Apple pie

Method

1. Peel and coarsely grate the apples. Tip them into a colander, scatter over a teaspoon of the sugar and leave them to drain for twenty minutes, then press out the juice with your hands. Wet apple turns the bottom pastry to paste.
2. Heat the oven to 180°C. Mix the remaining sugar with the semolina and the cinnamon; the semolina is there to take up whatever juice the apples give off in the tin.
3. Melt the butter and stir the oil into it. Lay a sheet of filo on the work surface, brush it lightly, and lay a second sheet on top.
4. Scatter a spoonful of the sugar mixture over the pastry, then lay a line of apple and walnuts along one long edge, leaving a hand's width clear at each end.
5. Roll the pastry loosely around the filling and lay the roll in a buttered tin. A tight roll bursts as the apple steams. Repeat until the pastry and filling are used up.
6. Brush the rolls with the rest of the butter and oil, flick the sparkling water over them, and score them into portions with a sharp knife.
7. Bake for forty to forty-five minutes, until the pastry is deep gold and crisp along the ridges.
8. Let the pita settle for a quarter of an hour, then dust it heavily with icing sugar and cut through the scoring.