Category: pies

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Cheese Pie with Homemade Phyllo Pastry

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

Cheese. Crunchy pastry. Worth some effort that the traditional Greek phyllo pastry requires – as well as worth a short walk to get some Georgian cheese 🙂 It’s a coincidence that I found some flat suluguni cheese in our local ‘farmers” store (they say it is a blini type of suluguni and sell it in disks) – which looks just like the pastry before it’s rolled out into sheets.

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

I have been meaning to use this recipe for the Greek phyllo pastry since I saw the video on the Food Wishes blog (the videos are always enjoyable – even from the language side of it – fellow linguists will understand:) some time ago. And finally I did dare to make a cheese pie with it – a sort of tiropita.

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

I have to admit this recipe is not a very quick one but you’ll see the difference and you’ll like the result for sure. And moreover there’s the video so you just have no excuses not to make this phyllo pastry and use it for savoury or sweet pies like bougatsa or baklava (there’s another video on how to make baklava). Careful though – baklava is super nutritious and addictive!

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

Don’t get intimidated with the seemingly complicated recipe procedure – Chef John’s instructions will guide you through it and after several it-will-never-work-out-well moments you will master this pastry that they use in so many pies in Greece. Oh, Greece is the heaven for pie fans!

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

1 year ago – Official St Petersburg or Along Bolshaya Morskaya

2 years ago – Pear Croustade and Pane Tipo Altamura

3 years ago – From Sunny Greece to Autumn Leaves in St Pete

4 years ago – Plum Cakes from Italy and Austria

5 years ago – Shangi, Pies from the North and Urals

6 years ago – Ode to My Baboushka

Cheese Pie with Homemade Phyllo Pastry adapted from the hilarious foodwishes.blogspot.com will make an almost authentic Greek pie… well, at least you can imagine it is! Go to the link above to watch video instructions for the pastry (attention: requires some time and effort!). See my remarks in italics.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
  • 5 teaspoons olive oil – for some reason I thought it was 5 TABLEspoons 🙂
  • 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
  • 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar – our 10-year old vinegar from France gave too much of flavour
  • 3/4 cups warm water

filling:

  • about 300 g rubbery cheese, ideally – suluguni, if not – haloumi, grated / mashed
  • about 300 soft fresh cheese in light brine, ideally Feta, Imeretian or Adygea cheese, grated / mashed
  • salt with dried herbs, pepper

starch mixture:

  • 1/2 cup cornstarch – I had only potato starch
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Procedure:

Make the pastry: Place the flour in a bowl, make a well in the center and pour in the oil, vinegar and the warm water plus the salt. Mix these ingredients with your fingers (not with someone’s else of course) in the bowl, then place on the surface and kneed into a smooth and soft ball, about 5 min. Roll the ball into a log and then back into a ball for several times. Wrap and leave to rest for at least 1 h at room temp.

Divide the dough into balls of 20 g (mine were about walnut size), cover the ones you are not using. Take 5 balls and roll each of these balls into a small disc, dust each of them really well (!) with the starch mixture and stack all 5 together. Then roll the stack out to about double the size, separate the discs (this will come with practice…), dust each disc again, re-stack them together in any order you like and roll out again into a sheet of pastry – the thinner the better.

Place one sheet of pastry between 2 sheets of parchment (reuse them in baking later), roll into a log (do not press), wrap in plastic (I placed them in a plastic bag) and leave in fridge / freezer if not using straight away.

When assembling your pie, use several sheets for the bottom layer and some more for the top layer (or even in-between layers, as in baklava). Drip olive oil over each 2nd sheet of pastry and do not forget to pre-cut the pie (do not cut through). Bake at 350’C for about 1 h (I did not have that much time so I switched the fan on at 180’C and reduced baking time to 30 min).

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

Remarks: Chef John says the recipe will make enough for about twenty sheets of pastry but I got 3 sheets with 5 layers + 1 sheet with 3 layers which was enough for a rather large though flat pie. I didn’t roll my pastry out too thin though. And yes, re-separating the discs of pastry is the most challenging part of the process, I only got the trick after rolling out and re-separating two stacks.  After all, phyllo means a leaf (or a sheet in this case)… Another remark, the cornstarch mixture makes a bit too much for this amount of pastry – I used the leftovers in a cake. Also, I used quite a small baking sheet so had to make rather thick borders – better avoid it, the pastry get too tough at the edges.

Result: Crusty-crunchy flat cheese pie. Do you need any more comments to persuade you to make it here and now? That’s what you are striving for – the crunchy outer layers of the pastry:

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

…and these layers that separate from each other on their own once baked:

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

…which are not that easy to separate before baking 🙂 Here is one of the stacks before rolling out:

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough

and before re-separating the discs:

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough

I was a bit late to photograph the entire pie – this is what was left next morning:

Homemade Phyllo aka Filo Dough from foodwishes.blogspot.com

And yes, my blog has just turned 6!

This post goes to the Lunch / Dinner and Greek recipe collections where you will find many more Greek – and not only – pies.

