Holiday Pie | Krautkopf

Holiday Pie

We love serving little dishes during the holidays, which you can assemble as the whim takes you. This way, everyone finds something delicious, and the dinner gets a sociable touch. Just like last Christmas, we decided to make a special centerpiece for the festive table. It’s a dish which can be cut and shared in front of the curious guests. The outcome is a wonderful holiday pie, filled with colourful vegetables. The cooking needs some preparation time, since every stuffing has to be prepared separately. Of course, you can vary the stuffing - there are no boundaries to your creativity. You can also cook the pie after the holidays to put all the leftovers to good use, for example.

Dice the butter. Mix the flour with the salt, and crumble with the butter. Add water and knead it to a dough fast. Put the dough into the fridge until the rest of the ingredients are ready.

Finely chop the porcini. Cook the lentils with the double amount of water, add the porcini and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes (check the instructions on the package). Salt only at the end of the cooking time. Add the oil to the cooked lentils and mash them a little. If the mash is a bit too solid, add some water.

For the chutney, peel the apples, core and dice them. Finely chop the onions. Heat some rapeseed oil in a pot and sauté the onions. Add the apples and deglaze with cider vinegar. Let the chutney simmer for about 10 minutes until the apples are soft but not yet fallen apart. Mix the pectin with the sugar, and add it to the chutney at the end of the cooking time. Season with salt and let the chutney cool down.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (upper/lower heat). Slice the pumpkin into roughly 5cm thick pieces, spread them on a baking rack, generously season with salt and drizzle some rapeseed oil over them. Bake the pumpkin for about 25 minutes until it is soft (test with a stick), and either dice the pumpkin or mash it.

Thinly slice the beetroot, and let it simmer in the elderberry juice for about 35 minutes until it is soft. Every now and then, stir the beet root and add more juice if needed. The fluid should be evaporated by the end of cooking time.

Roast the sunflower seeds in a pan without oil and grind them afterwards. Finely chop the garlic. Pluck the kale from the stem and chaff it. Mix the ground seeds, garlic, kale, mustard, and walnut oil, and season with salt.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (upper/lower heat). Grease a springform (18 cm diameter).
Take about two thirds of the dough and roll it out on a floured worktop. Put it into the springform and firmly press it so you get a 6 cm high border. Roll out the last third. Fill the pie in layers with the lentils, beetroot, pumpkin, chutney and kale. Brush the border of the rest of the dough with water and use it as a top for the pie. Firmly press the borders. With a sharp knife, cut the pie four times around the center so the heat can escape while baking and the pie does not burst open. Bake the pie on the middle rack for about 50 minutes until it is golden yellow.