It’s March 14th, and you know what that means: Pi Day! And it’s a Friday Pi Day to boot!
As shown by past posts in 2017, 2018, 2022, and 2023, I have been a long-time celebrant of Pi Day, and I kept the tradition up this year. Today’s menu involved two pies baked from scratch: one savoury and one sweet.
I am only one person with a small kitchen, so I had to approach today’s baking in stages. First, I started with making the crust for the sweet pie, a lemon curd tart. I used Baker Bettie’s shortbread crust recipe, and zhuzhed the dough up with a mix of almond extract, vanilla extract, and nutmeg.
I then made a double-batch of this lemon curd recipe from Budget Bytes, because I’ve made it in the past and it’s very simple. Of course, I forgot exactly how much this would make. Once I filled in the pie pan, the crust was barely visible!
The unfortunate thing is that I misjudged the savoury half of the plan – a chicken shawarma pie from the cookbook Falastin. I had the chicken marinating for a few hours, but completely didn’t account for how much time it needed to cook on the stove.
And oh boy, once the filling was ready, I was ready to just half-ass it and chuck the whole thing in the oven. I only used about half the recommended amount of phyllo pastry because I was short on time and getting stressed out. So you’ve got the buttered phyllo pastry on the bottom, then a layer of roasted potatoes, then the shredded chicken shawarma, then a liquid layer of yogurt and tahini, then more phyllo on top.
I decided to cut the bake down to 45 minutes to make up for lost time. It turns out to have been the right call, because the pie was deeply brown by the end. On the plus side, all that phyllo turned out nice and crispy.
The eating time took only a fraction of the cooking time, but this was hefty enough to make 8 servings. Mr. BooksandTea and I will have plenty of leftovers for the next few days.
And of course, we topped it off with lemon curd dessert. Unfortunately, it was very crumbly because I didn’t bother lining the bottom of the shortbread pie crust with parchment paper. I figured it would have enough butter on its own not to stick, but now I know more for next time.
