Two bags full

My brief annual spells in Athens (one weekend in winter, assisting a local sports club to manage their team) take me to the same places. Unfortunately, I don't see much of the city of Athens at all, which is a shame, because last weekend was such a sunny one, and Athens would have been in her best form under all that sunshine. If I look at things from the outside, then the sky, the buildings, the people, the roads, the metro... they will look much like they looked the last time I was there. They don't change much at all. To see what is different, you need to 'read between the lines' in order to comprehend the fuller story.

These two bags full of Greek pastries like tiropita, tsoureki, stafidopsomo, and other delicious-looking bread/filo-based treats will look very tempting to most people.

But the pastries were stale - I could tell just by looking at them, as they remained so rigid in that flexible plastic bag. They were badly packaged and some were broken, before they had even been placed in the bag. If they had been bought, they would have all been placed carefully into appropriately sized bags with the bakery's logo - more than two, that's for sure - with a paper napkin wrapped around each one, and a few other napkins placed in the bag.

The man carrying the bags was standing in front of me on the ilektriko*. He had hopped in at one stop, and hopped off the next one, which gave me a very short period of time to observe him. His clothes were dirty, and they smelled. No doubt, he was picking up some food from a place where he knew he would find it. I don't think he would be eating it all himself - he was really quite slim. Because the bags were so full, I presume that he had not eaten any of the contents yet. He was probably taking the bags to some place where there would be others to share it with, people in the same position as himself.

I suppose it's a fair comment to make if I say that he would not be going hungry today. But I can't guarantee that he (or the company that he keeps) is not homeless.

*ilektriko - the oldest metro line in Athens, running south-north from the port of Pireas to Kiffissia.

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Steak and kidney-less pie

One of our more memorable meals in London was taken on New Year's Eve at the Battersea Pie Station in Covent Garden. We had ended up there after attempting a walk along the Thames, starting from Cannon St. At Blackfriars, we were stopped by the crowd and safety control units who were policing the area and keeping people away from the riverside, due to the fireworks event that was schedule to take place later in the evening. Our detour away from the riverside took us through some very London sites of great historical interest. It almost felt Dickensian.

Poultry obviously takes its name from its former association with the chicken trade.

We were intrigued by what looked like a private function with a focus on seafood...

... and highly unamused by this vile-sounding Christmas food special! (It has been described as: "An overwhelmingly negative reaction, ranging from 'aggressively disgusting' to 'one of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth'. It gets points for effort, attempting to combine virtually every festive ingredient, but it tastes like someone has pushed their Christmas leftovers into a blender and served them with rice.")

New Year's Eve is a very quiet day for London business people, but even when London is supposedly sleeping...

... it keeps changing looks, as it prepares for various events, and this time, the portaloos made it look like it would be welcoming the New Year with a heavy bout of drinking.

We eventually needed to use a bathroom ourselves, so I popped into a Pret-a-Manger and bought some Christmas mince pies which I'd really wanted to try while in London.

When I asked for the bathroom facilities, believe it or not, this place did NOT have toilets! So we held off, in the hope that we would eventually find a place to take a leak legally.

At The Strand, the former Aldwych tube station, often used as a film location, looked ghostly silent. This street was cut off to strollers due to the fireworks event.

Somerset House was looking very festive with its ice rink (where we found some free bathroom facilities).

I had a quick browse through the ridiculously overpriced Fortnum and Masons shop (it was sponsoring the ice rink) - 50 pounds for a set of 6 Christmas crackers, did I read that right?!

A short stroll away, we found ourselves at Covent Garden. Cold weather makes you feel hungry all the time. I chose the Battersea Pie Station, in the hope that I would find some steak and kidney pie (and Cornish pasty - another of my favorite pies in New Zealand). We weren't disappointed. My family lets me do the ordering most places when in London, because they know I know the food well enough. My early life in colonial New Zealand stopped abruptly just when New Zealand's food tastes became more international, so I still have fond memories of New Zealand old-fashioned comfort food, which were invariably British-based.

Chicken and mushroom pie, steak and kidney pie, and Cornish pasty - ~20 pounds, with a bottle of beer and a cup of tea.

