Kelly’s Cretan Bougatsa – Sweet Greek Fillo Pastry Recipe with Feta and Goat’s cheese
Kelly recreates the flavours and textures of a Cretan bougatsa by combining three cheeses (ricotta, goat cheese and feta) with béchamel sauce, wrapping these with crispy fillo and sprinkling them with cinnamon and granulated sugar, to create a sweet and savoury sensation.
Traditionally Cretan Bougatsa is made with mizithra – a soft, ricotta-like cheese made from goat’s milk. Soft mizithra is not available outside of Greece, so Kelly has combined three cheeses and béchamel to create a similar eating experience to that of the traditional Cretan Bougatsa
Ingredients
- 200 ml full-cream milk
- 20 g corn flour
- 20 g butter
- 150 g Meredith’s Goat Cheese
- 100 g ricotta, not too firm or too soft
- 100 g feta
- 8 sheets fillo pastry – to make 2 bougatsa parcels
- 100 g butter, then clarified
Method
- Preparing the béchamel
- Place the corn flour in a small bowl with about a quarter of the milk – mix well
- Place the remaining milk in a small pot, along with the milk-corn flour mixture and heat on medium heat, while stirring continuously – be sure to stir around the edges of the pot
- Continue heating and stirring until it thickens and begins to bubble
- Remove from the heat and add the 20g of butter – mix in well
- Preparing the bougatsa filling
- Combine the goat’s cheese, ricotta, feta and béchamel sauce – set aside
- Making the bougatsa
- Bake the bougatsa in an oven preheated to 180°C for 20-25 minutes, or until the bougatsa are a lovely golden-brown colour
- Take one fillo sheet and lay it on your work surface horizontally
- Baste it all over with the butter, sparingly
- Lay another fillo sheet on top and baste it
- Repeat with a third fillo sheet
- Take a 4 th fillo sheet and baste the left half of it, before folding the right half over the left
- Bastet he bottom half of the folded 4 th fillo sheet, before folding the bottom half over the top half
- Place the folded fillo sheet in the centre of the 3-stack fillo pile, in a horizontal orientation
- Spoon half of the cheese filling onto the folded fillo sheet and spread it evenly across the folded fillo
- Begin folding the 3-stack pile of fillo. Fold the left section towards the centre and baste it. Fold the right section towards the centre making sure it overlaps a little with with left section and baste it too. Fold the bottom half up and baste it. Fold the upper half down, making sure it overlaps a little with the upper section and then baste it.
- Using a wide/long spatula flip the bougatsa parcel onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, so the fillo seam faces downward
- Baste the top of the bougatsa
- Repeat this process with the remaining fillo and filling
- Serving the bougatsa
- Allow the bougatsa to cool for10 minutes before sprinkling them with caster sugar and dusting them with ground cinnamon generously
- Cretan bougasta are traditionally cut into 8 pieces – slicing once lengthways and three times width ways Kali Orexi!