Cottage Cheese and Chive Pie

This is an old readers digest recipe; I got it from my boyfriends mother years and years ago (pre-vegetarian) after eating it at his parents house one weekend. It's essentially a cheese and onion pie, but using cottage and cheddar cheese alongside onions and chives. Fresh chives work really well if you have them; we used to grow chives in the garden of our old house but since moving, I've had to rely on dried chives and it works just fine. I tried to make things easier by using pre-rolled puff pastry, but it was the wrong shape and I had to roll it out anyway, so you may as well just buy the block puff pastry which is often a bit cheaper.

 

Ingredients:
1 onion
butter, for frying
85g fresh breadcrumbs
300g cottage cheese
2 tbsp dried chives (4 tbsp fresh)
salt and pepper
2 eggs
80g cheddar cheese
375g puff pastry (you could use less and roll it more thinly if you are concerned about fat/calories e.g. 250g)

Serves 4 (more if you are not greedy like me and Pete)

Instructions:

Remove the puff pastry from the fridge before you do anything, as it needs to be out of the fridge for  10-20 minutes before going in the oven. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/400 degrees F/Gas Mark 6.

1. Fry onion in a generous amount of butter until softened. Set to one side to cool slightly.

2. Meanwhile, take 85g (approx) of bread, and turn into breadcrumbs. You can do this by hand or - easier but involving more washing up - using a blender or hand-blender.

3. Add the cottage cheese and cooked onions to the bowl, and grate the cheddar cheese on top.

4. Mix together, and add the chive. Season with salt and pepper until as desired. 

5. Beat the eggs in a bowl and add to the mixture; leaving back a small amount (about half a tbsp) for glazing the pie. the mixture may seem quite dry, but it will be less so upon cooking.

6. Roll the pastry out on your dish so that is the same length as a rectangular baking tray, but is much wider than the tray. As I said above, I used pre-rolled pastry and it was not quite the right shape as the width was too small, so I folded it in half and rolled it out into a better shape.

7. Line a baking tray with baking paper/grease the baking tray, and transfer the pastry to it. Arrange the filling in the centre of the pastry and wrap the pastry around it, making sure to close the ends of the pie nicely. Score the top of the pie diagonally (leaving around 3 cms between each score), and glaze with the remaining beaten egg.

8. Bake in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes until the pastry is fully cooked.