Back home, when I decided to make a steak kidney pie myself, I found it near impossible to find kidneys! In Greece, the sale of beef and chicken kidneys has been banned since the mad cow furore - which started in the UK; yet, they aren't banned there! Although lamb's kidneys are still available for purchase here, when I tried to track some down, I found that they are never severed from the actual animal, so you have to buy the part of the animal that they are connected to. This is done for transparency reasons: in this way, the butcher is showing you that the animal was healthy - if the kidney is missing, the buyer may wonder whether the animal was sick. 

I used this very easy-to-follow recipe as the basis of my beef stew and pastry. The beef stew was cooked last night, the pastry was made this morning, and we had the pie for lunch with some leek and potato soup. 

To replace the umami taste of the kidneys, I bought a packet containing two slices of kavurma, adding some mushrooms and soya sauce (I was out of Worcestershire sauce) to my beef stew. I think the taste was successful, and the whole family enjoyed the pie, which will be made again eventually, because I froze half the stew. Slow-cooked food takes a long time to cook, so why not make a double batch and save your time later?

Bonus photo: A chat with the butcher where I bought the beef also revealed another mysterious EU meat regulation, which forbids lamb's spleen from being sold - but cow's spleen is permissible!

At any rate, if you have close relations with someone who raises their own meat, you can procure everything. I had lamb's spleen in sheep's intestine last week at an inner-city cafe bar, where the landlord-owner-cook prepares everything freshly and to order.

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Perek (Περέκ)

I recently came across a recipe that uses some kind of pre-cooked filo pastry, called perek. Perek is a kind of filo pastry made only from flour and water. Home-made perek can be stored for up to a year. As I make all my own filo pastry needs myself, I thought it would be a nice idea to have some filo pastry ready to use when I need it, without having to worry about when I would find the time to make the dough and roll it out.

Kiria Martha's perek is famous in Thessaloniki. Her son continues to make them in the family taverna. Note the hot plate an the left, sitting on coals in the fireplace.

The origins of perek are mired in the diaspora Greeks of the Pontus region. A friend from Northern Greece saw my perek when I presented them on my facebook page, and she told me a little story: She recalls that her grandmother was able to cook a pita very quickly, without much preparation, and she always wondered where her grandmother found the filo pastry to do this, especially since she too made all her own needs, and never bought it. So a kind of perek was and is still being made by Greeks within and outside the borders of the country.

I really enjoyed making perek for the first time, using this recipe. It looks a little like crispbread, and can also be used as chips for a dip. The perek is moistened before use when using it as filo pastry, a bit like spring roll wrappers. I decided to use my regular spanakopita filling to use my perek. With the following recipe, I got 10 rounds as big as a medium-sized frying pan.

You need:
600g flour (I used high quality Greek LIMNOS flour - this yellowish flour has a grainy texture; it's a joy to work with)
1/2 cup (approximately) of water
a teaspoon of salt

Place the water in a bowl and mix in the salt. Add a cup of flour and mix it in till well blended with a wooden spoon. This is the way I usually make filo pastry, not being a great fan of exact measurements of flour and water, which are always subject to temperature differences and flour quality. Now add another cup of flour and mix it in well. Keep adding flour until you can no longer mix it with a spoon. Start kneading the dough in the bowl, adding just enough flour to stop it from being sticky. Tip the dough onto a flat surface and knead it till it is soft and pliable. Set aside for an hour or two in a bowl, covered with a cotton cloth.

Divide the dough into 50-60g balls. Roll out each ball into a round, with the help of a rolling pin. Sprinkle with flour as you pile up the circles one on top of the other, to prevent them from sticking to each other.

Tradtionally, the perek are cooked on a very hot iron plate, like a griddle, in the fireplace. I cooked each one on both sides in a frying pan over a very hot flame. They felt soft when they came out of the fire, but when I wanted to use them (later in the afternoon), they were very crisp and dry.

Perek filo can be used in various ways (as in the original link I first noticed, and in Kiria Martha's pies in the taverna - see first photo for links). I made a spanakopita filling and chose to use the perek as a kind of wrap. Each perek was dampened in water to soften it, and wrapped around 3 tablespoons of filling. The pieces were placed in a pie dish and brushed liberally with olive oil. They were then baked in the oven till the pastry became crispy.