G.

pies · sweet

Red Currant Pie with Ground Oats and Peanuts

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Red Currant Pie

Berries from dacha. Some of them are now frozen, some of them turned into a sort of zhivoe varenye (live confiture, consisting of berries strained with sugar, no boiling involved – the best way to preserve all the good stuff in the fruit), some of them eaten raw (gosh, they are so sour!) and some end up as a filling to numerous cakes, muffins and this time also a pie.

Red Currant Pie

This summer with June and July almost sun-less, has not given the berries enough sugar so they are eeeextra sour. Thanks God, no apples this year – I can only imagine how sour they would be…

Red Currant Pie

Red currants are traditionally extremely sour. Yet, I like baking with them, they seem to give that special ‘it’ to the cakes and pies.

Red Currant Pie

After making quick cakes and muffins, I’ve finally got over my laziness and here’s a pastry pie I baked today with the last red currants from our dacha – soft and zesty. Why peanuts in a berry pie? Well, I just had some in front of me.

Red Currant Pie

Same goes with why I decided to add this tolokno (see Remarks below) layer to the pie 0 I guess I just had it on the table at that moment too! However, it seems it was not that bad an idea after all – it has given the berries an extra soft (and sweet) layer and also prevented the juices from destroying the bottom of the pie. I think it worked in a sort of custard-y way.

Red Currant Pie

1 year ago – Lemon-Gooseberry Bars

2 years ago – Greek Olive Buns and Breadsticks

3 years ago – Spanakopita and Mediterranean Vegetable Millefeuille

4 years ago – Summer Goes On with Sourdough Mini-Rolls

5 years ago – Pommes. Pommes de Terre too

Red Currant Pie with Ground Oats and Peanuts

Ingredients (as with most of my recipes – the amounts are very approximate!)

  • 150-200 g sugar, divided
  • lemon zest, to taste
  • 90-100 g butter, cold or from freezer
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 egg
  • handful of peanuts, ground into flour
  • all-purpose flour, enough for the pastry
  • 2-3 Tb oat flour (preferably tolokno or kama, see Remarks)
  • 1/2 cup warm water, or more as needed
  • fresh red currants

Procedure

First, make the pastry. Cut cold butter into small pieces, mix in about 50-70 g sugar, depending on how sweet you want your pastry, lemon zest and the egg. Working rather quickly before the butter softens too much, add a pinch of salt, ground peanuts and start adding all-purpose flour, delicately but swiftly kneading the pastry with your hand. My idea was to make it rather soft and crumbly so I did not knead it into a disk. Leave the pastry covered in the fridge for at least 30 min.

Meanwhile, prepare the oat flour layer. I used the easiest method for making kasha from tolokno (see Remarks), by mixing it gradually into a small bowl with some warm water, adjusting the amount of flour to achieve rather thick consistency. Add in about 50 g of sugar (the mixture will get more runny).

Line a round or rectangular baking dish with parchment paper. Take the pastry out of the fridge and distribute a bigger (2/3) part of it on the bottom, by gently rubbing it through your fingers. In this way you’re creating a more ‘aerated’ sort of pastry layer rather than a smooth one, so no worries if there are ‘holes’ in the bottom layer. Keep the rest of the pastry in the fridge.

Pour the oat mixture over the bottom pastry layer and scatter red currants on top, finishing with some more sugar, depending on the sweetness of your berries (ours are as usual super sour). Take the remaining pastry from the fridge and rub it through your fingers over the berries. There will be more spaces in the top layer with berries popping out as you’ll have less pastry for it but that’s exactly what you need.

Preheat the oven to 180’C. Bake for about 40-45 min. until the top layer is golden and the berries are happily bubbling away.

Red Currant Pie

Remarks

Tolokno aka kama or talkan, is a traditional grind of slightly toasted whole oats, considered to be healthier than what you get with the industrially milled oats. In Karelia they eat it with berries and it’s such a treat! You can of course use oat flour or grind some oatmeal instead.

Red Currant Pie

My pastry ‘recipe’ is not anywhere close to what you would call classic, so feel free to use your favourite recipe. Anyway, I have to confess, putting enough butter into the pastry does make a difference – it’s just what I wanted – soft and crumbly!

Red Currant Pie

Result

Sweet-n’-sour in one bite, very soft and peanut-y, with distinct flavour from the oats detected.

Red Currant Pie

This recipe goes to the Berries and Sweet collections where you will find many more recipes with red currants in particular, like Cardamom and Red Currant Cake, Coconut Red Currant Bread, Pretty Good Red Currant Coffeecake, Moelleux aux Groseilles or Redcurrant Cake, Red Currant Meringue Pie, Red Currant Flan and Red Currant and Marzipan Swirls among others.

G.

