James Bridle seeks some intoxicating recipes for everyday cooking, both in deepest France and closer to home
A week later, and the result was slightly less than we had hoped for, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, the barman at the Old King's Head by Borough Market hadn't exactly been deprived of custom for England's heroic but ultimately fruitless encounter with South Africa, and by Sunday night we were in need of a pretty solid dinner to put us straight for the week ahead.
Banitza is a traditional Bulgarian dish, taking its name from a tiny village in the North of the country, close to the Vratsa mountains and the Danube. Spanakopita is a traditional Greek dish - literally, 'spinach pie'. Both involve copious amounts of butter, cheese, eggs and pastry. I thought I was making the former, but it's probably closer to the latter in the addition of spinach, which is the perfect foil for the salty feta - either way, it's the kind of beautiful, fat-stuffed dish you need on a Sunday evening.
Grease a dish with plenty of butter, and lay down at least three layers of wilted spinach, crumbled feta, several spoonfuls of melted butter, and ready-to-cook pastry. Purists use filo, but as you may have noticed, I'm not one of them, and it being Sunday and the cupboard bare I confuse the issue further by using a completely random Turkish pastry I found in the corner shop - I have no idea what it is, but it's great. Finally, pour over several beaten eggs (that's the Banitza influence) and stick in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 180C/Gas Mark 4, until lightly browned on top.
Allow to cool a little and serve with plenty of bread (and yes, more butter). The World Cup was fun, but this is the kind of international meeting that will sustain me now it's over.
Recipe and cooking video: Hangover food
James Bridle is the author of 'Cooking With Booze' (Snowbooks, £9.99), an 'intoxicating incursion into intoxicated recipes'. You can read the whole book including all the recipes and lots of videos online at cookingwithbooze.org
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