Recipe
Baked feta with thyme honey and cracked pepper
Six-month feta bakes without collapsing. A younger, wetter cheese turns to soup in the same dish.
Recipe · 1 hr 20 min · serves 6
Wild greens and feta pie, the way it's made in Pieria
Hortopita takes whatever the hillside gives — nettle, chard, dandelion, wild fennel — and enough salted cheese that no other seasoning is needed.
Ingredients
- 1 kg mixed greens (chard, spinach, dandelion, wild fennel)
- 400 g barrel-aged feta, crumbled coarsely
- 1 bunch spring onions, sliced
- 60 g cultured sheep's-milk butter, melted
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 12 sheets filo pastry
- 2 eggs, beaten
- Cracked black pepper
Salt the greens, not the filling. Six-month feta brings roughly 7% salt of its own.
Method
- 01
Wash the greens well and blanch for two minutes. Drain, cool, then wring them dry in a cloth — a wet filling steams the base and the pie never crisps.
- 02
Chop the greens roughly and mix with the spring onions, eggs, pepper and half the olive oil. Fold in the crumbled feta last so it stays in pieces.
- 03
Heat the oven to 190 °C. Brush a 30 cm tray with melted butter and layer six sheets of filo, brushing each one.
- 04
Spread the filling evenly, then top with the remaining six sheets, buttering as you go. Tuck the edges in and score the top into squares.
- 05
Bake 45–50 minutes until deep gold and firm at the centre. Rest 15 minutes before cutting — the filling sets as it cools.
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