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

My sister came back from her Greek trip some weeks ago and brought us gostintsy (souvenirs) from the sunny country. We now have our stock of oregano refilled and I have new Greek books which will help get me through the winter. And there was this herby olive oil from Corfu as well:

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

That was a good excuse to make one of my favourite things when it comes to savoury and comfort food – pies. A successful marriage between Russian fresh cheese filling and elastic Greek pastry made with olive oil was it, and as I had no Greek alcohol required for it too, I used some (pseudo) Russian vodka. The pastry recipe comes from Dina Nikolaou, Greek chef who travels around Greece and then presents the region from the gastronomic side of life on TV. The great thing about this pastry is that it doesn’t need lots of time to rise – it actually only rests half an hour in the fridge and then the yeast makes its magic right in the oven, rising the pastry just enough to be soft and not enough to get all soggy! Teleio!

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

1 year ago – Orange and David Gilmour

2 years ago – An Autumn Day in Lappeenranta, Finland

3 years ago – Bread-therapy for a Tired Traveller

4 years ago – Autumn Colours and Karelia

5 years ago – Creamy Peach Tart and Kitchen Reborn

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry (pastry recipe adapted from Village Pastry with Olive Oil, Horiatiko fillo me elaiolado / Χωριάτικο φύλλο, με ελαιόλαδο from dinanikolaou.gr) will make a Greek-size pie with a soft filling and just enough pastry (I know I’ve said this about so many pies but you just can’t keep yourself from saying this when you taste it!).

Ingredients:

for the pastry (enough for 2 big pies):

  • 500 g all-purpose flour
  • 30 ml or about 3 Tbs olive oil (I had to add some water too)
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 30 ml milk (mine was 2.5% fat)
  • 8-10 g fresh yeast dissolved in 1/2 cup (100 ml) lukewarm water (I used 1.5 tsp active dry yeast instead)
  • 2 1/2 Tbs tsipouro or ouzo (well, I had to go for vodka!)
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

for the filling (enough for half of the pastry recipe):

  • 500 g 5% fat cottage cheese / quark (tvorog) – might as well be feta or brynza or a mixture
  • leftover mashed potatoes (optional but good)
  • some grated hard cheese
  • 2 small eggs
  • fresh herbs like spring onion, coriander and parsley, chopped
  • salt, pepper, dried oregano and seasoning like khmeli-suneli

Procedure:

First, make the pastry: Place fluffed flour in a big bowl and make a well in the center. Pour in olive oil, beaten egg, milk, yeast with the water it was dissolved in, tsipouro / ouzo / vodka and add salt and pepper. Knead lightly with your hands until you get soft and flexible dough. (Here I had to add a bit more water cause my 500 g of flour seemed like a lot for the indicated amount of liquid). Divide the dough into 2 equal parts, wrap in plastic foil and place in the fridge for 30 minutes (I left them there for more than an hour).

Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Mix all the filling ingredients (a good idea would be to add all except eggs and try it for salt) and put aside.

Now you can proceed with assembling the pie: Take one piece of the pastry and roll it out finely on a floured surface (I used only one piece of the dough both for the bottom and the top layers). It should be larger than the baking dish you’ll be using so that the borders are covered too. Place it onto your greased / laid with parchment paper baking dish. Roll out the second piece (or the leftovers from trimming the overhanging edges, which I did) to the very size of your baking dish – this will be the top layer.

Place the filling evenly on top of the bottom pastry layer and cover it with the top layer, pinching the edges. Don’t forget to cut slits in the top layer to help escape the steam (and occasional cheese liquid).

Bake in the preheated to 200 ‘C oven for about 30 minutes. The pie should start getting brown on the top (the top layer got browned faster than I expected so keep an eye on it).

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

Remarks: You will get more pastry than you would need for a very big pie (I baked my pie in the biggest cast iron pan we have, greased). I’m keeping my second half wrapped in the freezer for future comfort-food pies.

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

Result: The pastry is just perfectly elastic and keeps shape nicely – it also rolls out easily after its rest in the fridge. The filling was a bit too bland to be called Greek, so I would suggest adding either more salt or a different kind of cheese like the salty feta or brynza (super-salty brine cheese) or at least making it 50/50 with the cottage cheese.

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

When you take the pie out of the oven, the pastry is all smooth at first but then these nice cracks appear on the surface patricularly when you cut your huge slices. And the top of this pie is also crunchy, oraia!

Tvorog Pie with Greek Horiatiko Pastry

To make your life even more comfortable and cozy in this cold season (we’ve somehow skipped the autumn here and headed straight into oh-no winter, you just read some Moomin stories!

This post goes to country-specific recipes and Lunch / Dinner suggestions where you will find more Greek / Greek-inspired pies.

G.

bread · no recipe · pies · sweet · sweet bread

Apples. Again. A lot

georgiagilmour2 Comments

Apples. Again. A lot

Apples are back! Which means apples are gathered, apples are picked up from the ground, apples are given out to all our friends, apples are eaten raw, apples are baked as is and in cakes, apples are made into compote, apples are grated, cut, chopped, sliced, mashed … everything is done in the attempt to make them disappear! 🙂

Apples. Again. A lot

We’ve spent the entire weekend picking them up at our dacha – we filled all our baskets and the plastic bags too. Apples normally come in large numbers every second year, but this year with its un-summer-like summer we were quite surprised that the apples are not only many but also quite sweet!

