Cheats' Haniotiko Boureki

I ran into a couple of girlfriends in the supermarket the other day. By friends, I mean real friends, not the ad hoc kind we make on facebook. 'Ελα ντε that they are also on facebook and we are friends there too, which explains how they knew what I had been cooking recently.

"What a great boureki you made!" said one girlfriend.
"I wish I'd thought of making it like that!" said the other girlfriend.

Boureki is a very common favorite family recipe in Hania. (See my basic recipe here: http://www.organicallycooked.com/2007/09/boureki-courgette-potato-bake.html) While I was trying to remember how I made the last one we ate, and why it seemed to impress my friends so much, it occurred to me that I 'faked' it a little, by using 'cheap' ingredients.

"Did the family like it?" said one girlfriend.
"Did they notice the difference?" said the other girlfriend.

My husband noticed something different ("I prefer it without the pastry, the way you usually make it"), but my kids actually preferred it to my usual boureki, because it had a crunchier texture. But the family still doesn't know about the substitutions I made to the basic recipe, and they didn't seem to realise that I had made any. I don't intend to tell them, either. The boureki just looked different.

The whole issue could be phrased as a 'man' problem:
"My husband's always complaining that I don't buy mizithra much these days," said one girlfriend.
"When I refuse to mizithra, he goes out and buys it himself - and in bulk! Can you imagine what kind of money he's spending?" said the other girlfriend.

This will probably all sound like not so big a deal to most of my readers, but clearly for me and my girlfriends, it is. We can now draw some conclusions - among the three of us, despite our different age, socio-economic class, occupation and education, the three of us have many shared traits:
1. our families are quintessentially Greek, and their behavioural trends are more or less similar,
2. our husbands have fixed notions of what traditional Greek dishes are supposed to be made of, how they are supposed to look, what they are supposed to taste like,
3. our cooking habits are very similar,
4. we place a similar importance on ensuring that our families eat home-cooked healthy food,
5. our financial situations have changed over the last few years towards the worse.

It is this last point in particular that was really the basis of the conversation. We all know how to make a boureki, but it didn't occur to all of us how we can make it cheaply, without causing a domestic argument over the kitchen table. Differences in taste are immediately spotted by well trained eaters. Some are more open to variations, while others are not. (Look how well trained my family are, for instance: http://www.organicallycooked.com/2008/03/taste-sensation.html ) So you need to use all your powers of deceptiveness if you want to fool them.

It occurs to me that Cretan mizithra is difficult to find both in other parts of Greece and the rest of the world. So my latest version of the recipe for Haniotiko Boureki should prove very useful. Here are some useful tips on faking it:
- when you buy cheap ingredients, make sure to hide them in the fridge where your fussier members of the family can't see them,
- if some family members have a tendency to search the darker corners of the fridge (mine doesn't), then you should take off the packaging material and leave no label visible, repackaging the items in plain plastic bags,
- prepare meals when no one's looking,
- if anyone comments about how the meal feels/tastes/looks different to what it usually looks like, fake it even more by saying that you made it the same way that you usually do, by saying something like: "maybe the zucchini tastes different because it's out of season" (which it almost is at the moment), or "hm, the potatoes must be old" (they don't have a due by date, do they?). Just don't mention the substitutes (cheese in my boureki's case).
- if anyone insists that the boureki was made in a different way even though you say it wasn't, ask them to cook the next meal: you just provide them with the ingredients. This last one always works for me.

All over the western world, everybody's living standards are falling. So in effect, everyone is in crisis these days. Some of us are simply better at coping, like me an' my girlfriends. Just ask them.

I don't have much time these days for blog writing because I am incredibly busy at work (which basically means I am not unemployed, which is a good thing these days). I put up long posts on my facebook profile instead. Come and join me there if you like:  https://www.facebook.com/maria.verivaki 

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Fettuccine with tomatini

Remember the 1000 tomatini I harvested recently? I've been cooking quite a lot with them, often making the same dish served in different ways. Cooked tomatini with pasta has been the most popular dish so far. (There are still another 500 tomatini to go, so I still need to think of more ideas.) It's very quick to prepare, which is especially helpful as an evening meal - in 15 minutes, you will have cooked the dish and it will be on the plate, ready to be served, so you can cook it for dinner after work.

