♪ ♪ (whistle call) [Diane Kochilas] I'm in the mountains of Epirus today, home of Greece's itinerant shepherding traditions.

Sheep and goats graze on the lush slopes and fields among the densely forested Pindus mountains.

Epirus is known for its rich meat dishes and some of the greatest savory pies in all of Greece.

I'll get a lesson in a Feta cheese pie baked right in the embers.

It's almost like I can taste everything that's growing around me in the cheese itself.

It's really delicious.

Epirus indeed is pie heaven.

And in the kitchen I'll make a pleated phyllo pie with Feta.

If there was a fluffy cloud that tasted like Feta cheese, this would be it.

And a chicken phyllo pie with two Greek cheeses and herbs.

The chicken and the egg and the cheese are perfect together.

Join me on My Greek Table as I explore the flavors of the timeless shepherd's kitchen and talk milk and cheese with an itinerant shepherd too.

♪ ♪ [Announcer] My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by...

The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

Dodoni, tradition in taste.

Celestyal Cruises.

Meltemi Greek Yogurt.

The National Hellenic Society And by the following... ♪ ♪ [Diane] Epirus, in the remote northwestern corner of mainland Greece is one of the most pristine and sparsely populated regions in all of Europe.

Its lush mountains loom large, informing the food, culture, and way of life up here since Homeric times.

This is not the Greece familiar to most people.

Farming has always been difficult up here.

Only 10 percent of the land is level, but pasture land has always been plentiful, so the age-old professions of shepherding and dairy production still prevail.

Although, there is a lot of wild food up here, everything from game to mushrooms.

Nothing represents the cuisine of Epirus more than its savory pies.

Indeed, one of the most unique chapters in all of Greek food history.

The pies of Epirus are tremendously varied.

They can be made with a simple sprinkling of cornmeal to form a modeled crunchy crust, or with layer upon layer of hand-stretched or rolled phyllo pastry.

The art of rolling the dough along a dowel into the thinnest and most pliant sheets is something girls learn from an early age.

Pastoral families always had and have a few staples like flour or cornmeal in their mobile larders, but also had access to the countless wild greens and herbs they encountered daily on their treks up and down the mountains.

Epirus is also home to dozens of cheeses with Feta first among equals.

Indeed, the word for cheese, tyrí, almost universally refers to Feta up here.

It's no surprise then that Epirus's cuisine is largely a shepherd's cuisine based on what was and still is produced from this ancient pastoral way of life.

With few ingredients, the variety of pies from Epirus is truly mind-boggling.

♪ ♪ I'm in paradise in the Pindus mountains in northwestern Greece with Artemis Tsakalou who grew up here and is going to show us one of the most famous cheese pies.

So, the first thing she's going to do is make the actual phyllo pastry, by hand, of course.

[Diane] So, this is all-purpose flour.

A little bit of red wine vinegar.

Olive oil.

And water.

[Diane] So now, she's breaking up the pieces.

Ten layers of homemade phyllo go into this cheese pie.

And she's breaking up the pieces, and each one of these she's going to roll out on here, and they will go into that pan over there.

This is basically a dowel, which they use as a rolling pin.

♪ ♪ [Diane] To put a second layer of phyllo on here, and then the layering starts with the cheese.

♪ ♪ Only the first layer of phyllo has overhang.

Every other layer fits right into the circumference of the pan.

She'll roll this to make a decorative rim.

♪ ♪ [Diane] It rolls out really easily.

It's very, very pliant.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Diane] She's rolling the edges to make a beautiful rim, and then she's going to add a little bit of olive oil around the rim, but also over the surface of the pie.

[Diane] We're at the end of the whole process here before we bake it.

She's gonna sprinkle a little water on top, which keeps the phyllo from puffing up when it bakes, and then she's gonna score it into pieces.

[Diane] The next step is to bake the pie so that we can all enjoy it, and that is gonna happen in a very, very unusual place.

This is called a "gastro."

It's essentially, a huge metal dome that itinerant shepherds used to carry with them to use as a makeshift oven.

Wow.

Once, you dig a shallow pit and build a wood fire, you let it burn down to hot embers.

The pie pan goes over the embers on a small triangular stand.

Once, she places the gastro on top, this metal dome, she pushes embers and whatever ashes here to the side to seal it.

She doesn't want air in there.

She doesn't want to lose the heat, basically.

That's why she does that.

And this is gonna take about a half hour.

[Diane] Okay, now we wait.

Wow.

♪ ♪ You know that expression, "pie heaven?"

That was born in Epirus, for sure.

I smell cheese.