Apples. Again. A lot

And all that without actually picking the apples from the tree – we just gathered what fell (and is constantly falling) onto the ground. It has been windy as hell here in St Petersburg and the region recently. But this was a very fine late August weekend. With the soft sound of apples falling sneakily behind your back (it just suffices to turn away from the trees for a moment!) or… directly on your head! And so they are now baked in numerous cakes:

Apples. Again. A lot

and pies:

Apples. Again. A lot
with tons of cinnamon!

Apples. Again. A lot

THE best apples that grow in our ground and probably just the best apples are Bely naliv (aka Papirovka) – they are early to ripe, resistant to cold winters, sweet&sour in taste and juicy. Some of them grew to real giants of apples but then they get a bit too mashy, as if you were eating a potato. Here they are on the tree…

Apples. Again. A lot

…and making company to some freshly baked sourdough bread. Other types of apples that we have at our dacha include Baltika (pictured in the beginning of the post, with these cute red stripes), Osenneye polosatoye (Stripy Autumnal, with red strokes) and Zvezdochka (Star, winter sort, so thank God we’re to get their harvest some time later; they are red in color).

Apples. Again. A lot

And.. as we discovered on Sunday they are now accompanied by plums too. Who would believe we live in the North-West of Russia with all these fruits?

Apples. Again. A lot

For the collection of recipes with apples, see this page.

G.

bread · pies · sweet

Lemon-Gooseberry Bars

georgiagilmour2 Comments

Lemon-Gooseberry Bars

I’ve made these bars with whole lemon and gooseberries recently and my family liked them. There’s no particular recipe for them as it was a part of my improvisations with the ingredients I had at the moment. There was this lonely lemon hanging out in the fridge for some time and those 30% sweet – 70 % sour gooseberries from our dacha 🙂 And some butter in the freezer! The dough recipe was inspired by this friend’s recipe here, I just used less butter, omitted soda+vinegar and added some spices to the dough. The lemon part of the filling was inspired by another friend’s recipe where it is the only fruit component.

Lemon-Gooseberry Bars

1 year ago – Greek Olive Buns and Breadsticks

2 years ago – Spanakopita and Mediterranean Vegetable Millefeuille

3 years ago – Summer Goes On with Sourdough Mini-Rolls

4 years ago – Pommes. Pommes de Terre too

Lemon-Gooseberry Bars will make soft pie-like bars with a tangy summer berry flavour.

Ingredients:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup of sugar
  • 100 g butter from the freezer
  • 3-5 glasses of flour
  • spices like cardamom
  • 1 whole lemon
  • gooseberries – I had a mixture of red & black gooseberries
  • 1 Tb cornstarch
  • sugar and spices, to taste

Procedure:

  1. First, mix cold butter with sugar and add eggs. Add a cup of flour and spices and see how it goes. You might need about 2 cups for the dough to be malleable but thick. Turn the pastry onto a surface and divide in two equal parts (balls), wrap them in plastic foil or put them in two plastic bags and then of they go into the freezer for about one hour. The more you chill them, the easier the grating.
  2. Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Wash the lemon thoroughly, cut it in pieces and take out the seeds. Then put the pieces in the blender and wheeze them to achieve the result you want (bigger / smaller pieces). Add sugar to taste (about 3/4 of a cup I guess) and spices (ginger, mm?) and berries cleaned from all the stalks. Blend the mixture again and then by hand add the cornstarch (which will help create a less runny filling).
  3. Grate one piece of the dough to make the base for the pie – you can grate directly onto the bottom of a lined rectangular baking tin. The larger tin you use the thinner the dough and filling levels will be. Spread the filling all over the bottom layer and grate the second ball on top of the filling, covering it as much as you can (avoid too much action so that you do not destroy the authentic ‘grated’ look!). If the dough gets too soft making grating quite a hard job, put the ball into the freezer back for some time and then continue the process.
  4. Bake at 180’C for about 30 minutes.
  5. Let the pie cool a bit and then cut it into slices.

Lemon-Gooseberry Bars

Remarks: Although the berries I had were already quite tangy (to say the least), I think the combination with sugar was a good one. Just add enough sugar to cover the sourness of both. And you can use any kind of berries you have, I think. The filling will be oozing from the sides of the pie but that’ll only create this sugary extra something to the border slices 🙂

Result: Lemon-gooseberry bars, isn’t it a perfect end-of-summer vitamin booster?

Lemon-Gooseberry Bars

Check out these Double-Decker Gooseberry Scones too!

This post goes to the Sweet and Berry recipe collections.

G.

