Little Filo Cheese Rolls

Crispy, crunchy filo pastry baked around a lovely green onion, feta and ricotta cheese filling makes these little filo cheese rolls the perfect snack.

So it’s the Super Bowl today! As the old Texas saying goes, I don’t have a dog in that fight, but that won’t stop me from setting up my dvr to record the game (since it comes on a 3:30 a.m. Monday morning for me in Dubai) and then watching the most super of bowls munching on snacks and sipping on drinks.

And I am just going to warn you right now that I won’t be on Facebook on Monday until I’ve watched the game. It’s more fun to watch if I don’t already know the winner, don’t you think?

This week for Sunday Supper everyone is making delicious dishes that they would like to eat while watching the big game. The hard part was narrowing it down to just one! But I have to tell you that I am delighted with my choice! Crispy, crunchy filo pastry baked around a lovely green onion, feta and ricotta cheese filling. And as I bit into the first one, I decided it needed a little something to dip it into. So I poured some honey in a ramekin and added a chopped fresh red chili. The saltiness of the cheese was complemented beautifully by the sweet honey with a bite of spicy heat. So good!

Ingredients

1/3 cup or 75g melted butter

About 4 1/2 oz or 125g ricotta

3 1/2 oz or 100g feta

Generous bunch green onions

9 1/2 oz or 270g pack of filo – you won’t use all

Optional dip: About 1/4 cup or 60ml runny honey and one small red chili pepper

Method

Preheat your oven to 325°F or 165°C.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.  I give the pan a quick spray with Pam to stop the parchment from slipping around and you might want to do the same.

Finely chop about four inches or 10cm off the ends of your green onions.

In a small bowl, measure out your feta and ricotta and add in the green onions.  Use the tines of your fork to crumble the feta. 

Add in your egg and use your fork to beat it just a little bit.  Mix the whole lot together.  Set aside.

Remove the filo pastry from the package and figure out how to unfold it without ripping it so that you can see exactly how large the sheets are.  This is the trickiest bit of the whole recipe.  Once your sheets are unfolded, decide how you can best cut them into large rectangles of around 4 inches wide and 10-12 inches long. 

As you can see, my sheets were quite large so I ended up cutting them in fourths.  Stack all the layers on top of each other.  Place them on your clean kitchen counter.  I usually lay a piece of cling film down first to make clean up easier.

Brush the top sheet with melted butter and put about a tablespoon full of filling about an inch or two centimeters from the short edge.  

Roll the filo around the filling a couple of times and then fold in the two sides. Continue rolling until you reach the end of the sheet of filo.  Place seam side down on your prepared baking sheet. 

Continue buttering and adding filling and making cheese rolls until all of your filling is gone.  You will probably have some filo sheets left over.

Brush the tops of the rolls with the remaining butter and bake in your preheated oven for around 30-45 minutes or until golden and crispy. 

While there is no official dipping sauce to go with this, as I mentioned above, I mixed a little honey with a chopped fresh red chili and it was lovely with the cheese rolls.  You might want to do the same!

Enjoy!

This recipe was adapted from an original by Claudia Roden in The Accidental Foodie. 

Have a look at all the wonderful dishes the #SundaySupper crew have prepared today!

#SundaySupper Super Bowl Appetizers & Snacks:

