Cooking with the Ferrari's: Making flaounes

Last weekend as we were only one week away from Greek Easter, we decided to make some Flaounes.

Flaounes is a Cypriot Cheese Pastry which is connected directly to Greek Orthodox Easter. During the Easter feast days, in every Cypriot Greek Orthodox house you happen to visit, from the biggest town to the smallest village, you will come across Flaounes.

Here is how we made ours:

Ingredients for the filling:

1kg grated chedder
1oz fresh yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp Mastihi
10oz sultanas
10 eggs

Place all the grated cheese into a bowl large enough

Crumble the yeast into a small bowl with 2 eggs and mix thoroughly until the yeast is well combined.

Place the Mastihi into a Mortar and pestle with half a teaspoon of flour and mix well until you have a aromatic flour

add this into the cheese along with the sultanas and sugar.

Pour the egg and yeast into the cheese mixture.

Break 8 eggs in and mix thoroughly.

Now cover the mixture with cling film and allow to rise for at least an hour.

Ingredients for the bread:

2tsp Mastihi

1/2tsp Flour

1.5kg Self raising flour

1 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2oz fresh yeast

Handful of dried mint

Eggwash - 2x eggs and 2 handfuls of sesame seeds

Using the Mortar and pestle as before, crush the Mastihi into a fine powder.

Place the oil, flour and mastihi into a mixer bowl and mix with a dough hook, crumble the yeast into a jug with 400ml warm water and mix with a fork until the yeast is fully incorporated and the pour this into the flour mix.

slowly add water whilst mixing until you have a slightly wet but still holding its shape dough.

Knead the dough for 5 minutes.

Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl large enough for the dough to double in size, cover with cling film and let it rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour or until doubled.

Once the dough has risen, preheat the oven to gas mark 6.

Add a handful of dried mint to the cheese mixture and mix well.

Get the eggwash ready by mixing 2 eggs and the sesame seeds together and set aside.

Flour your worksurface and roll out a small handful of dough into a sqaure 2mm thick, you can make Flaounes whatever size and shape you like so the amount of dough you roll out is entirely up to you.

Add a tbsp (again depends how big you want the Flaounes to be) of the cheese mixture into the middle of the dough and fold over the four sides, leaving the mixture visible.