For two servings, you need:

3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

¼ tsp dried basil

1 clove fresh garlic

16-20 cherry tomatoes

1/2 yellow/red/orange/green bell pepper

a pinch of chili powder

60-80g feta cheese

200g fettuccine

Boil some water in a large pot and cook the pasta. In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a shallow frying pan, add the finely minced garlic and cook for 1 minute. Then add the basil and cook 30 seconds; now add the tomatoes (cut in half) and cook for 5 minutes on medium heat. Finally, add the peppers (cut in short strips) and the chili pepper (very finely sliced), and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Mix in the feta cheese and turn off heat. The cheese will melt, creating a thick sauce.

To serve, ladle the sauce over the drained hot pasta. This delicious tomato dish can also be eaten as a dip, served with toasted bread, tortilla chips or nachos. It's best served warm. My kids added grated Grana Padano cheese over the sauce, which feels a little stodgy since the sauce already has cheese in it, but it was actually a very good addition.

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Crete in one dakos (Όλη η Κρήτη ένα ντάκο)

Last night, an attempt was made to assemble the biggest dakos ever at 1.80m x 8m for the Guinness Book of World records. Dakos is a favorite Cretan snack which is often turned into a vegetarian meal when accompanied by a salad. It often forms our own evening snack throughout the summer when we have an abundance of fresh tomatoes growing in the garden. The base of the dakos is made of double-baked bread, usually wholewheat, that becomes hard and can last for a long long time in storage, to be used when needed. The rusk has been eaten in Greece since ancient times and it was one of the foods that soldiers often carried with them, as they were easily transportable.

The giant dakos was presented at the small forested park near the beach at Ayious Apostolous in Hania. Whereas a decade ago, the dakos was known as a Cretan specialty, it is now widely known all over Greece, having entered the mainland restaurant menus. The wholewheat rusk is now made to suit a multitude of different tastes, with white flour, brown flour, multigrain, etc, and most bakeries produce their own version. Dry bread doesn't sound exciting, but once you try the dakos, you will probably be hooked. Dakos can be made vegan or vegetarian, depending on whether you use the cheese - but generally speaking, Cretans associate dakos with the cheese.

The giant dakos event is not going to be remembered just for the dakos that was shaped in the form of the island of Crete (it was baked in smaller parts that fitted together like a puzzle). I preferred to see it as a celebration of the Mediterranean diet. The event was not characterised just by a food presentation. It started with a group of people who had an idea, which was taken up at the community level. The choice of the bakery, the cooking of the rusk, its transportation to the site, the setting out of the tables and chairs, the makeshift kitchen for the assembly of the dakos, the grating of the tomato (by hand, of course!), the choice of olive oil and mizithra (soft white cheese), the designation of the kitchen assistants and how each one would take part, the assembly of the dakos (layer by layer), the congregation that came to the event, and finally, the sharing out of the giant dakos to the audience (children were treated first) all formed a significant part of the event.

The dakos base was baked in a commercial baker's oven, but the grating of the tomato and the  spreading of the cheese was all conducted at the park. In about half an hour, the dakos was assembled; there was a bit of a scramble for photographs (I got a 6 1/2 foot man to take my shot from the dais set up for musical component of the event) after which the dakos was immediately distributed to the public.

Any food celebration in the Mediterranean area does not start and stop with food, so this was not the end of the event - music and dance followed, completing and marking the event as a whole and complete one. The Mediterranean diet cannot be divorced from the lifestyle component:

"The Mediterranean Diet as a unique lifestyle, determined by the climate and by the Mediterranean area, is also manifested through related festivals and celebrations. These events become the receptacle of gestures of mutual recognition, hospitality, neighborliness, conviviality, intergenerational transmission and intercultural dialogue. " 

Our piece came from the Rethimno part of the dakos.

Without a community base and a musical accompaniment, there would be no Mediterranean diet; it would simply be called 'Mediterranean food'. The food of the Mediterranean can be found in other parts of the world, but not the lifestyle - it is actually the lifestyle that UNESCO wants to protect as Intangible Heritage under the general title of the Mediterranean Diet.

