Hello! Happy Monday :). I love okra but I do not use them very often, I consider them somehow special (since they are not free) and when I cook them I want to make something as special as their taste. Since the inside of the okra has a very specific texture, I wanted to exploit it to make a creamy filling for a delicious pie! I enriched the pastry with turmeric and harissa and I loved how it tasted, and the texture of the pastry was spot on – this is one of my favourites so far.
I hope you will try it and enjoy it, it was an utter success here!
Ingredients and procedure
Harissa pastry
Pie crust
240g flour
2g salt
1/2 tbsp harissa
1 tsp turmeric
115g vegan butter
20g cold water
Mix flour and butter until mixtures feels like breadcrumbs. Divide in 2/3 and 1/3. For the 2/3, ddd the salt and powders and mix, then add the cold water and quickly being the dough together. Flatten in a disc and rest 1h in the fridge. Divide the 1/3 in two parts and do the same as you did for the harissa pastry, but use black carrot powder and beet powder on each of the halves, to colour the pastry. Freeze the pastry base for 30′ before baking.
Blind bake for 15’ at 170C fan before baking with the filling (for 35′ more minutes).
Filling
300g okra
2 vine tomatoes
1/2 preserved lemon
1 bunch of spinach
1 tbsp za’atar
1 tsp harissa
Salt and pepper to taste
Chop the okras in 1cm segments, and do the same with the tomatoes. Put these and the spinach together in a pan (I did not use any onion or oil to start with, to make it lighter) and add the pickled lemon cut in small pieces. Cook for a few minutes before adding the spices. Keep cooking until everything is tender but not mushy. Spread the filling in the pastry case, cover with the top and decorate, then finish baking at 170C fan for 30-35′ or until the pastry is golden brown. Enjoy!
Miri's Cake Files 