• All American Ranch Cheese Ball from The Weekend Gourmet
• Bacon Double Cheese Burger Dip from In the Kitchen with KP
• Bacon Kettle Corn from The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen
• Baked Crab Cakes from The Meltaways
• Buffalo Chicken filled Pull-Apart Loaf from Small Wallet Big Appetite
• Buffalo Chicken Pizza On A Stick from Neighborfood
• Buffalo Tofu Bites from Soni’s Food
• Cheeseburger Bites from Momma’s Meals
• Cheesy Jalapeno Popper Dip from Daily Dish Recipes
• Cranberry Glazed Meatballs from Curious Cuisiniere
• Easy White Queso with Chorizo from Supper for a Steal
• Eggplant Lentil Fritters With Orange Salsa from Sue’s Nutrition Buzz
• #GlutenFree 7 Layer Bean Dip from Cooking Underwriter
• Gulf Coast Smoked Tuna Dip from 30A Eats
• Ham & Cheese Crescents from Masala Herb
• Ham Crescents {Schinkenhoernle} #DairyFree from Galactopdx
• Little Filo Cheese Rolls from Food Lust People Love
• Mini Crab Bites from Webicurean
• Muffuletta Skewers from Magnolia Days
• Onion Cheddar Cheese Ciabatta from Family Foodie
• Peach Jalapeno Fritters from I Run for Wine
• Philly Cheesesteak Bites from Cindy’s Recipes and Writings
• Pizza Pretzel Rolls from Cravings of a Lunatic
• Pizza Wontons from Peanut Butter and Peppers
• Refried Black Beans with Pita Chips from Basic N Delicious
• Roasted Garlic-Bacon Dip from girlichef
• Roasted Red Pepper Hummus from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Stamp & Go! from The Lovely Pantry
• Sweet and Spicy Bacon Wrapped Dates from Noshing with the Nolands
• Tandoori Spiced Popcorn from MarocMama
• Wonton Cones Filled with Oriental Salad from Simply Gourmet

#SundaySupper Super Bowl Main Dishes:

• Bacon-Wrapped Chili Cheese Dogs from Damn Delicious
• Buffalo Chicken Sloppy Sandwiches from Cupcakes & Kale Chips
• Chicken in Passion Fruit Crunch from The Urban Mrs.
• Green Chile Cheeseburgers from Juanita’s Cocina
• Grilled Pizza with Sausage and Spinach from Ruffles & Truffles
• Marinated Rump Steak with Chimichurri Sliders from Vintage Kitchen Notes
• Meatball Sub Sliders from Country Girl in the Village
• Oven-Fried Catfish Fingers with Mango-Chili Dip from Pescetarian Journal
• Pigs in Sleeping Bags from Comfy Cuisine
• Turkey Sliders with Roasted Tomatoes from That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Vegan “Hamburger Helper” Soup from What Smells So Good?

#SundaySupper Super Bowl Desserts:

• Shortbread Brownies from Baker Street
• Smores Blossom Cookies from Chocolate Moosey
• Sweet Little Pastries from Happy Baking Days
• Sweet Potato Cake Pops from Ninja Baking
• Toddler Truffles from In the Kitchen with Audrey

Pin these little filo cheese rolls!

Manousah or Arabic Pizza for Cooked in Translation

Almost every ancient country or ethnic group has a flatbread, whether baked in an oven or cooked on the top of a griddle.  I might even go so far as to say they all do, but then I would have to do some research before posting this.  So let’s just agree that almost all do.  (Right off the top of my head, I give you tortillas from Mexico, matzo from Israel, injera from Ethiopia and naan from India.)  Normally I would be all about the researching but, frankly, I have spent many of my waking hours this past last week responding to concerned friends and family who are worried about our safety here in Cairo.  Let’s just get it out there:  WE ARE FINE!  The demonstrations all over the region and especially the tragic murders in Libya are extremely upsetting but, as for Cairo, aside from protestors in Tahrir Square, the rest of the city is calm and peaceful and we are in no danger whatsoever.  I continue to pray for total peace in the region.  

Now back to our regularly scheduled Cooked in Translation post where the recipe prompt is pizza.  The challenge set this month by our host, Paola, over at Italian in the Midwest is to recreate pizza from a new cultural or ethnic perspective.  Which is what brought me to flatbreads in the first place.  Because what is pizza but an oven-baked flatbread traditionally topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and possibly a few other choice ingredients?  I decided to give this a Middle Eastern spin, making my crust with toasted cumin and topping it with roasted eggplant paste made with spices and garlic and tahini – that is to say, baba ganoush – and then adding feta and black olives and roasted red peppers.  Egypt does indeed have its own pizza, called manousah, but I couldn’t find one that used baba ganoush as a sauce.  I did find recipes with yogurt and feta and even tomato sauce or honey.  So, this baby is authentic nowhere but that doesn’t stop it from being delicious! 