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Melitzanopita - Eggplant pie (Μελιτζανόπιτα)

I was buying some (French) beef the other day, which I asked to be turned into mince. The woman at the supermarket counter asked me what I was going to make.

"Bifteki for the freezer," I told her, "and I will also leave some to make a makaronada for tomorrow's lunch."

"If you have some cooked mince left over," she said to me, "use it in a melitzanopita." She explained that aubergine/eggplant pie was her favorite pita. Her mother in law introduced her to it recently, making it into a large pie (made with filo pastry) which she served up as a main meal with salad, as well as on a buffet table for a party. These days, her daughter in law makes it into little pies enclosed in thick pastry (made with puff pastry sheets) and she takes them to the beach as part of a picnic lunch. "They freeze really well, too," she added.

I'd never made eggplant pie before, although I have heard of eggplant used in similar ways, eg vegetarian patties and fritters. Looking it up in my Greek cookbooks, I came across a couple of recipes for eggplant pie, made by some famous old-school Greek TV chefs. They were labelled plainly - melitzanopita - but neither used mince in the recipe: they both used dairy products (cheese and cream). One version (1990) - made by Ilias Mamalakis, who stated that the recipe was given to him by Dimitris Bliziotis, a Greek food historian - was made into a large pie while the other (1999) - made by Vefa Alexiadou (no history of the origin is mentioned) was made into individual fat cigars. Both versions used different thicknesses of Greek filo pastry and the recipes were very frugal in nature, with a clear focus on simple Greek flavours. Ilia's pie contained just coriander seeds to flavour it, while Vefa's used parsley and mint. The basic idea was to make an eggplant filling for a simple pastry casing, which could be rolled up in any way that the cook felt like making them.

Ilias' (left) and Vefa's (right) melitzanopita recipes

I thought this sounded like a nice novel way to use up the eggplant that is rolling into the house from our summer garden at the moment. It also sounded like something I would really like to make - when we hear of a new kind of food, we are open to it as long as it suits our taste spectra. Before looking up 'melitzanopita' (or 'eggplant pie', 'aubergine pie' etc) on the web - my first stop for anything that I don't know these days - I decided that it had to be a very Mediterranean taste combination, something that decidedly fits into the Greek taste spectrum. Melitzanopita sounds unusual, but the ingredients needed to make it are actually very common. Although the pie is not a well known Greek recipe, I bet that it must have been tried out at the very least on one of those morning TV shows that housewives watch, which screen while I'm at work. (By the time I come home, old Greek re-runs are playing, and then it's Turkish soap opera extravaganza time, as Greece can no longer afford to make her own.)

Sure enough, I came across a number of youtube videos from the private Greek TV channels, which often contain a mixture of make-you-feel-good topics for ladies of no particular occupation: a bit of fashion, some celeb gossip, a recipe by a home cook, with the show being hosted by strappy-dressed peroxide blondes. This kind of light-entertainment program features on most of the private channels, unlike the former Greek state broadcaster, still doing a pirate run on ebu.ch, which is now featuring no entertainment, and only political discussions, operatic music and other very politico-socio-cultural  formal types of Greek-style urban-context amusement. (I am hard pressed to understand if the operatic bits are what rural Greeks expected to suddenly be bombarded with on the pirate ERT - then again, they probably don't use internet to watch anything, ergo... pirate ERT is broadcasting not for the masses, but the minority. And let's not talk about the new public but not-quite-legal broadcaster that hit Greek TV screens a couple of weeks ago - it's quite simply an embarrassment.)

Vegetarian filling for melitzanopita

The melitzanopita was made into what looked like a delicious vegetarian pie using soft white cheese and home-made pastry (ALPHA -  June 2012). Admittedly, Vasilis Kalilidis made a really hash job of his pastry, but as I mention on my blog how trivial it is to worry about how perfect your filo pastry sheets come out: when you cut it, it's gonna get scrappy anyway, so the most important thing about making pastry is that your pie remains in one piece after it's cooked and you are serving it, whether on the plate or as finger food.