Roasted cheese.

Charcoal-roasted cheese.

It's an amazing smell.

And also that beautiful comforting smell of baked dough.

[Diane] I can't wait to try this.

[Diane] You can probably hear me chewing because the phyllo is so crunchy, and it's crunchy because of all that olive oil.

That's what gives it the flakiness.

But what I'm really tasting besides that beautiful, smoky, earthy, baked phyllo fall-in-love-with-me flavor is the amazing flavor of the Feta cheese.

It's almost like I can taste everything that's growing around me in the cheese itself.

It's really delicious.

Epirus indeed is pie heaven.

[Diane] Mm.

Among the savory pies, probably the biggest chapter are the cheese pies.

So, I'm inspired today by the many, many different cheese pies.

I'm doing a simple Feta phyllo pie.

Let's get started.

The first thing I'm gonna do is butter my baking pan.

I'm just gonna get that nicely lubricated.

The phyllo is already rolled out on the counter.

And we just sprinkle a little bit of Feta.

Now, this dish kind of approximates some of the more complex pies from the region.

It's a pleated pie, kind of wrinkled effect on top.

So, what I like to do is just squish it up.

The next sheet in here.

And you want to just keep pushing the sheets against each other.

You can see I'm sprinkling this very lightly.

If you tear it a little bit, not to worry, it never shows in the final pie.

That's one of the beauties of working with phyllo.

It's actually very, very forgiving.

You want to work fast when you do this.

That's probably the most difficult thing about working with phyllo.

You have to be a little bit quick because the sheets will dry out.

♪ ♪ I like to crumble the Feta so that some of them are bigger pieces, some of them are smaller, it doesn't really matter.

I think it has a very kind of dramatic look, this pie, even though it's pretty simple and it doesn't take very long to make.

♪ ♪ Now, if you have leftover phyllo, you can just wrap it with plastic wrap, keep it in the fridge for a day or two, and you can always find another use for it.

♪ ♪ We're done with the main part of this recipe, and the next steps are really easy.

I just want to get some butter and eggs in here.

(cracks open the eggs) I've already melted the butter.

And I'm just going to whisk up the eggs, slowly add the butter to this.

(whisks the eggs and butter) Eggs and butter are whisked, and I have a little surprise, which also comes from a traditional technique in some phyllo dough recipes where you add a little bit of seltzer and it makes the dough fluffier.

So, I'm just gonna add a little bit of seltzer.

So, surprisingly, I'm actually gonna pour it over the pie.

And right after that, I'm gonna get the eggs and butter over the pie.

♪ ♪ We just want to move that around a little bit, so that the butter and eggs are evenly distributed right before we put it into the oven.

A little bit of grated kefalotyri cheese, which is a nice pungent Greek table cheese.

Usually used for grating, so things like pasta are typically garnished with a little bit of grated kefalotyri, and it also goes into a lot of cheese pies.

This is ready for the oven.

I've got it warming at 350 and it's gonna bake for about 45 to 50 minutes.

This is Feta cheese perfume.

It smells really great.

I can't wait to try some.

Let me cut a piece.

It's nice and fluffy.

Remember the seltzer water that we added to that?

That's why it's so nice and fluffy, but it's also really crisp, and you can see that just by the crackle of the phyllo.

Okay, time for a little taste.

Mm.

I have rarely met a cheese pie I didn't like, so I start from a biased position.

But this, the first thing that comes to mind, if there was a fluffy cloud that tasted like Feta cheese, this would be it.

It's really beautiful, creamy that the briny flavor of the sheep's milk Feta comes through.

It's also, crispy and crinkly, so there's a lot of texture.

A lot of back and forth between crispy and soft and fluffy.

So, this is a total winner and it's really easy to make.

I'm drinking a Moscofilero with this creamy, crispy Feta cheese pie.

This comes from the second coldest growing region in Greece.

It's also an indigenous varietal.

If you like Pinot Grigio, if you like Gewürztraminer, you'll like Moscofilero.

The acidity and the minerality go really well with rich cheesy dishes like this.

Eis ygeian.

(whistle call) Yannis Dekolis is the son of these mountains and the President of the Mobile Livestock Breeders of Epirus.

His grandfather and father grazed sheep in the Pindus and Grammos Mountains.

His herds roam the mountains depending on the seasons.

He knows the land, the local breeds, and how both contribute to delicious milk that in turn becomes the raw ingredient for Greece's premiere cheese, Feta.

[Diane] Ah!

(laughs) [Diane] Savory pies are an enormous chapter in Greek cooking.

