Have you ever thought of ‘why’? I’m sure you use it lots of times in your day and especially for the things happening around you coming from others; ‘Why did he/she do that?’, ‘Why did he/she talk to me that way?’, ‘Why did he/she decided to leave?’.. But I don’t mean this ‘why’. I talk about your ‘why’. This one related to very basic actions or decisions in your life. ‘Why do I want to get married or got married?’, ‘Why am I doing the job I’m doing?’, ‘Why don’t I have the relationship I wanted with my friends?’, ‘Why didn’t I try to follow my dream?’. Watch out when you give a reply to yourself. Don’t be scared to admit your mistakes or to even to admit that you had no idea why you did some things in your life. Once you are honest, you will see that all ‘external whys’ will disappear, you will have a better idea of where are you standing and what do you want. And when you start acting to the direction that you consciously want to go, all things will fall in to place. The leek pie (and especially the cooking part of it) is a great support to all introspection you might want to do!

the recipe

For the filo/phyllo dough you use the ingredients as mentioned in the ‘Kihi’ traditional cheese pie:

• 200gr. lukewarm water
• 650gr. flour
• 1tbsp. olive oil
• 1tbsp. vinegar
• 1/2tsp. salt
• 1/2tsp. sugar
• butter for spreading in the filo pieces you’ll make

For the filling

• 1/2 kilo leek
• 1 onion
• 4 tbsp. olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• 3 onion springs
• 250gr. feta cheese
• 1 egg
• some olive oil to sprinkle on the phyllos

directions

For the filo

• Put in a big bowl the water, oil, vinegar, salt, sugar and slightly mix with your hand.
• Add little by little the flour and knead with your hands until you get a soft dough that doesn’t stick to your hands. You might need some extra flour for that. It all depends on the quality of your flour (strong/medium/soft).
• When the dough is ready, let it rest for an hour in warm environment.
• After that, you make 6 balls out of it.
• Every 3 dough balls will give you in the end one ‘filo’.
• How is this going to happen? Well, you squeeze with your hand every ball so that you get a small round thick filo with a diameter of 15cm. You spread some butter on this and put on top another squeezed ball. You put some butter also on the 2nd small thick filo and then you place a 3rd one on top of the other two. You place this triplet in a big flat plate and then straight to the fridge! You follow the same procedure for the rest of the 3 balls. In the end you will have 2 dough triplets. Let them rest and freeze in your fridge for 20′.

For the filling

• Chop the leek, spring onion and spring onion and place them on a kitchen towel.
• Squeeze them in the towel so that you get out of them as many liquids as possible
• Move all chopped greens in a big bowl, add the olive oil, salt, pepper and if you want the egg and feta cheese. If you choose to use the feta cheese you should use less or even no salt at all. Mix all of them well.

Coming together..

• Preheat your oven at 200 degrees C and grease a 30cm baking pan.
• Take a dough triplet of the fridge, sprinkle some flour on your clean table and using a thin wooden rolling pin start spreading the triplet from the inner to the outer part. This ‘filo’ should be a but bigger than your pan. You will use it as the base of the pie and outer parts of it need to finally turn in the inner part of the pie to cover it. After you place it in the pan sprinkle with some olive oil.
• Take the other dough triplet and follow the same procedure. When ready let it stay on your table.
• Lay the greens filling on top of the filo you placed in the pan and spread well.
• Use the second filo you made and cover the pie. Let this filo fall spontaneously on the top of the filling so that those dough ‘waves’ as formed. Then turn the outer parts of the base filo on top of the upper filo and close the pie.
• Cut the pie in pieces, not really thoroughly. Sprinkle some olive oil and some water.
• Bake for at least one hour until it gets crispy and…

Enjoy!

Tips!

• Instead of baking the pie right away you can put it on your freezer and bake when you want. You will need to let it unfreeze smoothly before baking. You can also bake it and put in your freezer in pieces if you want to keep some for later!