Melitzanopita with mince cooked eggplant and mince (made in the same way as for makaronada) 

The next link I found came from - yet again - another TV morning show recipe featured on the web, only a week after the previous one (ANT1 - 12 June 2012). Argiro Barbaridou's melitzanopita did contain mince, but it was quite a 'heavy' recipe: it also contained eggs and cheese, which didn't entice me to make it, as I prefer my pies simpler. Eggs, cheese, mince and eggplant, covered in carb-filled pastry, all in one dish reminds me of very rich meals like moussaka, which are better eaten during the winter in colder weather.

But the chef who started this eggplant pie craze appeared a whole month before the vegetarian and meat version (SKAI - 8 May 2012) - George Gounaridis' melitzanopita is vegetarian (it contains cheese). That's what I love about cooking - making the same food in different ways, to satisfy different tastes. The well known restauranteur made his own thin (perfect) filo pastry which he layered into a baking tin with a simple filling of cooked eggplant, tomatoes and onions. The finished pie looked very light and very appetising.

Don't worry about how scrappy your pastry looks; it'll break up easily at any rate once it's cooked.

So you get the picture: eggplant pie can be made any way you want - vegetarian or with meat, even vegan, with the addition of perhaps a binding agent (eg breadcrumbs, semolina or crushed nuts). The pastry can be home made or store bought, in any thickness. But the most important aspect is to make sure that the eggplant is prepared in some way before adding it to the pie. Either it is cooked in cubes, or it is cooked whole and the skin is scraped away before being used for the filling. Eggplant is one of those vegetables that needs a lot of olive oil to cook well enough not to taste like cardboard (which is probably why Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't like eggplant). To avoid the oil, it needs to be roasted. Either way, it needs some preparation time before being used in meals such as pies.

I decided to make my melitzanopita in the shape of a 'snail pie.'

After deciding what kind of filling you want, and what kind of filo pastry you will end up using, you can then choose which shape of pita to use. Whether you make a large pie to cut into pieces, or you make individual pies is up to you. I decided to make my melitzanopita into 'snail pies' - an idea I found from yet another recent melitzanopita recipe from a well known Greek TV chef (no date is given for Dina Nikolaou's pie, but I suspect it was as recently as 1-2 years) - as I really like shaping filo in this way, and it cuts up nicely into smaller pieces, for good portion control.

Sarikopita, Strifti, Kihi - they are all names for a round pie made up of pieces of filled pastry made in the shape of a snail's shell. 

While there is no shortage of melitzanopita recipes in Greek, eggplant pie is found in just a few non-Greek recipes. I have heard that Martha Stewart has some kind of Greek background, so I wonder if it was this aspect of her identity that drove her to make individual eggplant cheese pies in 2010. I think her vegetarian muffin-shaped melitzanopitakia look dreamy. Her recipe is not far off the one I used: I added strained cubed tomato, I didn't use coriander and I used crushed walnuts instead of pistachios. Crushed nuts are a great addition to pie fillings because they give pies an added texture, the nuts soak up excess liquids in a filling (the same job breadcrumbs and rice do) which often makes pastry soggy, and nuts act like protein in a vegetarian dish. The walnuts also had a sweetening effect on the eggplant, which can sometimes taste bitter, depending on the quality of the eggplant.

The cooked pies - vegetarian (top) and mince (bottom) melitzanopita

The important thing in an eggplant pie is not so much what you add to the filling, as much as the texture of the final filling. The creamier and firmer, the better, because it's easier to work with, and it cooks better. The fillings should be pre-cooked before being added to the pastry. I used Dina Nikolaou's recipe to make my vegetarian melitzanopita, while for the mince version, I simply fried some small cubes of eggplant in olive oil, drained them and then added them to some leftover makaronada mince. That constituted my meat-eggplant filling. Both pies worked well because the eggplant was paired with classic Mediterranean tastes. It all depends on what you want to make, how you want to make it, and the desired finished look of the pie.

Vegan melitzanopita for the 2nd Symposium: Food, Memory and Identity in Greece and the Diaspora taking place this weekend. The filling contains the same ingredients as the Gounaridis pita without the cheese; instead, I added some green peppers (with the onion), and a mixture of breadcrumbs and walnuts to bind the (cooked pureed) filling. It smells like mince - very cheap, very Greek and very frugal (the whole thing can't have cost me more than €1.50 to make - all the ingredients are found in most Cretan homes, and half would come from a small summer garden).