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry for Midsummer

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Home again and tired… I’m a bit late with the traditional Midsummer Post this year because I’ve just finished a crazy trip to lake Baikal along the Trans-Siberian railroad and then to Vladivostok and back on a plane. Still need some time to recuperate… And obviously yet another week or so of holidays to write posts about the trip. The day I arrived I was already baking (without any particular recipe, lazy style). In two days I felt ready for some more effort which means following a recipe. And here it is, my semi-improvised midsummer Greek spinach and cheese pie:

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry will make a thin crunchy pie with soft cheese and herbs. For the recipe of the Homemade Phyllo Pastry, visit food.com. Here is the improvised filling and what I changed in the pastry recipe:

The only change to the pastry ingredients was to add some freshly ground pepper. As for the procedure, I did not use the dowel to poll it out as thin as possible but rather just… well, rolled it out with a rolling pin and then stretched it as much as I could before it would tear apart (which it inevitably did). For this pie I used only half of the pastry recipe – three sheets on the bottom and three sheets on top, brushing them with olive oil. Still thinking what to do with the remaining half (this type of pastry is traditionally used in both sweet and savoury pies, but  already added pepper to it…).

Filling:

  • c. 350 g of soft white cheese like Adygea cheese (try Feta if you can get it but be careful with salt)
  • 400 g of spinach (I used frozen)
  • 1 egg
  • some fresh herbs of your choice, chopped
  • salt, pepper, seasoning of your choice
  • dried oregano
  • sesame seeds
  • bran, wheat germ, semolina or just flour

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Procedure:

First, I heated up frozen spinach without adding any water, so that the liquid evaporates. Then I left it to cool down a bit and meanwhile prepared the pastry. While the pastry was resting, I added cheese, egg, spices and herbs to the spinach. My idea was to get a less liquid filling not to lose the crunchiness of the pastry.

I laid three sheets of pastry onto the bottom, brushing them with olive oil. Then I sprinkled some wheat germ on top to absorb the liquid of the filling (you can use whatever absorbing ‘agent’ you prefer). Then I spread the filling over the bottom sheets and covered the pie with three more sheets, slightly pinching the edges. I brushed some olive oil on top too and sprinkled it with sesame seeds. I also pre-cut the pie which created this ‘pattern’:

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Then I baked the pie at 200 ‘C for about 30 minutes until the top pastry layer achieved its golden colour.

Remarks: Thanks to all the precaution I took to reduce the amount of liquid in the filling, the bottom pastry layers was not soggy and the top was quite crunchy. Also, the pre-cutting worked out just fine. If you add all the 12 sheets into one pie, I would suggest making larger folds for the top pastry layers, so that you get a less dense dough part.

Result: A thin pie with a nice balance of pastry and filling. Perfect with a (Greek) salad on the side.

My midsummer series so far:

Adding this post to the Lunch / Dinner collection, where you will find other cheese and greens pies. For many more Greek and Greek-inspired recipes like Tyropita or Spanakopita, check out the By Country collection.

Will come back with my Grand Russian Tour posts, I hope soon.

G.

pies · sweet

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake

When you have pears hard as wood and two packages of Russian tvorog, you just go and make an improvised cheesecake. It turned out to be quite Russian, I should say, because tvorog is pretty grainy compared to the much softer cream cheese. Anyway, here’s a more or less accurate reconstruction of that improvised Russian-style cheesecake with pears:

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake

1 year ago – Deli Bread with My Un-Favourite Ingredient

2 years ago – Dying Eggs for Easter the Natural Way

3 years ago – Apples and Oranges

4 years ago – Biscotti and On Soviet Food Stupidities

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake will make a soft but rich cheesecake with that very tvorog texture and flavour.

Ingredients:

for the base:

  • 90 g of butter, cold
  • 70 g of sugar, but actually to taste
  • about 180 g of flour
  • an egg
  • some cold water
  • a dash of nutmeg

for the cheesecake:

  • 500 g 5% fat tvorog (or a grainy type of farmer’s cheese)
  • 2 eggs
  • 100 g or more of sugar, to taste
  • 2 Tbs of cornstarch
  • a pinch of vanilla extract
  • 4-5 small pears or other fruit
  • some ground cardamom

Procedure:

First, make the base: mix flour with sugar and nutmeg, then cut in cold butter. I usually work in the butter with my hands after I precut it into pieces. Your mixture should resemble crumbs. Mix in the egg and add the water little by little so that you get a kneadable dough. Do not over-knead though. Cover the bowl and leave it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, you can start making the filling. Rub the tvorog with the sugar, mix in the eggs one by one, add the cornstarch and the vanilla. Slice the pears in your preferred fashion (I leave the skins on and do not pay too much attention to the appearance).

Grease a round springform pan. Now take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it a bit bigger than the size of your baking pan / spread it in the pan with fingers (which I did). You should be able to make quite tall borders with this amount of pastry. Lay the pieces of pears all over the bottom, sprinkle with some cardamom. Then pour all the cheese mixture on top. Give it a nice shake to distribute the mixture evenly.

Bake at 160-170 ‘C for about an hour (check at 50 minutes). Leave to cool and then keep refrigerated. It will slice better after some time in the fridge.

