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cooking recipe

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.

It’s not easy to find the correct ingredients abroad. In Brussels, so far we have found a Greek foods importer / distributer that carries what you will need. It is the “SANI Mediterranean” greek foods importer at Boulevard De Dixmude 25-29 (near the Sainte Catherine square and Metro station). I am sure there are others as well, I just did not have time to look.

Update:

If you don’t find SANI‘s location very convenient, there is another place that carries the necessary ingredients: “Fresh Med” at Rue de l’Escadron 35 in Etterbeek. It’s a tiny bit more expensive than SANI but lately I prefer to buy from them as they are closer to our home.

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.

By George

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