Next time I make perek, I will use the taverna photos as a guide to novel ideas for their use.

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Broccolopita (Μπροκολόπιτα)

Upon hearing the word 'pita', a Greek will immediately put a picture in their mind of filo pastry and some kind of cheese-based filling, with or without greens, or possibly containing grated squash. Broccoli won't commonly be one of the filling ingredients, but since I have run out of spinach and squash for the time being, and there is a lot of broccoli at the moment and not much else growing in the garden, I thought I'd try making a broccoli pie.

My first attempt picked up on a Betty Crocker recipe, which included chicken and was self-crusting. It was a very tasty pie, but nothing like a filo-pastry pita filled that I usually make. The pie was a self-crusting one, so it felt rather like eating a slice of bread rather than a pie (you could practically butter the slices).

Broccoli is not really so tasty on its own - it feels like you are eating grassy water. It needs fat, like oil or butter. If you add some egg and cheese to it, you get a more delicious taste. By adding some onion to this basic mixture, you get something that smells and tastes like a leek pie: prasopita (leek pie) is a very popular kind of Greek pita. Using this idea, I made a broccoli pita, in the same way that I make spanakopita: layers of pastry are spread with a thick filling dotted over the pastry sheet, then covered by more pastry, with another layer of filling, and finally topped with more pastry.

The pie was cooked in the oven compartment of our wood-fire heater, which made the pie even more tasty, as the pastry was well browned, both the top and the bottom. This is important because soggy pastry ruins pies. To ensure that the filling wasn't too moist (broccoli contains a lot of water), I added a small amount of dried breadcrumbs, just to ensure that any excess liquid would be absorbed. The broccoli was cooked for 5 minutes in boiling water, then drained and cut up into small pieces, which were mixed with some ricotta cheese (a novel imported product in Cretan supermarkets, which I had bought to try, as I have never had ricotta before - I usually use the local Cretan mizithra), some finely chopped onion, an egg, salt and pepper. This pie was made with some store-bought filo pastry which I wanted to use up, as it was showing signs of cracking due to dryness (you can see this in the photo). I normally make my own - it is so much tastier and has better texture.

I had a small bowlful of filling left over from the pie making session, so the next day, I made a rough dough and shaped it into seamless pies, similar to what is known as sfakiani pita in Crete. A ball of dough is rolled out thickly and a ball of filling is placed inside it. The dough is stretched to cover the filling, like a ball, and it is sealed on the top, rather like a pouch. This ball is pressed down lightly so that it doesn't break, and is rolled out into a flat pie which looks like a thick pancake. These flat pies are then pan-fried on each side in a shallow frying pan, in a little olive oil, until the pastry is golden-brown.

I regret not adding some parsely or mint to the filling - when I'm experimenting, I tend to use the bare basic ingredients and forget to add the touch of spice that often turns a basic meal into a taste experience. But each pita was also very good in its own way; the pastry pie was excellent and very similar to my regular pita recipes (it was creamier, and the pan-fried pies were also a success, especially when accompanied by a little sriracha sauce to add a little more flavour.

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Spanakopita (Σπανακόπιτα)

Making a Greek pita is, for me, a mindless task. Rolling out pastry is not a mental chore, it's a physical one. So while I'm rolling out my pastry, I have much time to think and organise my thoughts. To make the task more challenging for me, I try to invent a new design to score the pastry.

Apart from a design I learnt from a youtube video...

and the classic square-shaped pieces...

I also do one of my own designs, which I call 'marigold':


Cooking can sometimes be mundane, but you can make it more exciting in your own way.  However I decide to score the pastry, I don't worry about it breaking - it still sits nicely on the top of the pie, and it was going to break anyway once it is served. 

I make a pita every week in the winter. This week's pita contained spinach and soft white cheese. It was made in a square-shaped baking vessel - for a change. I always make layered pastry pies - so my filling is never one layer - it's usually 2-3 layers, with pastry in between. Square pies are easier to deal with when you use store-bought pastry.

