Butternut feta and chard borek

A delicious vegetarian centrepiece that’s perfect for a festive lunch or dinner. Perfect served slightly warm with a dressed green salad. If you can’t get chard, swap in cavolo nero or spinach. Up your flavour game by adding some red onion wedges to the butternut as it roasts.

Method:

• Pre-heat oven to 190°C.
• Peel, deseed and chop the butternut squash into 3-4cm pieces. Tip the squash into a bowl and drizzle with the oil, sprinkle in the chilli flakes or paprika and gently mix to coat.
• Roast the squash for approximately 30-40 minutes giving the tray a good shake halfway through until the squash is golden and cooked through. Leave to cool while you prep the other ingredients.
• Using the same bowl that held the squash, crumble in the feta into large chunks.
• Wash and drain the chard well, strip the leaves from the stems and shred finely. Chop the stems into small pieces and add to the feta with the minced garlic and a good grinding of black pepper.
• Add the cooled squash and mix gently together.
• Oil a 22cm springform cake tin and heat the oven to 200°C and place a heavy baking sheet towards the top of the oven.
• Lay a piece of baking parchment on your work surface and place a sheet of filo on top with the long side towards you, brush with melted butter and place another sheet on top.
• Brush a line of butter along the top edge of the pastry then place a ‘sausage’ of filling 3cm up from the bottom edge along the length of the pastry and tightly roll it up.
• Coil the sausage around tightly and place in the centre of the tin.
• Repeat the buttering, filling and rolling twice more adding the rolled pastry sausage to the coil in the tin to continue the spiral. If you have a gap at the end, scrunch up the last sheet of filo and wedge it in to keep the coiled shape.
• Brush the top with the beaten egg and sprinkle generously with the za’atar.

• Place the tin on the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 30 minutes until the borek is crisp and well browned.
• Leave to cool in the tin for 5 –10 minutes before serving.

Louismann