Melitzanopita, as it is made by Greeks, from the recipes available on the web, fits well within the taste spectrum of Greek food, using commonly associated combinations in Greek cuisine: eggplant and mince or eggplant and tomato, spiced up with parsley and mint, dressed in olive oil and encased in classic Greek filo pastry. It is an aromatic pie and makes a full meal, coupled with a green salad and some wine. More importantly, it's not an acquired taste and it is very versatile; these two aspects will make it popular among a wide variety of people.

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Feta cheese (Φέτα)

Big slabs of white cheese, preserved in brine, were first seen in Crete in 1494. How strange that feta cheese is not associated with Crete in modern times. Although Cretan cheesemakers are nowadays producing it, feta cheese is not a specialty of Crete, and modern Greeks would never think of Crete as a feta producer, which is why the feta that is produced in Crete usually stays here.

Feta made in Karpenisi

Feta is the national cheese of Greece. When referring to feta (which means 'slice'), Greeks never use the word 'cheese' to go with it, as the word is naturally understood to mean 'cheese'. And in Northern Greece (anything above the Peloponese), the word 'cheese' is synonymous with the word 'feta', since it is the main cheese available in the area. Because feta cheese is a PDO product, not all white sliceable cheese can be labelled feta. So when a Cretan company producing meat products recently diverged into the dairy market, it could not label a white sliceable cheese it was producing as 'feta', even though this is what it looked like. Instead, it called it 'Mesogeiaki', with no mention of the word 'cheese', leaving me a little confused when I saw it being advertised - it did not even mention the word 'cheese' - until I realised it was simply trying to avoid using a PDOlabel. This product is made with 90% sheep and 10% goat's milk, with a final olive oil content of 11% olive oil. Mesogeiaki won the 'Best Launching 2011' award as a new product.

The olive oil content is the 'value-added' part to the product, which is a common theme in the modern marketing world. Labeling anything as containing olive oil is a clever marketing ploy because of the well-known health properties of olive oil. The company in question has actually added olive oil to many of its meat products too, like salami, compressed ham and mortadella: they have experimented with removing the natural animal fat found in meat, replacing it with olive oil. Testing conducted on the final products has shown that the products containing olive oil are in fact healthier than the original products that contained the natural animal fat (MAICh thesis study from the Natural Products Department).

The move to add olive oil to products that usually contain animal fat is well accepted by consumers. People prefer these products over others, for obvious reasons, and many say that those products' taste is not compromised.

Which feta cheese you prefer is a matter of individual taste. I don't think I will ever change my preference for the feta that I have been buying for the last 15 years, since I discovered it. Feta Plataion is a firm feta, not very salty, with a mild taste. You can buy it pre-cut and packaged, but it is also sold in bulk (which is cheaper, naturally). It's widely available in national-chain supermarkets all over Crete, although this is probably not the case in mainland Greece, because feta cheese is produced to extremely high quality in various parts of the country and each feta-producing area claims its own fame for its own version of Greece's national cheese.

In the summer, we buy less feta cheese, preferring the local soft white Cretan cheese, called mizithra, served in the same way as feta. Hence, I was a little puzzled as to why feta cheese had to have olive oil added to it. Adding olive oil to feta cheese is completely unnecessary if you eat feta cheese the traditional way: drizzled with olive oil and some oregano. It usually goes into a Greek tomato salad, so again it will be served with olive oil. I'm sticking to my traditional feta - some things were made the way they were meant to be. 

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Cheese from England (Tυρί από την Αγγλία)

"What's that?" my husband asked, when he saw what looked like a child's playdough creation on a plate on the lunch table. It certainly stuck out like my sore thumb (not pictured) which I had sliced through to the bone (you would not have wanted to see it, would you?) that morning while cutting carrots into little cubes to make some classic Greek fasolada.

 Sourdough bread, raw onion, a plate of fasolada, feta cheese with olive oil and oregano, garden-fresh cherry tomatoes - and a cheese swirl.

