Hello everyone 🙂 Hope you’ve had a good week. The sun’s been shining a lot with me and everything in the garden has taken off, especially in the herb garden. Lots of fresh new growth and lush looking bright green leaves. Delicious.

I can find everyday uses for all of the herbs I grow, but the clump of sorrel often remains untouched. I pick off any little leaves to throw into a salad, but the larger leaves I admit, I seldom use. However, this week, as I was cooking up some spinach for my planned bake, I remembered to mix in a few of the larger leaves to add a slightly sharp and acidic tang to the filling.

I’ve turned to spelt flour to make the suet-crust pastry for my bake this week, although I have mixed it with some gram flour. I haven’t tried the recipe with all gluten-free flour; I can image it would work ok, but it would be more challenging to roll up. I have fond memories of sweet and savoury roly-poly puddings from my childhood and school cookery classes. Suet-crust is one of the easiest pastries to make, and it takes next to no time to put together. It is light and fluffy in textue, and when baked, has a crispy, crunchy outer shell.

The key to this recipe’s success is to make sure you dry the cooked spinach as much as possible. Cook it in only a minimum amount of water and then squeeze out the excess by pressing it against the side of the strainer as it drains, and then blot with kitchen paper. This will help keep the bake as crisp as possible. If you don’t have fresh sorrel, then just cook up a little bit more spinach. I hope you enjoy it.

Serves: 6

Ingredients

For the filling:

• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 small red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
• 2 teasp ground cumin
• 1 teasp each of ground coriander and ground cinnamon
• 25g fresh garden sorrel leaves, well washed and stems removed
• 250g fresh spinach
• 100g cooked chickpeas
• 40g toasted pine nuts
• 40g sultanas
• 1 teasp salt
• 1 – 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil (optional)

For the pastry:

• 150g spelt flour
• 50g gram flour
• 12g baking powder
• 100g vegetable suet
• Approx. 150ml cold chickpea cooking water, canning water or plain water

1. First make the filling. Heat the oil in a small frying pan and gently fry the onion, garlic and spices over a gentle heat, with a lid on, for 15 minutes until softened but not browned. If you’re using sorrel, rip up the leaves and once the onion is cooked, add to the mixture, cover and leave to wilt in the steam. Leave to cool completely.
2. Meanwhile, rinse the spinach, shake off the excess water and pack into a saucepan whilst still wet. Heat until steaming, cover, and cook over a medium heat, for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until wilted. Drain well, pressing out the excess water, and leave to cool. Chop and blot away the excess water using kitchen roll.
3. Put the cold onion mixture in a bowl, mix in the cooked spinach, chickpeas, pine nuts and sultanas. Season with salt. Cover and chill until required.
4. When ready to assemble, the roll, preheat the oven to 190°C/ 170°C fan oven/ gas 5. Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Mix the flours in a bowl with the baking powder and suet. Pour in sufficient water to make a soft, scone-like dough. Roll out on a lightly floured surface to make a rectangle approx. 30 x 25cm.
5. Spread over the filling, right to the edge, and the roll up from one of the shorter sides. Carefully transfer to the prepared baking tray, seam-side down, and bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown.

   

   The pastry will probably crack during baking – I have rarely made one that hasn’t split slightly on one side. For extra richness, brush generously with extra virgin olive oil as soon as it comes out of the oven. Best served hot or warm.