They're also, kind of an unsung hero because with a few simple ingredients, you can make a pretty substantial meal for the family.

I'm making a chicken herb and cheese phyllo pie today.

Let's get started.

I'm gonna heat some olive oil.

Gonna get some chopped red onion into the frying pan.

The garlic goes in next.

Let's get the chicken in here.

I'm just gonna stir this around.

Get everything nicely combined.

So, I'm just gonna let this chicken cook and chop the herbs.

I'm using parsley and mint today.

Both of them are really popular herbs in the Greek kitchen.

You can use almost any herb, you want in this dish.

That's also something that is very much a part of all Greek cooking, all Mediterranean cooking.

It's very flexible, it's easy to swap things out.

♪ ♪ The chicken is beautifully coated with the olive oil, and it's really nicely mixed together with the onion.

I'm gonna turn this off.

Add the herbs.

♪ ♪ And a little bit of pepper.

And I like to use sea salt, first because it tastes really good, but also because you actually end up using a little bit less.

The larger the flakes, there's more surface area, so it's actually a little bit saltier, so you need a bit less of it.

So, this has cooled down enough to add the cheeses, and I'm using two Greek cheeses here today.

These are both delicious table cheeses.

One is called "graviera," and it's a mild, nutty sheep's milk cheese, a yellow sheep's milk cheese.

It's kind of a sweet cheese.

And the second cheese is a cousin of the graviera.

It's called "kefalograviera."

It's similar.

It's a little bit harder and a little bit more pungent.

So, this is all mixed together and our filling is ready.

We're ready to assemble the pie.

The first thing I'm going to do is brush my pan with a little bit of olive oil.

We're gonna get our phyllo in here.

I'm using a heavy phyllo today because the filling itself is actually pretty heavy.

Get the sheet dappled with olive oil.

What you want to do when you lay out the sheets is to try to get them even over the edge.

♪ ♪ This is the fifth and last sheet for the bottom.

♪ ♪ Let's get the filling in here.

♪ ♪ And now, we can cover this.

I'm gonna put three sheets on top.

Press them down as you put them in.

These are also gonna be brushed with a little bit of extra virgin Greek olive oil.

There's a lot of overhang around the perimeter of the pan.

We're gonna trim that.

We've got the bottom and the top layers together.

I just want to trim off some of this excess.

You want about an inch, inch-and-a-half of overhang.

So, let me show you what I'm gonna do next.

We're taking the top and bottom, and we're just gonna roll that in.

And you want that to be lubricated first because you want the phyllo to be moist.

If you leave it without any lubrication, it'll start to crack on you.

You don't want the rim to be too thick.

It shouldn't be more than about an inch, even when it's rolled in.

You want there to be enough time for that thick piece to also bake completely.

♪ ♪ This pie has a little secret.

I'm gonna top it with a combination of whisked eggs, a little bit of semolina flour and some chicken stock.

Just get the eggs in here.

(cracking open the eggs) Little bit of fine semolina flour.

Want to get that into the egg slowly and whisk out any clumps.

(whisking the mixture) And the chicken broth or stock goes in next.

(whisking the mixture) There are a lot of different ways we can score a phyllo pie.

I'm gonna do this particular pie in wedges.

You don't want to draw the knife all the way through, but you want to make it easy enough so that when this bakes, you can remove the pieces.

And now take this egg mixture.

Let me just whisk it up one last time.

And pour that right over the top.

♪ ♪ I'm just gonna get that all over the pie.

And you can see it's almost, if it's already been absorbed, inside the filling and whatever remains on the outside will form this beautiful crust.

I'm gonna get this into the oven now.

It's preheating at 350 for about 45 to 50 minutes.

♪ ♪ Look at that beautiful sheen, that beautiful crust.

(pie plate hits the table) I'm just gonna cut this through right where we scored it and it cuts through beautifully.

That is a beautiful sight.

Easy as pie.

Time to taste today's chicken pie.

Mm.

The chicken and the egg and the cheese are perfect together.

The mint is beautiful.

The onions are really sweet, and it all comes together really perfectly.

And this recipe to me is a compelling reason to try a little bit of phyllo, make a savory pie, and experiment with many of the different phyllo pies found throughout Greece.

For recipe links and information about My Greek Table , visit my website, DianeKochilas.com.

[Announcer] Diane's cookbooks "My Greek Table" and "Ikaria" are available to purchase online at DianeKochilas.com Or call the phone number on the screen.

My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by...

The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

Dodoni, tradition in taste.

Celestyal Cruises.

Meltemi Greek Yogurt.

The National Hellenic Society And by the following... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