Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Anna Berrill

Layer up: spring fillings for filo pies

tart with goat’s cheese, herbs and hazelnuts
Layer cake: Rukmini Iyer's spring tart with goat’s cheese, herbs and hazelnuts. Photograph: Ola O Smit/The Guardian. Food styling: Aya Nishimura. Prop styling: Louie Waller. Food styling assistant:, Laura Lawrence.

Filo pies are my go-to for entertaining, but what are the best spring fillings?
The wonderful thing about filo pies and tarts is that they look fancy even when they’re knocked up from just a handful of ingredients, they require little more than a green salad to please and, much like the rest of us, they really do benefit from some downtime. “They’re even better at room temperature because the flavour evolves,” says Rosie Kellett, author of In for Dinner, which also makes them perfect for dodging any last-minute entertaining scrambles.

Kellett likes to wrap as many spring greens as possible in filo, along with cheese and hot honey butter. “The key to getting a really delicious filo tart or pie is a flavoured butter,” she says, so, rather than simply painting melted butter between every filo sheet so it goes nice and crisp in the oven, she also adds honey and harissa. (In a similar vein, if your pie or tart involves mushrooms, take your lead from Feast columnist Georgina Hayden, who uses butter flavoured with thyme and Marmite.)

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.