You need: a
500-600g finely cut spinach (I used spinach frozen from last spring to make the pita in the photo)
1 large onion, finely chopped
2-3 sprigs of finely minced fresh mint (or a teaspoon of dried mint)
500g Cretan mizithra or crumbled feta (I use mizithra because it's cheaper and possibly tastier)
1 egg
3-4 tablespoons of breadcrumbs (to ensure that any moisture in the filling is soaked up and won't make the pastry soggy)
salt and pepper (don't use too much salt if you use feta cheese)
10 sheets of filo pastry (I make my own filo pastry, which is a little thicker, therefore I use fewer sheets, about 8)
olive oil for brushing over the pastry

Thaw your pastry first (if you are using store-bought pastry). Mix all the filling ingredients together. (If you are making your own pastry, you should have the filling ingredients ready first. Then roll out one sheet at a time and use it immediately.) Turn on your oven to pre-heat to 200C.
Layer 1: Grease the bottom of a baking vessel (pyrex or tin). Place one sheet of pastry on it. (This piece of pastry should hang slightly over the sides of the baking vessel so that it will seal the pie at the end. In my photo, you will see that I didn't do this perfectly, but I use my own home-made filo pastry which is sturdier than store-bought pastry.) Grease the pastry and lay another sheet over it (do this twice). Dot a third of the filling evenly over the pastry. 
Layer 2: Lay another sheet of pastry over the filling. Press it down to make the filling spread evenly below the pastry. Grease the pastry and lay another sheet over it. Dot another third of the filling over the pastry. 
Layer 3: Repeat the instructions for Layer 2. Grease the pastry and lay another sheet over it (do this twice). Brush the final layer of pastry with olive oil, then turn the pastry hanging over the sides of the baking vessel over the top layer of the pie. Brush those with olive oil too. Then score the pastry with a knife, making cuts right down to the bottom of the baking tray, to make the cuts you want when you finally serve the pie.

You can see each layer of filling and the pastry layers.

Place the pie on the lowest shelf of your oven. Turn on the 'fan' function, which circulates the air all around oven. Turn down the temperature to 180C. Cook the pie for 40-50 minutes, depending on how golden you want the pastry. The fan function is important, so that you do not get soggy pastry at the bottom of the pie. If you do not have a fan function in your oven, cook it at 200C for at least an hour. Some ovens also have a function that allows them to cook using only the bottom heating elements. You can use this at high heat for 10 minutes or so, at the end of baking time. Allow the pie to cool for 10 minutes outside the oven before serving - you will need to cut again wth the knife to ensure that each piece comes out separately.

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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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Lahmacun (Λαχματζούν)

To feed a family frugally with healthy frugal home cooking, you need to keep them excited and surprised by what they see coming out of the oven or the pot. The food has to look enticing and different - it may be made with the same ingredients, but it must look enticing and different.

I had some leftover pizza pastry from our last pizza making session a couple of nights ago where we'd made pizza and peinirli (boat-shaped baked sandwiches), but now it's time to get back to tackling the garden spinach before it starts to warm up. I made some spanakopita filling which I turned into vegetarian peinirli.

The main meal for the next day was makaronada (Greek-style spaghetti bolognaise). This gave me an idea for another pizza-based meal: Turkish lahmacun, the Middle Eastern equivalent of pizza. The chef at MAICh makes this on a rotating basis for the staff and student lunch, with both a vegetarian and meat version offered for students to choose.

Lahmacun is usually made with an egg-based pastry topped with a spicy mince sauce. Our Middle eastern students often roll it up a bit like souvlaki after having stuffed it with some salad and yoghurt sauce. So it's a very versatile kind of pie. I spread some of my home-made tomato sauce on teh pastry before spreading the mince sauce. The topping sticks to the pastry and does not break or roll off the pastry.

The spanalopita peinirli and lahmacun were all cooked together. The lahmacun was brushed with olive oil while the peinirli got an egg wash, a bit like a spanakopita, topped with some seasame seed. To check if they have been cooked, I simply turned the pastry over to see if the bottom of the pies had browned. They don't need a long cooking time - about 25 minutes in a hot oven.

We are eating delicious food made with similar ingredients on a daily basis, but no one seems to notice when you use the same ingredients in a unique way every time.

