Tyropitakia – feta and manouri cheese pies
Stuffed with chopped olives, feta cheese and manouri (a Greek cheese made from the whey leftover when making feta), these little Greek pies are the perfect snack to serve with drinks. Keep them uncooked in the freezer, ready to bake when guests come over.
This recipe is taken from Under The Olive Tree: Recipes From My Greek Kitchen by Irini Tzortzoglou (Headline, £25). Photography by David Loftus.
Ingredients
Filling
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 250g of feta
- 150g of manouri cheese
- 1 handful of Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
- 1 pinch of grated nutmeg
- 1 pinch of black pepper
- 1 pinch of thyme leaves
Pastry
- 250g of Greek yoghurt
- 125ml of extra virgin olive oil
- 350g of plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 1 pinch of caster sugar
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk , for brushing
- sesame seeds , for sprinkling
Method
1
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4
2
Place all the ingredients for the filling in a bowl and mix well. You can add or substitute ingredients you love, such as sun-dried tomatoes, black garlic, ham, spinach, or make a few pies with each filling, sprinkling them with poppy seeds, black sesame seeds, crushed almonds, etc. to differentiate between them
3
For the pastry, put all the ingredients except the egg yolk and sesame seeds into a bowl and mix to form a dough. It should have a velvety feel. Sprinkle some flour on a clean surface and roll out the dough fairly thinly (about 3mm-thick). Cut out 10cm circles, place a teaspoon of filling on one half of each, and brush all round the edge with the beaten egg yolk. Turn the other half of the pastry over the filling to create half-moon shapes. Press the edge to close, or use a dumpling press mould to get uniform-looking pies. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake for approximately 30 minutes, until deep golden in colour
4
Best served hot but can also be eaten at room temperature
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Tyropitakia – feta and manouri cheese pies
