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Nigel Slater’s recipes for broad bean, spinach and filo pie, and broad bean and tahini cream
Baby broad beans are ideal for spring pies and fresh dips
The first broad beans in the shops are usually from Italy, their small pods as lumpy as a Christmas stocking, their contents needing only the briefest of cooking. I buy a brown paper bagful as a treat after what feels like months of winter roots, boiling them and scattering them over a plate of culatello and a flood of milky burrata. Such beans are like jewels and almost as expensive, so for now at least I am cooking with frozen – perhaps the second most successful of all freezer-stored vegetables – until the fresh ones come down in price.
I wanted an uncomplicated filling for a pie with which to celebrate spring. I made a stuffing from lightly cooked spinach and feta similar to that of a classic spanakopita, then introduced lemon zest, black pepper and some lightly cooked broad beans. Rather than wrapping the filing in the usual square parcels, I rolled the stuffed filo pastry up like a sausage roll and curled it round itself like a Cumberland sausage. It came to the table, crisp and bronze, on a wooden board on which we cut it into short thick slices and ate it with curly frisée leaves dressed with olive oil, mustard and cream.
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