Vegan Phyllo Pie With Pomegranate and Almonds

Vegan Phyllo Pie With Soy Crumbles, Pomegranate, Almonds, and Thyme

I love the changing seasons, especially that shift from summer to fall.

There's something magical about those days when it's still warm outside, but the heavy humidity has finally lifted and the evenings start to cool off.

(If you ride a scooter, you know exactly what I mean.)

You can still head to the beach to watch the sunset.

There's still beautiful summer fruit at the grocery store.

But something in the air feels different.

Something new and a little magical is slowly slipping in.

I spotted sea squills blooming—the tall white wildflowers that signal fall in Israel. That first sight never gets old.

I'm writing this at the dining table with all the windows open. A lovely breeze is drifting through the house, the kind we get only at the end of summer, as the Tishrei holidays (the Jewish fall holiday season) begin.

For the holiday dinner, we're going to Amir's aunt's house. We'll sit in her beautiful garden under the big trees and welcome the new year with all sorts of delicious holiday dishes.

I'm bringing a vegan phyllo pie filled with soy crumbles and pomegranate. It's a little sweet, a little showy, and wonderfully festive—without a ton of work.

Picture a warm pie with layer after layer of paper-thin, crisp pastry wrapped around a lightly sweet filling of soy crumbles, pomegranate, almonds, and thyme.

It tastes like fall.

It tastes like Israel.

A Little About This Vegan Phyllo Pie

I buy the phyllo dough and thaw it ahead of time. I use Maadanot (an Israeli frozen pastry brand), which also collaborated on this post.

I'm especially fond of phyllo because the sheets I use are made with flour and water and very little fat—certainly no margarine. That means I get to control how much fat goes into the pie.

For the filling, I didn't soak the dried soy crumbles at all. I just added them straight to the sauce I'd prepared, and they soaked up all that flavor.

The sauce starts with grated carrot and crushed tomatoes. You can swap the carrot for any firm vegetable you like, such as beets, kohlrabi, or even potatoes.

You can also replace the crushed tomatoes with eggplant salad, vegan yogurt, or another sauce you enjoy.

For a pleasantly tart edge, I used a tablespoon of sumac. A teaspoon of hot paprika adds a gentle kick.

You can use lemon instead of sumac and sweet paprika instead of hot paprika.

To give the sauce its distinctive pomegranate flavor, I used pomegranate molasses, a concentrated syrup you can find in the sauce aisle. To balance that pomegranate tartness, I added a little silan (date syrup). We are hoping for a sweet new year, after all.

Nutrition Information From Noam Bachar (an Israeli Clinical Dietitian and Fitness Trainer)

One slice of vegan phyllo pie, weighing 110 g (3.9 oz), or 1/10 of the recipe, contains:

• 137 calories
• 7.3 g protein
• 16.5 g carbohydrates
• 6 g fat

Have leftover phyllo dough? How about cinnamon cookies?