Tiropitakia

Thank you to my greek cooking instructors Jim and Barbara Pappas for the original recipe, you should really go check out one of their classes if you live in Winnipeg.

Tiropitakia are greek phyllo wrapped cheese pastries that make for a quick and easy appetizer. While they're a bit fiddly, they aren't something you see too often at a party. The usual recipe is pretty much just the cheese but I usually add a few extra ingredients to broaden the flavour a bit. What you put in them is of course up to you. These are of course closely related to other "pitas" such as spanakopita/spanakopitakia.

Note: Please excuse the deplorable kitchen, this is what I've been stuck in for 8 months and I'm finally leaving in two weeks.

Yield

Yield depends on how you fold them, one recipe produces 3-4 dozen party sized ones for me usually.

Ingredients

• 2 Cups of good Feta Cheese (crumbled)
• 1 Cup of Dry Cottage cheese or Kefalotiri (can be replaced by more Feta, I can never find Kefalotiri that isn't crazy overpriced)
• 3 Eggs
• Fresh Pepper to taste

• Phyllo pastry (try to get a box that looks fairly new, this box was incredibly dry and a pain in the ass to work with. Let it thaw in the fridge a few hours before trying to work with it.)
• Some melted butter and a pastry brush.

Optional:

• 3 cloves of garlic (minced)
• Green Onion (chopped)
• Oregano
• Rosemary

Method

• Note that the folding method is the same for all these greek triangles and only the filling differs. I'll be putting up recipes for the other 4 fillings I've have soon.

Filling

• If you're using a mixing bowl, crumble the cheeses together with a fork and mix them. Be sure to drain the feta first if it's brine packed or your mixture will be too wet and too salty. Here I'm using a food processor because my back is killing me and I simply don't want to be standing long.

• Add all the ingredients and mix thoroughly, if the mixture isn't binding too well (every brand of feta has a pretty different texture it seems) feel free to add another egg to bind it more. Your mixure should be a little thicker than this as this feta turned out to be super creamy and wet.

Folding

• Preheat oven to 325F

• Give yourself lots of room to work with on a pastry sheet or the like. I just sold my kitchen table yesterday so I'm stuck on the counter for these, god I hate this kitchen.

• While working with phyllo, take one sheet to work with long side facing you and gently lay a slightly moistened cloth over the rest of the pastry to keep it from drying out.

• Using a knife slice your phyllo sheet into equal sections. For appetizer/snack sized tiros 6 equal sections work best. If you want to make meal sized ones, I suggest placing down a double or triple layer of phyllo depending on thickness and just halving the sheets.(that much filling will leak otherwise)

• Taking your strip of phyllo, brush a little bit of melted butter over the edges then place a dollop of filling (not too much) and begin the folding process.

• Taking one bottom corner, fold it to create a triangle like so.

• Then fold upwards to square off the end again, before taking the other bottom corner and folding it to create a triangle again.

• Keep folding until you've used the whole strip then put aside.

• Repeat until filling or phyllo runs out.

• Gently brush all finished triangles with a bit of butter.

• Bake at 325 for 20 minutes until golden brown. (watch carefully as they burn and dry out easily)

Serving

These can be served straight from the oven or made the night before and reheated later.

Serve as a party snack or as an appetizer before a feast of Moussaka or Souvlaki and Greek Lemon Potatoes