Ingredients for two pizzas

For the crust:

4 1/2 cups flour

1/4 oz or 7g dried yeast (I used one envelope of Fleischmann’s Rapid Rise.)

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon whole cumin

For the baba ganoush:

1 large or 2 medium eggplants

1/4 cup or 60ml tahini

3 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Sea salt, to taste

For the additional toppings:

7 oz or 200g feta (I used sheep’s milk feta but your favorite will do nicely.)

1 large red bell pepper

1 teaspoon ground sumac 

1/4 cup black olives (about 14-16) or more if you love them

Olive oil

Good handful fresh flat-leaf parsley

Method

First we will make the dough so it has time to rise. 

Toast your cumin seeds in a dry non-stick skillet over a medium fire.  Keep shaking them so they don’t burn.  This takes just a few minutes.  Set aside.

Put about half of your flour in the mixing bowl and add the yeast, salt and 1 1/2 cups or 355ml very warm water. 

Mix on low until all of the water is incorporated and you have a very thin batter.   Scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Beat on medium for two minutes.

Add in the rest of your flour a little at a time, along with the toasted cumin, switching to the bread hook, if you have one, when the dough gets too stiff for the regular beater/s.  If you don’t have a bread hook, knead the dough by hand until it is stretchy and smooth. 

Drizzle a little olive oil into the bowl and roll the dough into a ball and turn it around in the oil.  Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise.

Now on to the baba ganoush. 

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.   Roast the eggplant on the stove top if you have a gas stove or on a barbecue pit.  I know this looks scary, but an Indian friend taught me this method and she swore by it.  It really does work!

You want to keep turning the eggplant until all sides are charred and the skin is cracking. 

Place your eggplants in a pan in the preheated oven.  Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the eggplants are soft.

 Turn the eggplants over halfway through.

Roast your red bell pepper on the stove or barbecue pit, just as you did the eggplant.   When it is blackened all over, pop it in a plastic bag and tie a knot.  (The steam will help loosen the skin and make it easy just to slide off.)   Set aside.

Meanwhile, mince your garlic and roughly chop your parsley and set them aside. 

When the eggplants are soft, remove them from the oven and transfer them to a plate  Allow them to cool enough to handle.  Turn the oven up so it can preheat to 400°F or 200°C.

Peel the eggplants and cut the stem end off.  Put the flesh in a medium bowl and mash with a fork.

Add in the rest of the baba ganoush ingredients.  Stir well.  Set aside.

By now your dough should have almost doubled.  Punch it down and divide into two equal halves.  (These ingredients will make two pizzas, probably with baba ganoush leftover, if you don’t spread it on too thickly.)

Oil a baking pan and stretch one piece of the dough out by hand - as thin or thick as you like it.  We prefer thin to thick.  And remember that it will rise some more as it bakes. 

Pop this in the oven for about eight minutes.  The goal is to cook the bottom enough so that the crust slides around easily on the baking pan.

While the crust bakes, remove the skin from the roasted bell pepper.  Cut the stem end off, remove the seeds and cut it into strips.  Drain the olives of any liquid and dry them off.

Crumble your feta with a knife or fork.

Remove the crust from the oven and top with some baba ganoush and half of the feta, olives and bell pepper.  Sprinkle with half of the sumac and drizzle on some olive oil.

Slide the pizza into the oven, off of the pan and directly onto the oven rack or shelf.  Bake until the crust is golden brown and the feta is melted, about 15 more minutes.

Remove from the oven by reversing the process, grabbing the edge of the pizza crust and sliding it back on the baking tray.

Top with chopped parsley and drizzle on a little olive oil.  (Repeat the whole process for the second pizza.)

I like to put my pizza on a wooden cutting board at this point because I think the wood absorbs some of the steam and keeps the bottom from losing its crunch.  But you can leave it in the pan, if you’d like.  Cut into slices and serve.

Enjoy!

If you would like to learn more about Cooked in Translation, you can find the instructions to join here at The German Foodie. 

To check out the other delicious Cooked in Translation pizza posts, follow these links.

