It just happened, without planning it.
Gibanica appeared on my table, after it came out from the oven, though a few steps had to happen before.
For example, forgetting to buy yeast for the rolls I wanted to prepare today... I had to go back to the supermarket, which is not a great feeling, right? It happens that when you forget something and you go back for the missing ingredient, you end up buying a ton of other stuff. Like a roll of meat stuffed with raisins, fish, peas, carrots, Russian salad, milk, juice, the yeast you originally went for and then you see Filo.
Yes!
The original idea of preparing little rolls was replaced by the thought of preparing gibanica cheese pie. (it is a traditional pastry dish that is famous over the Balkans) I already had eggs, cottage cheese, and sour cream at home... Now the Filo pastry made the difference and look, it posed with those bowls. Like lips, the two packages of Filo smiled on my table.
Let us get serious and share the recipe. As you can think I just play there in the kitchen and mix whatever I find. It is not always like that. Sometimes I follow the steps, but I don't consider the measurement always.
The original recipe that I have says that we need:
500 gr of Filo pastry
Two eggs
250 gr of cottage cheese
yoghurt
150 ml of sparkling water
50 ml oil
I almost did everything like this, but instead of the yoghurt I used sour cream, and I didn't measure the sparkling water and the oil. It was more or less, it will be good technique.
Here I mixed the eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, oil, sparkling water and a pinch of salt. This summer I ate a very tasty gibanica, but the chef {who I hope will be proud of me for seeing me active in this culinary thing} also put into the mix chopped chard, directly picked from the garden. That is a version I really like. But I am not a real chef as she is, and I don't have chard on my balcony, just some succulents. I stayed with the normal, modest just cheese and eggs version.
The real fun begins when the mixture is ready and you start putting the Filo sheets on the tray {usually, I use a rounded tray for gibanica}. We place two sheets on the bottom, brush them with a little oil and on that "bed" we place the rest of the sheets that we first "bathe" in the cheese, egg, sparkling water and oil mixture.
You see, it is very easy. You don't have to think about not tearing the sheet, or taking extra care of aesthetics. Just crumple it up and dip it into the mixture. Imagine being a child again and don't think about anything. Crumple, dip, place into the tray and again. Oh, wait, you do have to think about one thing. To leave two sheets for the end, as we have to cover the pie with them.
When you stay without Filo sheets, use up the whole mixture, and cover the "mess" with the two last sheets, you have to put it into the hot oven and wait. How much time? A bit more than half an hour or until you feel you should stop entertaining yourself with Baileys... Btw, I got this little bottled surprise today! :D
When it is finished, cut it into pieces. I cut it into triangles, as it reminds us of börek, a pastry similar to gibanica and which we hadn't eaten for a few months.
This unplanned gibanica was tasty and could be repeated, probably by surprise again, somewhere next year :))
