Traditional Greek pie (with feta cheese and/or spinach)

After popular demand, here is our recipe for a traditional greek pie (with feta cheese and/or spinach).

This specific variation was “perfected” by my wife and it is easy to follow because it uses ready-made puff dough.

The success of the recipe is linked to the quality of the dough. This is why our mothers’ pies are the best: they make the dough from scratch. Alas, we are not skilled enough at this and we use ready-made dough for our pie. Do not worry though, it’s a small difference in taste but a big convenience.

Ingredients

• 1 packet of ready-made greek traditional pie puff dough
• 400 gr greek feta cheese
• 100 gr cheese (we use greek “kaseri” cheese but you can use Gooda or similar)
• 90 gr greek yogurt
• 1 egg
• pepper
• olive oil

Optional

• 500 gr spinach leaves
• 1 medium onion

Instructions

If you want to make spinach-pie, start with step #1. Otherwise, skip to step #6.

#1 : Wash the spinach leaves and cut off the stems. Dry the leaves as best as you can.

#2 : Chop the onion.

#3 : In a heated pot, add a tiny bit of olive oil, the chopped onion, the spinach leaves and some salt.

#4 : Keep stirring until all the moist is gone.

#5 : Remove the pot from the heat and leave it aside for step #10.

#6 : In a big bowl, crumple the feta cheese.

#7 : Add the other cheese (after you grate it).

#8 : Add the yugurt, the egg and some pepper.

#9 : Mix them all together

#10 : Mix-in the spinach.

#11 : Take a baking pan and oil it well. Our pan is round but you can use any pan available as long as it is smaller than your dough leaves.

#12 : Lay a dough leave in the pan and oil it. Let the edges of the dough to flow outside the pan.

#13 : Repeat the process with another 2-3 dough leaves.

#14 : Lay the cheese/spinach mix on top of the leaves.

#15 : Lay 2-3 more dough leaves on top of the mix. As before, oil each dough leaf.

#16 : Cut most of the excess dough, overflowing the pan and turn the rest over the top of the dough. Apply more oil.

#17 : Pre-cut the pieces of the pie with a knife, for it will be difficult to do it after the pie is baked.

#18 : Bake in a pre-heated oven at 170°C for around 30-40 minutes.

#19 : Enjoy!

Notes

You may have noticed that there is no salt in the ingredients. It is by design, as the feta cheese is naturaly salty.

Feta cheese : you can find “Dodoni” feta chese in 200 gr or 400 gr packages at the Delhaize supermarkets. You can find 1 kg or 2 kg packages at SANI or Fresh Med.

Kaseri cheese : you can find some at SANI or Fresh Med, but you can use Gouda cheese as well, or even some other hard yellow cheese like Parmesan.

Greek yugurt : you can find “Fage Total” yugurt at the Delhaize supermarkets or “Kri Kri” yugurt at the Carrefour supermarkets.

Greek traditional “fillo” puff dough : you can find “Zagorisio” or “Alfa Kihi” greek traditional puff dough at SANI or Fresh Med. I once tried to use “Fyllo” dough that I found at a Colruyt supermarket but it did not taste as good.