When we visited London two years ago, we bought some generic-style Red Leicester from a supermarket. It was cut off a large block (rather than a large round cheese wheel). It was being sold on special together with some pale-looking cheddar, packaged in the same way. We paid about 3 pounds for 2 square pieces of cheese of 150g-200g each. The cheese didn't taste particularly appetising (it reminded me of 1980s-style Chesdale cheese sold in NZ), but it was cheap, and it kept us fed in between meals. I was a bit wary of this when I saw the Red Leicester cheese swirl at the supermarket, but it looked very pretty in its own special way, so I decided to give it a try.

English cheddar began selling on a regular basis in Hania (at supermarkets, the main purveyors of imported food products) only about four or so years ago, mainly due to the presence of our 'tourist' residents who've set up home here. Since then, we've been able to get a wider selection of some very tasty English cheeses, like Blue Stilton, cut from a round rather than sold in a packet (much more flavoursome than French Rocquefort), along with value-added flavoured cheddar cheeses: we recently tried one with mustard and ale. I hope one day to see Cornish Cruncher available here too - I search that one out whenever I'm in the UK. I particularly like its slightly granular texture - it's very similar to graviera from the island of Naxos, made of cow's milk, which also has these little bits of milk crystals in it.

My attempt at adding value to cheese: Cretan mizithra mixed with Greek fig spoon sweet, rolled into small balls and placed in a jar of olive oil; olive oil is an anti-oxidant and preserves cheese.

We all liked the cheese swirl. The herbs moulded into the cheese, together with the soft garlic-centred white cheese, turned it into a delicious evening snack with some bread and olives, and a glass of home-brewed wine. It also looks like an idea that can be adopted by Cretan cheesemakers to give their products added value, to make them stand out among other cheesemakers' products, and to give their local audience something new to try; maybe the cheese swirl idea is a little far-fetched, but a mustard- or pepper-flavoured graviera would probably go down well, not to mention grow into the export market, and make Greek cheeses (feta aside) better known - after all, Greeks eat more cheese per head than any other national group. Not that the export Greek cheese isn't doing well abroad - but it's mainly known among Greeks living abroad rather than the wider public.

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Filo pastry for Greek pita-making (Φύλλο)

UPDATE 08-01-2013: The photos in this post dont always show up (facebook-blogger glitch): they all come from the photos set in my facebook page, which you link to here.

A friend recently showed me a photo of what looked like a perfect Greek pita. The filo pastry had that 'village-style' look which we can buy from the deep freeze in Greek supermarkets (about 3.50 euro for a packet of 6-8 sheets), which is also available at the refrigerator counter (slightly more expensive, because, I suppose, it's 'fresh'), or at the specialty stores where filo pastry is made freshly and sold on the day it's made (a whopping 8 euro a kilo).

Hrisida's pita

Hrisida's pie looked hand-crafted; the layers of the filo were perfectly sized for a round baking tin. Shop-bought filo is always sold in square/rectangular pieces. Her pie reminded me of the qualities of a good νοικοκυρά (noikokira - housewife). "In Macedonia we make quite thick fyllo pies, usually only with two sheets at the bottom and two at the top. My favourite spinach pie was the simplest one, one fyllo either way, with just spinach for the filling, no eggs or cheese. I also tasted these kinds of pites in Turkey; they are like crepes. In the Roumeli region of Greece, they put more emphasis on thinner fyllo pastry and more filling. Some people like the fyllo more than the filling in a pita, others like the filling; it's a case of what you're used to."

"Don't tell me you made all that filo pastry by yourself," I wrote to her jokingly.

"Of course," she replied seriously. "I do all the fyllo myself and I started out as a complete novice."

God help me, I thought, as I imagined her kitchen table covered in flour, her clothes dusted all over and her kitchen looking like a bomb just hit it. Making filo pastry is a form of art and nothing less. The typical Greek housewife of the past made huge pies in 60cm tins called σινί (sini) with low sides. The last time I saw someone making paper-thin filo pastry, all I could imagine was the floury mess it would create in my kitchen. But the end result was well worth it.

