Mediterranean cuisine – Ukrainian interpretation

It’s raining cats and dogs outside and I’ve decided to write my recipe with the slope on the Mediterranean national meal! The dishes prepared in this part of Europe have a very special taste which can seem enough specific for people from the other countries. It’s very simple to explain – Mediterranean national cuisine is so oily and hot because meat and species are often used ingredients.

Today I’m going to describe how to cook “Pita”, also known as Mediterranean meat pie. I could also describe this dish as an analog of Italian lasagna.

So, you will need:

• About 500 g of minced meat made from mix of pork and beef meat
• 500 ml liquid drinking-style yogurt without flavouring
• 1 large egg
• 1 large or 2 small onions
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Oil
• Phyllo pastry (or any other pastries used in your country)

Step one

For the first step you just need to chop the onion. I used one large onion which has been washed and cleaned before using. Cut it to get two separate parts and then chop each of them like you can see on the photo below

First, you need to slice the onion parts and then carefully chop them

Step two

After you prepared your onion, you need to cover the pan with a thick layer of oil that you prefer the most for frying. When the pan gets warmed, cover its with the onions.

While it’s frying, you can proceed the next step.

Step three

Take a bowl, break one egg into it and add some salt.

Then you are able to use the fork instead of mixer or kitchen whisk to mix all the ingredients together and to get orange colour homogeneous mass.

Note: while doing the mass, don’t forget about the onions you fry! You need to stir them up after a few minutes frying on pan just to not get them burnt!

After getting the mass ready, you need to add 500 ml of yogurt step-by-step mixing all the ingredients together.

Before doing the next step, you can put your mass into a fridge.

Step four

When the onions are well-fried, all you need to do is to add the minced meat.

Stir the fried onions with the meat.

When the meat starts having brown colour, it’s time to add all the spices I’ve mentioned in the instructions above. You can also take the oregano or any other spices you like to make the meat more delicious.

Step five

Unroll the phyllo pastry on a clean and spacious place – for this step I usually use the kitchen table. Take one piece of the pastry and place it in pre-oiled pan for baking. Then take your yogurt mixture and pour over the pastry to make tiny layer.

Put the meat on the impregnated layer of pastry. Make sure your meat level is appropriate for the pastry size and quality – don’t put too much!

Cover the meat you put with a tiny layer of yogurt mass.

Note: for the covering exactly the meat level, you need to use less yogurt syrup than for spreading the phyllo pastry.

Take the next pastry piece and put it on meat. Then just keep creating the “floors” of “Pita” until your meat runs out. Cover the last layer with a pastry and spread it out with the oil. I usually use sunflower oil but this time I stopped my selection on butter.

Step six

Heat your oven at around 200°C and bake the meat pie for the 30-45 minutes. When you get it baked, just spray the upper layer with some water and wait 5 minutes!

Dobar tek!(Bon appetite)