Spinach Pie!

I have recently discovered these little spinach pies made by Heba's Health Foods. I. Love. Them! They're little turnovers filled with spinach and onions, no preservatives or animal products, nothing but delicious perfection. I like to toast them, top them with a little hummus and tabouleh salad, and eat them for lunch. Every day.

Heba's is apparently located in Manassas, Virginia, but they don't have a website. I have seen their delivery van on the beltway a few times, and I have considered trying to hijack it. I don't think there's a restaurant, I think they just make a few middle-eastern food items and sell them at a handful of area health food stores. And probably also in heaven.

In today's difficult economic climate, it is always worthwhile to find out if it might be more cost-efficient to learn to cook something oneself. So I Googled around for spinach pie recipes. The Heba's-style pie is evidently based on a popular middle-eastern street food called "Fatayer Sabanegh" (that means, "Spinach Pie"), and there are indeed some recipes for those which I may eventually try. But in the course of my journey, as so often happens, I discovered many other wonderful variations on my original objective, and I decided to try a vegan version of some of these.

So today, I give you, (Vegan) Spinach and Chickpea Pie! This turned out so beautifully and is so delicious. I didn't take any step-by-step photos, which I regret, because the crust is really not confidence-inspiring during the preparation phase, although it came out marvelously well. I will try to be more diligent with the camera in the future.

Ingredients

Dough
2 cups chickpea flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
3 tablespoons cold Earth Balance
2 tablespoons plain soy yogurt
3/4 cup soy milk (or rice or almond or whatever)
¼ cup toasted pine nuts (optional, but they add a little crunch and are divine)
extra flour for rolling dough

Filling
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, halved and thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons blackstrap molasses
2 teaspoons Old Bay
black pepper to taste
3 bunches spinach, thoroughly washed and stemmed
1/2 cup firm tofu, crumbled
¼ cup nutritional yeast
Oil spray

Method
To make dough: Combine flours, baking powder and old bay in a large bowl. Rub in Earth Balance until flour mixture looks like peas. Add yogurt and milk and stir with a rubber spatula until just combined. Flour your hands and gather dough into a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for about one hour.

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and cook until soften and slightly golden but not burned, about 10 minutes. Add garlic and stir to combine. I had some leeks, so I added a couple leeks, too.

Add chickpeas, vinegar and molasses, turn heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. Stir in salt or Old Bay, plus pepper to taste. Set aside.

Steam spinach until just wilted and drain in a colander, pressing out as much water as possible. Coarsely chop spinach, place in a bowl, season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste. Add tofu, half of nutritional yeast and toss. I used some baked & seasoned tofu from Heba's; if you have a recipe for tofu ricotta, that would work, too.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a nine-inch pie plate or spring form pan with oil spray.

Remove dough from refrigerator and dust work surface with flour. NOTE: Dough is really sticky. Keep hands floured, too. Cut dough into half and work with each half one at a time. With your hands, press dough into a 10-inch circle, then carefully lift into prepared pan. Press dough into bottom and trim off excess if necessary.

Spread spinach mixture over dough. Top with chickpea-onion mixture. Roll out remaining dough and lift onto top and pinch crusts together to make a seal. Make small steam vents on top crust with the tip of a sharp knife.

Bake until crust is brown, about 30 minutes. Do not overbake, as results will be dry. Cut into wedges and serve.

I also made tahini sauce:
a few tablespoons of sesame tahini thinned with a little water and,
a tablespoon or so of Ken's Balsamic Vinaigrette.

I served the pie with salad and rice-filled grape leaves, and the tahini was yummy on all of it.


The crust is light and and delicate, very fragile, but savory and rich-tasting. I was a little surprised, because it seemed so heavy and sticky while I was prepping it. My intrepid omnivorous companion said it was "Good!", and when asked to elaborate, added, "Flaky crust good", and after a few minutes, "Creamy sauce good" (I presume he means the tahini sauce, which really was good. Kudos to Ken's dressing, even if it does owe its existence to a steakhouse).

I also think that this recipe would lend itself well to modification. Curried lentils instead of chickpeas, or swiss chard instead of spinach? Serve it with warm tomato sauce and vegan parmesan?