Dance of the Vegetable Patch

Lentil, Eggplant and Mushroom Pie

This is one of my all time favourite recipes.  I get sick of veggie pies always being either thick and dry with mashed potato, or based on a white/cheese sauce.  This one has a nice gravy.  It takes about half an hour to make the pie filling, and then a little time to assemble the pie (5 min for one large pie, longer for lots of small pies).  If you are making a large pie, it doesn't take much longer to make twice the filling, so make two pies and freeze one.

You can, of course, substitute any vegetables.  I sometimes leave out the mushrooms if they're expensive. 

This recipe uses frozen puff pastry but it is delicious made with home made rough puff pastry - you'll find the recipe in this section of the site. 

It is great as one large family sized pie or as 12 pies the size of a take away pie, or you can make little pies in muffin tins for party/snack food.  I always make extra to freeze too.  This recipe includes enough pastry for 12 take away sized pies.  If you make one large pie you wont need this much pastry.

Ingredients:

6 sheets frozen puff pastry

3/4 cup brown lentils

1 onion, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 medium eggplant, sliced thinly and then cut into small squares

2 zucchinis, sliced thinly

a handful or more of mushrooms, sliced

300 ml water

1 tablespoon tamari or shoyu (I like this in preference to regular soy sauce, but you could substitute soy sauce if you really had to)

2 tablespoons sherry

1&1/2 tablespoons cornflour

1 tablespoon orange juice

A little oil for greasing the pie tin, and some for cooking the veggies

1 egg for glazing

Method:

Get the lentils on to cook - cover them in water and boil them away.  They should be about done by the time you need them, but start them cooking before you chop the veggies!

Spread the pastry out to defrost.

Cook the veggies:  In a frying pan on medium heat with a little oil gently fry the onion until soft.  Add the garlic, making sure it doesn't stick on the pan.  Add the eggplant.  Eggplant takes up quite a bit of oil when frying, so you will need to add oil now so that everything doesn't stick and so the eggplant cooks nicely.  Add zucchini and mushrooms and cook it all until everything is nice and soft.

The sauce for the veggies:  Add water and tamari to the cooked veggies and bring to the boil.  In a little jug, combine orange juice, sherry and cornflour.  Mix into the boiling vegetable mixture and stir continuously until it thickens.  Taste this now.  You may prefer it with a little extra tamari.

Finishing the pie filling:  Check the lentils are soft and mix them in with the veggies.

Compiling the pies:  Lightly brush pie dish(es) with a little oil.  Line them with pastry.  Put filling in.  Put a lid onto each pie and press the edges together.  Trim the pastry and decorate.  Beat the egg with a little water and brush this over the pastry.  Prick a few holes in the pie top to let steam escape.

Bake:  At 210 deg C for about 35 minutes, until golden.