Greek feta cheese, fresh mint and crunchy fyllo pastry. This is another recipe inspired from my childhood and it's incredibly simple to make. Spiral, fyllo pastry, cheese pies (tyropites) are very popular in Greece. They are usually made with a mix of greek cheeses such as graviera, kefalotyri, kaseri or others. My grandma though always tends to make them with feta cheese and fresh mint and so today I decided to do the same.
Ingredients:
-1 pack fyllo pastry
-400g feta cheese
-75g melted butter
-fresh mint
-sesame seeds
-pepper
-oregano
To begin, in a large bowl, crumble up the blocks of feta cheese, sprinkle some pepper and dried oregano and mix well. Chop up some fresh mint and mix that in with the rest of the cheese mixture, (it is up to you to decide how strong you want the mint flavour but I tend to use quite a bit as it really adds a beautiful and unique flavour to the pie). Before I start rolling the cheese mixture in the fyllo, I like to add a tablespoon of melted butter in there, just to soften it up a little bit.
Once you've done that you are ready to start filling your pastry. Take one sheet of fyllo, drizzle some melted butter all over it (this will help it stick) and then add some of the mixture (1 1/2 tbsp) across the edge of the fyllo, horizontally. This is when the rolling process comes in. Bring the edges over the cheese and gently roll inwards and away from you. Roll until you've reached the end and repeat this process until you've either run out of mixture or pastry sheets.
In a circular pan, place the first piece of fyllo with the filling in the centre and twist it around itself, creating a spiral effect. Continue this process, every time taking the next piece of fyllo and wrapping it around the previous. To finish it off, pour the rest of the melted butter all over your spiral pie. Splash a little of water as well, before sprinkling the sesame seeds on top. This way the seeds will stick on the pastry properly.
Bake your pie in a preheated oven, at 180° for 35-40mins or until your pastry has a golden brown colour. Make sure you place your tray in the centre of the oven so that the fyllo becomes very crispy after it has cooled down.