The secret to rolling out dough easily, she says, is 'soft' (not all-purpose) flour and niseste (cornflour, without vanilla flavouring, also known as corn starch) for rolling it out, much much easier than rolling it out with flour, a must for a novice. And of course a traditional thin rolling pin (in Crete, this is called ξυλίκι - xiliki), not the thick one we usually buy at home stores. Hrisida's seen Italian women rolling out pastry for pasta using the same technique with a thin rolling pin and not wasting their time with pasta machines. You don't push the dough to stretch it as with a thick rolling pin; instead, you roll the dough round the rolling pin and press it down lightly. Every time it seems that the dough is sticking, you add a bit of niseste; don't expect it to become a mess before you add more, but use niseste sparingly - there is no need to add as much as flour. If you use a lot, it gives a sort of slightly gritty taste to the pie. It's very effective in drying out the fyllo sheets as you roll them out. For pasta making where you add eggs and the pastry gets sticky, the use of niseste makes rolling out the pastry much easier. Hrisida has also used these same techniques for making pita fyllo when she makes ravioli.

Here are Hrisida's instructions for a 40-cm round baking tin (the kind Greeks call 'tapsi'), which I followed as closely as possible, to get the perfect pita, just like hers. You need about a kilogram of pastry per pita.

You need:
4 cups of soft flour
a bit of salt
a drizzle of oil
about 1 cup of water or more to make a soft dough
niseste (corn flour WITHOUT vanilla flavouring) for rolling the dough

Mix the ingredients together and knead the dough until it becomes a firm ball that isn't sticky. Then split the dough into 8 balls, each around 120g. Cover them all with flour or niseste and start rolling out. Don't let the dough rest because it may become very soft and sticky.

One ball is going to be bigger than the rest (about 160g), because it will line both the bottom and the sides of the baking tin, so it needs to be bigger than the other sheets. Hence, you start off with a bigger ball of dough. The other sheets are going to be the same size as the baking tin. The first phyllo sheet needs to be stuck to the sides of the baking tray with a drop of water around the rim so it stays upright. The baking tin is always oiled well before the first pastry sheet is laid on it.

 

Hrisida warned me that the first ball of dough is the hardest to roll out because the dough is firmer and it needs to be the largest piece. The rest is much easier because they are smaller and the dough becomes softer with time. She's absolutely right - by the time I finished rolling the 8th layer, my dough wasn't breaking. (But I did get stuck a little with the rolling pin - I'm used to using a thicker rolling pin, and found it hard to use the thin one she recommended).

Be aware of the fact that the finished pastry product depends on many factors: apart from how the cook is feeling, the ingredients and the utensils, the atmosphere also plays a large role. If you are rolling out dough in the summer, it may become too soft and could need to be kept in the fridge in between rolling out the layers! I've often found this to be true, and this is also why exact measurements for the ingredients involved in pastry making are not always possible.

Left: Pita in Evritania; Middle: My first attempt at a layered pita with shop-bought filo; Right: Hrisida's marrow pita.

Hrisida places 4 sheets of filo at the bottom, each one brushed with olive oil in between the layers, then she adds the pita filling and another 4 sheets of fyllo at the top, again brushing each pastry sheet with olive oil. I decided to model my pie after my experience at a taverna in Gavros, near Proussos in the prefecture of Evritania in Central Greece. I was served a pita where each pastry sheet was topped with filling, with a final sheet of filo pastry on top. This is the traditional way Greek pita is made in the Pindus region, meaning Roumeli and Epirus. To ensure the pita was cooked to crispy perfection, every fyllo sheet was baked separately (yes, they really went to all this trouble!) and then the pie was assembled. So I placed 2 sheets of filo at the bottom, then a thin layer of filling, and repeated this process twice, before topping the pie with 2 more sheets of filo, with olive oil in between all the layers of course.

Both women in these videos use a thin rolling pin and a specially designed wooden board (called πλαστήρι - plastiri) which allows them to instantly know when they have rolled out the filo to the correct size. I just use the flat surface of my wooden table. Note that the woman below doesn't wear an apron; her clothes remain unfloured. Don't let the Greek language use scare you - all you need to learn is easily understood just by watching the video (I turned the sound off).

