When a friend invited me to a picnic, I wanted to bake something easy, filling but light at the same time and something salty this time. So I baked this lovely zucchini pie since I cannot get enough of zucchini this year.

 

This is really easy, the only extra work is to sauté the zucchini with onions at first. Doing this you get rid of the water in the vegetable which you would not want ending up in the pie while you are in the process of baking.

 

What you get in the end can be called many things: I call it a pie, but it can also be seen as a savoury cake or even a pastry of some sort. The beautiful thing is, when you take a slice, you see layers of zucchini embedded in the pie. Yumm!

 

 

 

The cheese, especially feta adds even more juicy flavour, therefore you have to add them. You may try different cheese instead of cheddar if you like, but should be as hard. You could try with goat cheese maybe?

 

I adapted this recipe from AZ Cookbook website. I used onions instead of spring onions and left out parsley. You could also add these or you could use spring onion instead of onion. The original recipe looks more like a flat pie and mine puffed big time, which I liked more.

 

Enjoy this pie / cake / pastry in one of your summer picnics, I impressed even my friend’s aunt who is a great cook!

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Ingredients:

 

1/2 cup / 1.2 dl olive oil
1 big onion, chopped
3 normal sized zucchinis, diced
5 eggs
1/2 cup / 1.2 dl plain yogurt (I used Bulgarian jogurtti)
1 cup / 2.4 dl white flour
1 tbsp / 15 ml baking powder
50 gr. feta cheese, crumbled
1 cup / 2.4 dl cheddar cheese, grated
Salt, pepper and paprika to taste
A few extra round slices of zucchini, to decorate

 

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1. Preheat the oven to 175C.

 

2. In a pan, put olive oil in medium high heat. Sauté onions for about 3 minutes. Add diced zucchinis, and sauté until the water from zucchinis evaporate, which means about 15 minutes.

 

 

 

3. Add a bit of salt (just a bit, because the cheese will already bring a lot of salt into the pie). When the water is highly evaporated and zucchinis are quite cooked, take the pan out of heat and let it cool.

 

4. In a mixing bowl, put eggs and beat them well.

 

 

5. Add yogurt, flour and baking powder and beat until the ingredients are just incorporated.

 

 

 

 

6. Add feta and cheddar and using a whisk or wooden spoon, mix the cheese with creamy flour mixture.

 

 

 

7. Add cooked zucchinis and onion and mix again with a whisk or a wooden spoon until all the ingredients are well mixed.

 

 

8. Put the pie batter in a mould. Add black pepper and paprika to taste.

 

 

9. Decorate the surface of pie with thin slices of zucchini. You can add a bit more paprika to the surface.

 

 

10. Put the pie in the oven, in middle rack. Bake for about 40-45 minutes, until a knife or a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and you have a nice brown surface. When it is ready, take it out of the oven and let it cool completely before you slice and serve. Enjoy!