'cheese triangles'
Mar. 19th, 2010 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
domtheknight in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
omnomnomThis is an old family recipe (but I think it's Greek, and my family is majority German, so... I am not sure where we got it; maybe from when my grandmother spent time in Greece). It takes awhile to do, so we typically did it for holiday celebrations, especially if there were then some extra helpers in the kitchen.
What you need:
1 lb filo dough
1 lb cottage cheese (preferably small curd if you have a choice, but actually I'm not sure I typically see large curd in the store)
1/2 lb feta cheese (you can be fancy and grate it yourself, but I'm lazy and get the kind already broken up)
4 eggs
1 lb butter (but maybe not all of it; I'd melt it a stick at a time and see how much you're using)
Plus, you need a pastry brush for the butter and a big flat surface (like a giant cutting board, or an empty clean counter).
What you do:
Melt the butter.
Mix up the eggs and cheese. It looks kind of gross. Don't worry!
Cut the filo into strips (I typically do four per sheet; you could make them smaller if you want to, for more bite-size pieces).
Brush melted butter on the filo.
Spoon out around a tablespoon of the egg-cheese stuff.
Fold the strip of filo into a triangle.
Brush the top of the triangle with melted butter.
Bake for 20 minutes at 350 (give or take depending on the oven) - they should be golden brown on top, and if you went on the generous side for filling, it might have bled out a bit.
Okay, some added tips -
If you've never worked with filo before, it typically comes frozen around here. You have to unfreeze it. I like to buy it days in advance and let it thaw slowly in the fridge. If the dough dries out, you will have a very hard time using it.
You can either use the filo in whole sheets, so you would pull off a sheet at a time, and cut it on the board/counter and spread the butter, or you could cut the filo while it was still rolled up and then just pull out one cut part at a time. I generally prefer that method, because it's easier to pull the filo pieces off one at a time if they're smaller.
Either way you do it, you should keep the rest of the filo packaged up and in the fridge while you're working on part of it. It dries out very quickly. If you've cut it at the beginning, you can wrap up the extra hunks and stick them back in the fridge. If you're using it all at once, my mother typically covers it with plastic wrap and a wet (with cold water) dishcloth - the cloth shouldn't touch any of the dough, but should keep it cool and damp by association.
It is a smart idea to try to process each part of filo as quickly as possible. I recommend getting a kitchen helper you trust to spread the butter as you pull off the filo. My mother did not trust me to do this when I was little. I guess she thought I would be too rough and break the dough while I was spreading (and I did have a reputation of throwing sprinkles all over the kitchen instead of sprinkling them on the cookies).
For butter, you want the butter to be really melted, so if you pull it off the stove and it starts congealing, put it back on for more heat.
In terms of folding into triangles, if you aren't sure what that is, it's the same process as folding a flag (if you're an American, anyway). It's also the same fold as for sending notes when you're a teenage girl, or for making the paper football for tabletop football games.
Picture of partially-done fold:
What you need:
1 lb filo dough
1 lb cottage cheese (preferably small curd if you have a choice, but actually I'm not sure I typically see large curd in the store)
1/2 lb feta cheese (you can be fancy and grate it yourself, but I'm lazy and get the kind already broken up)
4 eggs
1 lb butter (but maybe not all of it; I'd melt it a stick at a time and see how much you're using)
Plus, you need a pastry brush for the butter and a big flat surface (like a giant cutting board, or an empty clean counter).
What you do:
Melt the butter.
Mix up the eggs and cheese. It looks kind of gross. Don't worry!
Cut the filo into strips (I typically do four per sheet; you could make them smaller if you want to, for more bite-size pieces).
Brush melted butter on the filo.
Spoon out around a tablespoon of the egg-cheese stuff.
Fold the strip of filo into a triangle.
Brush the top of the triangle with melted butter.
Bake for 20 minutes at 350 (give or take depending on the oven) - they should be golden brown on top, and if you went on the generous side for filling, it might have bled out a bit.
Okay, some added tips -
If you've never worked with filo before, it typically comes frozen around here. You have to unfreeze it. I like to buy it days in advance and let it thaw slowly in the fridge. If the dough dries out, you will have a very hard time using it.
You can either use the filo in whole sheets, so you would pull off a sheet at a time, and cut it on the board/counter and spread the butter, or you could cut the filo while it was still rolled up and then just pull out one cut part at a time. I generally prefer that method, because it's easier to pull the filo pieces off one at a time if they're smaller.
Either way you do it, you should keep the rest of the filo packaged up and in the fridge while you're working on part of it. It dries out very quickly. If you've cut it at the beginning, you can wrap up the extra hunks and stick them back in the fridge. If you're using it all at once, my mother typically covers it with plastic wrap and a wet (with cold water) dishcloth - the cloth shouldn't touch any of the dough, but should keep it cool and damp by association.
It is a smart idea to try to process each part of filo as quickly as possible. I recommend getting a kitchen helper you trust to spread the butter as you pull off the filo. My mother did not trust me to do this when I was little. I guess she thought I would be too rough and break the dough while I was spreading (and I did have a reputation of throwing sprinkles all over the kitchen instead of sprinkling them on the cookies).
For butter, you want the butter to be really melted, so if you pull it off the stove and it starts congealing, put it back on for more heat.
In terms of folding into triangles, if you aren't sure what that is, it's the same process as folding a flag (if you're an American, anyway). It's also the same fold as for sending notes when you're a teenage girl, or for making the paper football for tabletop football games.
Picture of partially-done fold: