Simple and sweet
If you have some sweet apples, simply slice them up, place them on a tray of two filo sheets. sprinkle over sultanas and roughly chopped walnuts, cinnamon.
Pop in the oven for around 30 mins. Then add vanilla sugar.
That’s it! Eat as is is or with Greek yoghurt and honey. A prava crna kafa might be necessary.
It’s a dreich Boxing Day. There was snow overnight and it still lies across the valley, now mixed with a thick fog as dusk makes its appearance a little later every day.
I’ve bunged one in the oven. A lazy pita laid out in a round tevsija which I bought in Belgrade in the 1980’s – it still serves me well.
Leek is not unusual as a main ingredient for pita and is known as prasa in Greece, often mixed with feta cheese.
I like the flavours of the Balkans – not too rich or heavy. Everything is lightly spiced or sugared, relying on the healthy taste of other man ingredients. Organic is best.
I lightly sauteed chopped leek in olive oil, adding Vegeta and white pepper, then some spinach leaves so they can wilt. Boiled and simmered thinly sliced new potatoes.
Lined the tevsija with olive oil and three strong sheets of filo.
Then combined the leeks and potatoes together, stirring gently. At this point you can add crumbled white cheese and/or prosciutto if it takes your fancy. Three eggs were cracked over the leek and potato mixture. Filo sheets folded over.
I placed tin foil over and bunged the dish in the oven. Around 30 to 40 mins on 180C will do . Take the foil off for last 10 mins.
Serve with roasted red long peppers and your favourite pickles.
Makes a nice change to soup, sandwiches, for lunch.
Looks messy, but it’s delish!
It was the right time of year to fetch a giant marrow. Mia would need her cart.
She dressed herself, put on her gloves, hat and scarf and trundled her cart down the cobbled road to Baka Rosa’s vegetable garden. There, lay many over-sized gourds and the best marrows in the land, all fed by warm rotting compost laid beneath them at the start of summer.
Baka Rosa wasn’t there today. She had already picked and harvested much of her homegrown produce. What was in the ground had to stay there over winter.
On the gate was a note. ‘Mia, to the left are your marrows, some apples, and a pumpkin.’
Mia turned into the garden and looked to her left. She surmised that she could fit everything in her cart. The apples were placed in a hessian bag so they wouldn’t roll off as she went carefully back up the hill.
She loaded her cart and thought how wonderful it would be to have a four-legged animal to pull it. Back up the cobbles she went, holding the long iron handle attached to the cart, all the way home.
She stopped next door first and dropped off the pumpkin and some apples at Baba Duna’s place, then in she went to her own home, with her grand prize – the giant marrow.
Mia carefully stacked the apples checking them one by one first, placing them gently, wrapped in soft paper, into a wide wicker basket in the pantry where it was cool. Their aroma was divine and would grow ever more so over coming weeks. She could eat one a day when the weather turned cold perhaps baking them whole with honey and walnuts.
She placed the giant marrow on the table. It landed with a thud as it kissed the smooth wooden surface.
She wondered how she was going to tackle the marrow alone. She wasn’t going to ask Baba to help as she had promised to make the pita herself for them all. It was going to be the first of the season.
To skin it and slice it was her first task.
Mia turned on the radio. She left the door slightly ajar should anyone wish to call by as they would be very welcome. She was thinking of her friends of course.
She grabbed the wooden step so she could hover high above the table, then took the large knife.
Chop, chop, chop.
Piece by piece Mia worked methodically to take the giant marrow apart.
She could feel her cheeks heating up as they grew rosy-red like the apples. She took a headscarf and tied it round her head at the back. Now she was a pirate, hacking away with her cutlass at the treasure before her.
Her apron, made by her very own small, clever hands, was suitably befitting of her outfit with a pattern in skull and crossbones.
On one chair she had placed her handmade animals so they could watch. They were good company.
After much huffing, puffing and shivering of timbers, the marrow was grated. Mia placed the marrow gratings into a sieve over a glass bowl, a heavy plate atop so the marrow water would seep out slowly into the bowl. She put a cotton cloth over and pushed it to one side. Now for the filo pastry.