Sambusaks or Cheese-filled Buttery Pastries

Sambusaks are a traditional cheese-filled buttery pastry popular in Egypt. Filled with crumbly feta cheese, the tender pastry melts in your mouth. Serve them with hot sweet cardamom tea or a completely untraditional glass of wine.

Everybody has a story to tell.  Some tell it with words and some tell it with illustrations.  (And some keep it to themselves, but they still have a story.  I’m sure of it.)  Right after cookbooks, my favorite kind of book is an autobiography.  (And my favorite cookbooks are never straight recipes.  They need some personal stuff too.)  I will read anyone’s autobiography, from Winston Churchill to Tina Fey and Corrie Ten Boom to David Sedaris.  The little old lady down the street?  If she can write well, I will read hers too.  You never know what interesting thing is going on behind closed doors.

An autobiography and its often more colloquial twin sister, the memoir, reach deep into the heart of what makes the author tick.  How we were raised, where we lived, what we were exposed to in childhood:  These are the circumstances that make us who we are.  Without debating the nature vs. nurture argument, even while leaning heavily to one side, a reasonable person would have to admit that neither nature nor nurture can be completely discounted in the formation of young minds.  And we have all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.” 

So, along with my love of cookbooks and autobiographies, I have recently developed an appetite for memoirs that share recipes.  The perfect marriage of both my loves.   

And you know what’s dangerous?  Buy now with 1-Click:  Kindle books on my iPad.

But yesterday’s purchase was money well spent! (Aren’t they all?)  After all, I am trying to get to know my new home city, right?  It is called Apricots on the Nile, a lovely book by an articulate author, Colette Rossant, and it's all about her childhood centered around the consolation of cooking and food in her grandparents’ home in Cairo’s Garden City, way back in the 1930s and ‘40s.  What a delight it was to read about Cairo in a different age but with traditional recipes I am still seeing today.  I highlighted just about every recipe and can’t wait to try them all.

Sambusaks or Cheese-filled Buttery Pastries

This is an easy recipe that I would have highlighted twice, if Kindle for iPad permitted such a thing.

Ingredients

For the pastry:

1/4 cup or 55g melted butter

1/4 cup or 60ml canola oil

1/4 cup or 60ml hot water

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups or 355g flour plus extra for rolling out dough

For the filling:

5 1/2 oz 156g feta cheese

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg

2 teaspoons baking powder

Black pepper

Method

Put the melted butter, oil and hot water in a bowl with the pinch of salt. 

Add in the flour and mix well.  Knead for a few minutes then wrap in cling film and pop the dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, crumble your feta cheese with a fork or your fingers.  

Add in the Parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, egg and the baking powder.  Mix well.   

The original recipe said to whip it all up in a food processor so that’s what I did with my first batch of filling.  And then I started over.

Runny filling going down the drain!

Just mix it by hand. 

When the 30 minutes waiting time is almost up for the dough, preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.   Grease your baking tray or line it with parchment paper.

Get the flour ready, because this dough is pretty soft and sticky.  Cut the dough in half and then cut each half into five equal pieces.

Flour your rolling pin and the counter top.  Shape the piece of dough into a ball and then gentle roll it out into a circle of about 4 inches or 10cm. 

Place about 1 tablespoon of the filling on the circle.  

Fold over and squeeze the air out.  Then press the sides together. 

If you have enough room, roll the edges up slightly and then press with a fork to decorate.  I followed the original instructions and just used the fork to close the joint.  (Check out the update at the end for pictures of this.) Some of my cheese filling melted out so folding the edges over might help prevent that.

Continue until all 10 sambusaks are assembled. 

Bake in your preheated oven about 25 minutes or until they are golden brown.  I was amazed by how light and flakey these were. 

Enjoy!

The salty cheese filling goes great with a glass of red. 

Update and confession:  I really only made four of the 10 sambusaks that day.  Yesterday, I used the remaining dough and filling - and added some thinly sliced ham - and they were just as delicious, if not more so.  I also followed my own suggestion of folding the edges over before crimping with the fork and it worked!