SPINACH PIE

Submitted by: Julie Bacque/Toulouse, France (1998)



PREPARATION TIME:
30 minutes

COOKING TIME:
15 minutes

INGREDIENTS:
1 kg of fresh spinach
Paste:
200 g flour
50 g butter
Bechamel Sauce:
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of flour
Milk
Salt
Pepper
Muskat Nuss
150 g grated cheese (we usually use grugere cheese)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Spinach: Wash the spinach with a lot of water several times. Drain the spinach. Cook the spinach in boiling water for 5 minutes. Mince the spinach using a mixer.
2.Paste: Mix flour and butter with a little salt water till you have a ball. You'd better use a mixer. Spread it and put it in a pie mould (diameter about 25 cm). Cook in a oven for 15 minutes at 175C. The paste must be glazed and not completly cooked.
3.Bechamel Sauce: Mix the flour and butter in a saucepan on a slow fire. (Danger: if the fire is too hot the sauce will burn). You have to mix during all the preparation of the sauce. When you have a paste, add some milk. Mix and you can see after a few times that the sauce is less liquid. When it has the yogurt consistancy, add some milk. Repeat it several times until you have about 0.5 liters of sauce. Add salt, pepper, muskat nuss as you like. Then add 75g of grated cheese. Mix. You can modify the quantity of the sauce in accordance with your taste.
4. Mix the sauce with the spinach. Put it on the cooked paste. Add 75g grated cheese of the garniture.
5. Put in the oven for 15 minutes at 175 degrees Celcius. The cheese has to be roasted.

MEMORIES/STORIES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS RECIPE: For alot of children in my family, this recipe is the only way to eat spinach and they usually love spinach pie. This is my mother's recipe. My uncle is Jean-Pierre Engelbach. I am the only person in my family that can write a recipe and letter in English. I have a sister, Laure, who is 13 1/2 years old.

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