Filo pastry has a tendency to dry out. Not that this has any real impact on the taste, but it makes it difficult to work with. So it's best to have your filling ready before you start making the filo. To make the filling Hrisida used for her kolokithopita (zucchini/marrow pie), you need:
1kg of grated zucchini/marrow thoroughly strained (maybe a bit less if you prefer)
4 eggs, beaten
400g feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste (beware: feta cheese is salty)

Hrisida also makes a hortopita (mixed greens pie) using half a kilo each of spinach and Swiss chard, or leek and sping onions, with some dill, parsley and mint (the typical Greek herbs) all very finely chopped, then wilted with a bit of salt and strained; again, 4 eggs and 400g of feta cheese are added to the pie. She prefers not to saute the greens: "If they're simply wilted with the salt, the taste of the filling will be much fresher and not as heavy as when you saute them in olive oil," she told me.

My pie had a less refined look about it: this pretty much sums up all my cooking - real food, cooked up in a rustic style for hungry eaters.

I hardly ever follow a specific recipe for making a pita filling. I use anything at hand. I'm not a fan of eggs in pies - but the recipes that follow can easily have anything from one to three eggs added! That's the beauty of making Greek pitas: they are very versatile. They can be made with leafy greens, cheese or a mixture of these. They never need to taste the same, which is very important in my home to avoid complaints that we are 'eating the same food' too often.

To make my egg-less leek and zucchini filling, you need:
200g of grated zucchini, strained of liquids
5-6 medium whole leeks, chopped small
1 large onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves, finely chopped
500g of feta/mizithra (I use a mixture of whatever I have at hand: in my second attempt at making the same pie, since I didn't have any feta or mizithra in the house, I used a 150g tub of galotiri, which is similar to creamy Philadelphia cheese, and a 250g tetrapak of light cream - the rest of the recipe stays the same)
a handful of semolina (or dry breadcrumbs, to soak up any excess liquids)
salt and pepper

 

My leek and zucchini pita took just under an hour to brown well in a moderate oven. But when I removed a piece from the tin, I noticed that the pie wasn't well-cooked at the bottom. To get a nice brown crust at the bottom, after the pie looks cooked at the top, switch off the top element in your oven and allow the pie to cook for a further 10 minutes on high heat, using only the bottom element. It will continue to cook without getting burnt.

Saute the zucchini, leeks, onion, garlic and the seasonings in a small saucepan with a little olive oil; I add the tough parts of the leeks (waste not, want not, and they really are tasty), which is why I prefer to soften the greens before adding them to a pie. When the greens have cooled down, add the dairy products and semolina. Mix well.

The extra fyllo round the edges of the pie is rolled around the edge of the pie (or simply folded over on the top of the other filo pastry sheets) at the end to make the κόθρος (kothros); only the bottom fyllo is used to make this. All the other fyllo sheets are the size of the baking tray. The kothros shouldn't be too thick, because it won't bake very well. Finally, make incisions in the pastry according to how you want each piece to look when it is served. It's important to cut the pie before you cook it, because filo pastry gets rather crusty after it's cooked and it isn't easy to slice without cracking it.

Hrisida bakes her pita at the lowest level in the oven at 160C with the air feature on, to make the hot air circulate better, for 1 hour.

In my second attempt at making filo pastry, even though I didn't have any feta or mizithra cheese in the house, I was still able to make a delicious leek and onion pie, using a tub of galotiri and a tetrapak of light cream. Later in the week, I made a small spanakopita (spinach pie) to which I added an aromatic green called akournopodi (Oenanthe pimpinelloides), some local mizithra, onion, salt and pepper. It was the easiest pie I have ever made - it was also the most quickly eaten!

Making filo pastry isn't as difficult as I thought it would be; all you need is the right technique, which I learnt, thanks to Hrisida. My mother also made her own pastry for making Cretan kalitsounia, but never as thin as this, and she never layered filo pastry using the technique described above; it wasn't part of our home's culinary culture. I was surprised that it didn't take me much time and I can't say I got tired in the process: the whole thing took about an hour from start to finish. Not only was it simple to make: it also cost just a fraction of what filo pastry costs at stores. A kilo of fresh home-made filo pastry will set you back by less than 1 euro - compare that to the prices I mentioned at the beginning of the post for store-bought filo. As for the cleaning up afterwards, well, just think of all the money you saved. 

No doubt I'll be making my own filo from now on for all my pie making needs. As my husband pointed out, "θα τρώμε πολλές πίτες από τώρα και πέρα" - and our piece of the pie will be constantly getting smaller.

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