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Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Kalitsounia

Prices are in euro (valid in Hania). All ingredients are Greek or locally sourced; those marked with * are considered frugal here because they are cheap and/or people have their own supplies.  

Summer's bountiful harvests last you through the winter, but when spring comes, you find your coffers are close to empty empty. Spring is a funny time of year for fresh produce: there's not much around, except for leafy greens and herbs, which makes it a good time to make kalitsounia. It's much cheaper, if somewhat time-consuming, to make your own kalitsounia from scratch, and spring is the best time to make them, because of the abundance of wild aromatic greens found all over the countryside at this time of year.

Kalitsounia, little pies filled with cheese and/or greens, are a Cretan delicacy, found in different forms and with a variety of fillings throughout the island, but they are also found in other Greek islands, notably those where there was a heavy Venetian influence. I recall a beautiful 3-day holiday spent in Kithira last year at this time, where kalitsounia were also being served in the taverna we frequented every night.

Kalitsounia cooked in the wood-fired oven

These little pies are about the size of your hand, made with not-so-thick, not-so-thin filo pastry. My mother used to make them in New Zealand for all our feasts and parties, and I now make them in regular batches, freezing them too, because it's not easy to make them on a regular basis. In all honesty, they are a little fiddly to make, because of the pastry, but you can buy this if you can't be bothered rolling out your own; you can also buy ready-to-cook kalitsounia from the supermarket and ready-to-eat kalitsounia from snack bars, but these options are not at all very frugal these days.

Making kalitsounia can be a random and somewhat spontaneous activity. It often involves using whatever ingredients you have at hand, which is why I can't give exact ingredients. Unlike with a pie, where you can roll out the pastry as thickly as you want, and you can fill it as much as you like, with kalitsounia you may find that you end up with extra pastry or extra filling left over; I prefer the former, because I don't like to make the latter, and I can always find something to fill extra pastry with.

Baked kalitsounia

Fried kalitsounia

Kalitsounia can be fried or baked. It all depends on personal preference. To cook them as cheaply as possible, I bake them in a wood-fired oven in the winter, or I fry them (which means not heating up the oven and using too much power) in warmer weather. Kalitsounia are a perfect snack meal. These little pasties form my family's morning, afternoon and/or evening snacks, and I often put them in the kids' lunch boxes for their school meals.

To make kalitsounia, you need:
some pastry (half a kilo of flour makes about 20 medium-sized kalitsounia: ~50 cents)
some fresh leafy greens (spinach, sorrel, swiss chard, even cabbage and leeks - including the green tops - will do: half a kilo of greens is enough for pastry made with half a kilo of flour - ~50 cents)
some aromatic herbs*
an onion*
a little bit of semolina* (for half a kilo of flour, about 3-4 tablespoons will be enough)
salt and pepper
some mizithra or other soft creamy cheese (~€1 - optional: kalitsounia can be vegan, and therefore even more frugal)
some olive oil* (about 4-5 tablespoons)
an egg for brushing over the pastry* (only if you bake them)

I don't use much bench space when rolling out pastry - that way, I make less mess, too.

Wash your greens, and dry them as much as you can (this is important). Chop them finely and mix them together, with the onion and seasonings. Heat the oil in a small pan and add the greens mixture. Cook the greens until they wilt (about 5 minutes). Set aside, and allow the greens to cool. Drain off any excess liquid. Mix in the semolina (and the cheese, if you are using any).

Make some pastry. Roll it out not too thinly, and not too thickly. Using a small saucer as a guide, cut it in rounds (if frying) or squares (for either frying or baking). Place a tablespoon of filling on one half of the round pastry (or in the middle of the square) and fold it up over the sides, sealing the pastry with some water.

To stop the pastry from sticking, I use some plastic sheeting in between the rounds.

If you are baking them, place them on a well-oiled baking tray, and brush them with beaten egg. Bake for 30 minutes in a moderate oven, preferably on the lowest rack. If you are frying them, heat some olive oil in a frying pan, and fry them until the pastry is cooked, turning once to cook both sides.

This is a wholly Cretan delicacy, and one that people never ever tire of eating.

You will get about 20 kalitsounia using half a kilo of flour - 20 vegan kalitsounia cost less than €2; 20 vegetarian kalitsounia cost about €3. 

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