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake

Remarks: No need to buy unripe pears for this cake 🙂 And I think any fruit will do as long as you like it! I didn’t add any sour cream (smetana) either which might have added a creamier taste to it. Also, be careful with the sugar – mine was a little bit too sweet!

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake

Result: A chewy kind of cheesecake, if you know what I mean. It is more like the Russian zapekanka which is made with tvorog, eggs, sugar and a bit of flour.

After some time in the fridge, the slices were not falling apart that much and looked more ‘professional’. But I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures 🙂

Russian-style Pear Cheesecake

This recipe goes to the Sweet and Russian collections.

G.

bread · Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Greek: Grandma’s Cheese Pies and Homemade Village Bread

georgiagilmour2 Comments

Grandma's Cheese Pies

I’ve got two Greek recipes to share with you: cheese pies and bread. Both recipes call for whole-wheat flour which in Greece is not that very common unless you really turn to home or rather village cooking. And that’s exactly what I like in cooking – let’s walk on the rustic side of it!

Grandma's Cheese Pies

1 year ago – Italian Sourdough Bread with Potatoes and Herbs

2 years ago – Sunflower Seed Rye Sourdough or We Need Sun Here

3 years ago – Thessaloniki

4 years ago – Mangoes and Rye to Welcome Spring

(Greek) Grandma’s Cheese Pies or Tiropitakia tis giagias (Τυροπιτάκια της γιαγιάς) translated and adapted from bettyscuisine.blogspot.com will make lots of pies with rubbery cheese filling – a Greek version of hand pies. Beware (:) the entire recipe will make about 40 big pies! I halved the recipe and yet got about 2 trays of pies 🙂 See my remarks in italics.

Ingredients:

  • 1 kg whole-wheat flour
  • 1 Greek yogurt case – was not sure about the volume so added about a cup for 500 g flour, using a mixture of milk and kefir
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup olive oil + added salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 700 g Feta, crumbled with a fork – I used a 250 g pack of 5% fat tvorog (cottage cheese) + 290g Adygea cheese (for all three fillings) + fresh rosemary, salt and pepper. Second filling was some cooked millet and third – Adygea cheese + green onions, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper

(Greek) Grandma's Cheese

Procedure:

Mix flour with yogurt (I would suggest adjusting the amount of liquid accordingly), soda, eggs and oil. Knead well and divide into pieces (I also let the dough rest about 20 minutes which made it softer). Roll each piece into a round disk and place a spoonful of the filling on one side. Cover the filling with the other side of the disk and pinch the edges. You should get crescent-shaped pies (I also tried other shapes, see remarks). Place the pies on a greased baking tray (I used a silicon mat) and bake at 200 ‘C for 20 minutes (before baking I sprinkled the pies with some water).

Grandma's Cheese Pies

Remarks: My pies took exactly 20 minutes to bake – no matter what shape I used. First I thought about making small pies just like pelmeni (or Russian ravioli) but soon got tired of all the rolling, cutting and pinching, so made medium-small pies with the rest of the dough. And I should really warn you that we’re dealing here with a truly Greek recipe that will feed all your relatives! 🙂 So I would suggest making only half of the dough recipe or you might end up with no filling! Even with half of the dough I still had to invent more filling options thus adding fresh herbs (rosemary was good!) and using both cottage cheese and soft white cheese.

Grandma's Cheese Pies

Result: I tried the smaller pies right out of the oven – they were hot (apparently) and rather rubbery with all the soft cheese inside. If you’re using real Feta (lucky you!) I bet your pies will be quite salty and won’t need any special spicy twist to them (the dough might seem a bit bland even with the added salt). You can serve these as a starter – or if you make them big as the author suggests, they can become your lunch or dinner! 

Grandma's Cheese Pies

***

Homemade Village Bread

I’m still looking forward to finding that very recipe which will result in the super soft and super whole-wheat rustic bread I ate almost each day at the free (!) student canteen in Thessaloniki. Gosh, even my parents remember it! 🙂 I guess the thing was in the flour which was rough but yet gave that wonderful flavour to the bread. And it was soft too – with a crunchy crust. Oh, that bread was perfect… So here’s what I call the Greek size:

Homemade Village Bread

Homemade Village Bread or Khoriatiko psomi spitiko viologiko (Χωριάτικο ψωμί σπιτικό βιολογικό) translated and adapted from www.sintagespareas.gr will make a huge flagrant bread with super soft crumb and yet all those healthy bran bits inside. See my remarks in italics.

Ingredients:

  • 1 kg ‘village’ flour (whole wheat) – made a mixture of whole wheat + all purpose + wheat and rye bran + some oats for the topping
  • 2 packages of instant dried yeast – used less
  • 500 ml lukewarm water – had to use more
  • 1 shot of olive oil (Greek, please!)
  • 2 tsp salt

Procedure:

In a big plastic bowl (not necessarily🙂 mix all the flour with the yeast. Add salt and gradually pour in the lukewarm water, mixing well with your hands (yep, that’s how you do it!). Knead vigorously so that it becomes soft. Cover the bowl with a towel and a blanket (I just used plastic). Leave the dough to double in size in a warm place for at least 2 hours.

