MEDesque: Everyday Recipes with Mediterranean Roots
By Georgina Hayden
Not Too Tricky
serves 4
About the recipe
You are covering three bases here: feta, filo and honey. It’s an easily achievable version of a Mediterranean theme, the love child of an Italian-Greek-Middle Eastern delicacy which all share that lovely salty-sweet combination. Seadas, from Sardinia, is a sweet deep-fried pecorino cheese ravioli; Greek saganaki is fried cheese drizzled with honey; knafeh is their Middle Eastern cousin of syrup-soaked kataifi pastry layered over cheese. Truth be told, these can be eaten at any time of day, but are lovely at breakfast. Thyme and Aleppo pepper, or chilli, are both definitely needed here as counterpoints, so don’t leave them out.
Recipe From
Ingredients
100g feta (vegetarian, if needed)
40g pecorino (vegetarian, if needed)
½ unwaxed lemon
100g ready-grated mozzarella (vegetarian, if needed)
Leaves and spriglets from a few thyme sprigs
30g shelled unsalted pistachios
8 regular sheets of filo (or 4 larger sheets)
Olive oil
2 tablespoons honey
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or a pinch of chilli flakes, to serve (optional)
Method
- In a mixing bowl, break up the feta with a fork until it is finely crumbled. Finely grate in the pecorino and lemon zest. Add the grated mozzarella and most of the thyme leaves. Mix everything together and set aside. Finely chop the pistachios.
- When you are ready to make the triangles, get the filo out of the fridge. Lay a sheet out in front of you, short side closest to you, and brush with olive oil, then lay a second sheet on top (or, if using the larger sheets, brush 1 with oil and fold it in half). Spoon one-quarter of the cheese mixture over the bottom corner of the filo, leaving a gap around the edge, then fold that corner over into a triangle shape. Repeat, folding the triangle away from you up the filo sheet, tucking in the edges as you go, until you have a sealed folded parcel. Repeat with the remaining filo and cheese filling. When you have made all the triangles, set a large frying pan over a medium heat and pour in enough olive oil to just cover the base. Fry the parcels for 2–3 minutes on each side, in batches if need be so as not to crowd the pan, until golden all over. Remove from the pan on to a plate lined with kitchen paper to blot off excess oil, then transfer to a serving plate.
- Drizzle each triangle with ½ tablespoon honey and sprinkle with a good pinch of seasoning, some of the chopped pistachios and a few thyme leaves. I love a pinch of Aleppo pepper too; it adds a lovely heat. Serve straight away
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