Flour, water and oil were all that were necessary, plus more muscle power as she mixed them all together in a ceramic bowl with a large wooden spoon. Then out flopped the dough mixture onto a floured table top.
Uff said Mia as she kneaded the dough this way and that begging it to form into a smooth elastic, not-so-sticky soft white ball.
‘Not too much now,’ came a voice from the doorway.
Mia smiled at her friend and beckoned him in with a nod.
‘Is it stretching filo time,’ asked Hare.
Mia nodded again. Hare had appeared to help.
A tap at the door. Mia looked over and beckoned Young Deer in with her head.
What fine company she had at such an opportune moment.
There were already pieces of marrow and a bowl of water on the floor incase someone happened to drop by. Young Deer took a sip then gave Mia a head butt of appreciation and affection.
The dough was now smooth and elastic enough to commence turning it into filo pastry.
Mia took down the long thin rolling pin from a shelf, then spread flour over the wood surface and started to roll the dough with her pin as far as she could across the table.
Hare and Young Deer moved to opposite sides waiting til the moment they could help.
As Mia ran out of rolling steam it was time to gently start pulling at the white dough til it hung over the edge of the table. This had to be done carefully so as not to tear the ever- thinning expanding sheet of filo.
Hare took an edge between his teeth and dragged it towards him. Young Deer did the very same.
Mia used her fingers to tease the filo. They all worked round the table until the transparent dough was sufficiently stretched right across and over the edges.
‘So big!’ exclaimed Young Deer.
Mia splashed water over the filo then turned to pour away the liquid from the grated marrow. She then put in some crumbly white cheese made by Baba Duna, an egg from Goose, a large spoonful of cornmeal. Then mixed it along with the marrow.
After that she splattered the mixture with her wooden spoon over the filo sheet in random splodges. Hare and Young Deer giggled, jumping up to catch bits that flew through the air, missing the filo and landing in their mouths.
Now for the next step.
All three friends lined up down the long edge of the table, taking a hold of the filo.
‘One, two, three, flip! said Mia.
She repeated the command until they had rolled over the entire sheet and mixture. They were proud to have completed the task without any slips-ups.
Mia took out the large round enamel oven dish and proceeded to lay the rolled- up marrow pita in a circular fashion into the dish, taking it in both hands until complete, finishing off in the centre.
The oven was already warm.
Young Deer and Hare finished nibbling on the marrow skin when suddenly the door blew open, the wind pushing in dried leaved onto the kitchen floor.
‘Leave it be,’ said Mia. ‘I need to cool down after all that work.’
She turned to the stove and put on a kettle. Hare and Young Deer lapped up some water. Mia made herself a pot of rosehip tea, placing everything on a tray – the teapot, a glass, honey, a spoon, cardamom, star anise. Then turned to place the laden tray on the kitchen table where she would sit, sip and blether with her friends a while.
She gasped.
The round enamel dish was empty. Hare and Young Deer looked under the kitchen table and all over the floor, astonished. All three looked at each other agog. Then Mia rushed to the door.
‘Look! There!’ she shouted.
Across the cobbles, on the other side the marrow pita was slithering away like a snake, across leaves and grass, heading into the forest.
The three pita makers looked on in horror. All that work for nothing.
‘I’ll go fetch it right back, ‘declared Hare, feeling brave and indignant.
‘No, don’t, said Mia. ‘We don’t know what kind of magic possessed the pita.
As she uttered the word magic, a sprinkle of fairy dust covered her shoes. The wind disappeared into the forest.
Young Deer sniffed the air. ‘I smell something,’ she said.
Hare raised his nose, nodding.
‘It’s coming from the stove,’ said Mia, ‘And smells just like marrow pita.’
They stepped back inside over to the warm stove. Mia reached for her oven mitten, opening the main oven door. Inside was a risen, bubbling, browning pita.
She pulled it out and placed it atop the stove.
‘This one, ‘she declared, ‘did not escape. Let’s get Baba and Dida, we will have a marrow pita feast!’
And so they did!
Gabriel & Hare 