Then add the oil and knead well again. Place the dough in a greased and floured baking pan (preferably a large thick non-stick pan or tray). Slash the surface (I also brushed it with olive oil + sprinkled oats). Preheat the oven to 180 ‘C for 10 minutes, place the bread on the middle rack and bake it for about an hour (I had to move it to the lower rack at the end and baked just 55 min.).

When the bread is ready, take it out of the oven and out of the pan and leave it on a rack so that it gets rid of all the moisture inside.

Homemade Village Bread

Remarks: With all its Greek dimensions the bread did bake through! However, if you’re not planning to gobble this entire loaf at once (which you will surely do if you try just a bit!) and would prefer to freeze a part of it, I would suggest baking two loaves out of this recipe. I eventually cut the bread in – still – huge pieces and froze them. Beware of the burning top – I had to move the pan to the lower rack as the oats started burning and the voluminous top was menacing to reach the upper heater.

Homemade Village Bread

Result: The crumb is really very soft – and crumbly while the crust is… you get it, crusty! :). It’s hard to slice this bread properly – but I’m sure you will manage without perfect slices! This bread won’t keep well because a). you will eat it fast no matter how huge it is and b). the crumb has lots of moisture in it.

Homemade Village Bread

Hope I’ve given you a desire to bake some nice rustic Greek food. Ideal at the end of the winter (let’s hope we’re getting there soon!).

This post goes to Lunch / Dinner, Leavened Bread and Greek recipe collections.

In neverending search for wonderful food, always yours,

G.

pies · vegetarian

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs, Azerbaijani Pies with a Russian Twist

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs

Let’s have some savoury dish for a change. This time it’s going to be a recipe for Qutab from the Azerbaijani cuisine but with a certain Russian twist. I recently tried a similar fried filled bread from Turkey called gozleme traditionally made with white brine cheese. Both recipes are easy to make and do not require lengthy dough preparation. You can make them with meat or other fillings but I just love the cheese + herbs combination. For both recipes I used suluguni cheese mixed with some tvorog (cottage cheese) for the lack of proper brynza, and whatever is available from the fresh herbs.

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs

The Russian twist is ensured by the addition of rye flour to the dough. I doubt that in Azerbaijan they eat rye qutabs (rye flour is characteristic of the Northern parts of Russia rather than Azerbaijan!) but at the same time this adds some extra flavour (and a bit of wholesomeness) to the somewhat heavy dish. You might want to make a 100% white flour dough or mix in some whole wheat flour. Whatever your choice, heat your sturdy cast iron pan and let’s make the qutabs!

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs

1 year ago – Vyatka, City of Snow that Dreams of Summer

2 years ago – Two Spinach Pies and Spinach…Rice

3 years ago – French Bread

4 years ago – Two Rrrrrye Breads (Raisin and Riga)

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs translated and adapted from perfectfood.ru will make a chewy and vegetarian version of the Azerbaijani pies. Check out the original website for the video recipe (understandable even without any knowledge of Russian). See my remarks in italics.

Ingredients for 9-10 qutabs:

For the dough:

  • 150 g rye flour (can substitute with whole wheat or all-purpose flour)
  • 150 g all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 Tbs sunflower oil
  • water – as much as the dough will take

For the filling:

  • 100-150 g cheese, hard and /or soft (Adygea, brynza, paneer…) – I used fat-free cottage cheese and Suluguni
  • 300 g of herbs of any type, can use spinach, sorrel, nettle, etc. – I used dill, parsley, spring onions and coriander
  • salt, according to your cheese (I also added pepper)

For the sauce (optional):

  • matsoni or natural yogurt or smetana (sour cream)
  • garlic, couple of cloves

Procedure:

In a bowl mix the flours, add salt and oil. With your hands rub oil into the flour mixture, so that it’s distributed evenly. Gradually add water and mix until you have a very soft sticky dough. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to rest for 10 min.

Meanwhile prepare the filling. Finely chop the herbs. If you’re using nettle, first scald it with boiling water and then chop it (the nettle will thus lose its stinginess). Finely grate the cheese and mix in with the herbs. Add salt.

Flour the work surface and your hands. Pinch off a piece of dough that will fit in the palm of your hand. Roll it out into a flat round. Place some filling on one side of the dough leaving the edges free. Then fold the other side over the filling and seal the edges with a fork.

Place a dry skillet (preferably cast iron) over high heat (no greasing required!). If your pan is big enough you will be able to cook 2 qutabs at a time. Cook 1 minute, then turn the qutabs over and cook 1 minute more (my qutabs needed more time – I also baked only 2 and then placed the dough and the filling in the fridge for a later use).

Serve immediately with the matsoni and garlic sauce, dipping the qutabs into the sauce. The sauce can be made in advance so that it gets the most out of garlic flavour: press several cloves of garlic into matsoni, mix and place in the fridge. For the lack of matsoni you can use natural yogurt or smetana (sour cream).

