post is dedicated to Gary Butler.