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs

oh that melting cheese!

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs

Remarks: I would rather call the rye dough pretty bland (although it contained salt) but the filling was pretty salty (didn’t pay attention to the saltiness of the cheese). Also, next time I would roll the dough really thin cause it was quite chewy. You can also experiment with the sizes and the amount of filling – some of my qutabs were a bit too big 🙂 These are best eaten hot – so I suggest cutting the dough recipe by half. I ran out of cheese with that much of the dough and had to use mashed potatoes with the leftover cheese filling for the last qutabs.

Cheese and Herbs Qutabs

Result: Easy pies with melting cheese? Count me in! Perfect with some greens on the side and a lot of kefir (for the lack of traditional matsoni). Also no problem with keeping these pies in the fridge and reheating them later.

This post goes to Lunch / Dinner and the country-specific recipe collections (first Azerbaijani recipe!).

G.

Georgian recipe · pies · sweet · vegetarian

Peach Pie and Khachapuri Revisited

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Aunt Alice’s Peach Pie from www.thesisterscafe.com

A short break in between my Provence posts. A food post! Both recipes I’m going to share with you seem to be quite popular on my blog already and have lots of other variants. Greek peaches and Georgian pies – the best!

Aunt Alice’s Peach Pie from www.thesisterscafe.com

A year ago – Chocolate-Chocolate Cookies for the First Snow

Two years ago – Autumn Leaves and Karelian Pies

Three years ago – Khachapuri, I’m addicted!

Four years ago – Some Soviet Things for a Change

Aunt Alice’s Peach Pie adapted from www.thesisterscafe.com will make two small pies (or one big) with a runny & chewy fruit filling. Addictive-ly sweet! Check the link to get the entire recipe (which is super short).

My changes: I used no recipe for the pie shell but improvised as usual (see this for example). I used less cornstarch though would suggest using all the 4 tablespoons. Instead of fresh peaches, I found Greek canned peaches – some of them I sliced and the rest processed in the blender. Instead of almond flavoring I added cardamom.

Aunt Alice’s Peach Pie from www.thesisterscafe.com

Remarks: you will need to prebake the pie shell, so I would suggest putting some weight on the bottom of the pie (I skipped this with my second pie and, well, it all rose up and the result was not that straight :). The filling wouldn’t thicken unless I placed the pies in the fridge which seems to help with some pies.

Aunt Alice’s Peach Pie from www.thesisterscafe.com

Result: An addictive sweety-sweet pie with super soft runny peachy filling. Hats off to Aunt Alice, whoever she is!

More ways to use canned (or fresh) peaches:

And though the original recipe (and post) for that peach pie was definitely about Georgia, the peach state, here’s a connection to the other recipe I’m revisiting today… Piles of khachapuri, anyone?

Adjari Khachapuri

Three years ago in a random magazine somewhere up there in the North, in the Komi Republic (Russia) I found a recipe for a Georgian pie which I’m still using now. Recently I decided to bake the famous Adjari Khachapuri again.

Adjari Khachapuri

My khachapuri might not be authentically Adjari as those should be boat-like and have an egg in the middle, which you break closer to the end of baking. I add the eggs into the filling instead. My khachapuri also mutated to include pine nuts (why not?), spring onions and coriander (they say herbs are almost obligatory for such super-cheese pies), khmeli-suneli seasoning mix and smetana (sour cream) to make the filling softer.

Adjari Khachapuri

Khachapuri is what comes to your head first thing when you want to eat something hearty, when you have friends coming to your place, when you just want that comfort food (especially in autumn!). Khachapuri is for every occasion and I can sing songs about it just as I do for the sourdough rye bread.

Adjari Khachapuri

Khachapuri has become so very much known in USSR that we somehow consider it traditional. And although we do know very little how to make authentic Georgian pies (with the recipe varying from house to house, village to village, region to region) if you judge from what you can get in mainstream places, well, at least we do appreciate this super tasty food immensely! In particular in my family khachapuri is something like a family recipe, beating pizza no doubt.

Adjari Khachapuri

The are hundreds of recipes for these pies, I have already gathered an entire collection on my blog. The recipe for the boat-like khachapuri coming from the Adjari region is this recipe. I guess for the sake of the dough being elastic and shape-able, you’d better not choose a no-yeast no-egg recipe for these pies. The recipe is fool-proof – and who knows, probably you will dare and bake them with an egg cracked in the middle of each pie!

Adjari Khachapuri

I also baked another batch of these pies on the next day, adding some whole wheat flour to the dough and cottage cheese (5% fat tvorog), kefir, dill, spring onions and Adygea salt (salt + pepper, coriander, garlic, herbs) and khmeli-suneli to the filling. It was even more chewy and rubbery than a pie without tvorog. And as long as you can get hold of good rubbery suluguni cheese – you will succeed!

Other variants of the celebrated Georgian cheese pie khachapuri:

Enjoy!

Adding the peach pie to the sweet recipes.

G.