Sunday, October 6, 2013

Old Fashioned Serbian Apple Pita











Our little urban family decided to do something truly brave and adventurous. We are leaving the city and going to the countryside. For an entire day! To some extent, this brave adventure is driven by a recent discovery that, surprise, there exists a whole big world outside New York City. To a far greater extent, the trip is badly needed as Miss Pain’s first grade class is learning about harvest, fall, ripening and related items, and I realize that Miss Pain has no clue what it really means. She does, however, know that milk comes from a cow, and that one actually needs a potato in order to make French fries, which puts her very much ahead great many city kids deprived of such insight.

Illuminated by an extensive research on the topic of best apple-picking destinations around Manhattan, we embark on a two hour drive up north to the town of Warwick, New York, the home of the Maskers Orchards, where the cell signal is spotty but the apples are plentiful. “With 14 varieties of apples ripening throughout the season at Masker Orchards, you're sure to find all of your family's favorites,” says the guide to the orchards; that is exactly where cell phone reception would have come handy to us poor city dwellers in a desperate need of googling to ascertain the difference in appearance between Empire and Jonagold, or say Macintosh and Cortland. At one point, I manage to get hold of a tiny precious ounce of the signal, and vehemently search for “macintosh apple” only to get pages and pages of, well you are already guessing, latest Apple Mac products and accessories. By the time I realize I should have typed Jonagold, although I was not quite sure how to spell Jonagold, the signal is gone and we are left to our own devices. Only later we realize that Masker’s management had kindly labeled each lot with the corresponding apple variety, except that, like true explorers, we have taken the road less traveled and approached the orchards from the back.

Eight hours and twenty five pounds of unknown apples later, we are back at home, and I kind of scratch my head with what to do to our precious cargo. A part of me wishes that we could keep it forever, as a testimony to our brave adventure. A part of me sees “apple pie” written all over it, although a different part of my persona screams “for Heaven's sake you cannot post yet another apple pie recipe, the Internet is already crowded”. But come to think about it, there is only one apple pie that really matters, at least for me, and it is the Serbian apple pita (pie), the truly one and only. I conduct a quick google on it, and very few recipes come up, therefore I am officially granted the permission to release yet another apple pie into the cyberspace.









Old Fashioned Serbian Apple Phyllo Pita


Ingredients

* one 16 oz package phyllo dough (you might not use all the dough, but make sure that it has at least 15 sheets)
* 8 medium baking apples (about 3 lb), peeled, cored and shredded
* 4 handfuls of Thompson raisins
* 4 tbsp granulated sugar
* 1-2 tbsp confectioners sugar
* 3 tbsp sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing the pan
* cinnamon


Hardware
 

* one 9x13 inch baking pan


1. Preheat the oven to 400F.

2. Grease the baking pan with oil, or line with baking paper.

3. Cut the phyllo sheets into 9x13 inch rectangles.

4. Line the baking pan with three phyllo sheets, spread one quarter of shredded apples uniformly over the phyllo and throw in a handful of raisins. Sprinkle with a tablespoon of granulated sugar and cinnamon according to your liking.

5. Cover with three phyllo sheets, again
spread one quarter of shredded apples uniformly over the phyllo and throw in a handful of raisins. Sprinkle with a tablespoon of granulated sugar and cinnamon according to your liking. Repeat two more times. You will have four layers of apples.

6. Cover the pie with three phyllo sheets.

7. In a small saucepan heat three tablespoons of sunflower oil until medium hot. Drizzle the oil on top of the pie and place the pie in the oven. Bake for about an hour until it is dark golden and crispy.

8. Remove the pie from the oven, drizzle with a tablespoon of water and cover with kitchen towel. When the top layer has softened a bit, remove the kitchen towel. When the pie has cooled completely, dust it with the confectioners sugar, cut into squares and serve. 



Makes about 16-20 squares


p.s.  It would be very unfair to give the Serbs the complete ownership of this pita. It is equally Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Bulgarian or Greek, as all these folks have a wonderful habit of using the phyllo in a number of wonderfully special ways, and stuffing it with all kinds of wonderful things, including cheese, spinach, walnuts, mushrooms, cherries and occasional pumpkin.  

p.s. p.s. If you would like your last layer super crispy, do not drizzle with water and do not cover with the kitchen towel. Just let it cool and then dust it with sugar.

9 comments :

  1. Juče sam baš spremala pitu od jabuka, ali ovog puta odlučila da je malo poboljšam, pa dodala jedan fil od jogurta i griza, a u jabuke sipala rum, orahe, pločice kokosa, rogač i cimet naravno. Besmisleno je i komentarisati kakav je bio rezultat :).
    Inače, hvala na ovom predivnom blogu. Uživam u fotografijama i pričama, a posebno receptima. Veoma inspirativno i prijatno za oko i dušu :). Svaka čast :).

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    Replies
    1. Tamara, hvala puno. Inace ostalo mi je jos pet kilograma jabuka, i sada cu bas da isprobam Vasu varijantu!

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  2. Evo ga recept koji sam ja pratila. Sa svim modifikacijama, po želji :).
    http://www.coolinarika.com/recept/savijaca-s-jabukama-i-grizom/

    Prijatno! :)

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  3. The sentence about searching for Macintosh apples made me laugh out loud, then read it to my husband who also cracked up, For a while we lived on the Gulf Coast and the first time I tried to do a search for the best restaurants in Mobile, AL by the words "best Mobile restaurants".....

    One of the great things about your site is the unique quality of your recipes, and this one is yet another example. Adding it to the bookmarks.

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  4. Loved the photos on this post. In all these years living in New York City, I still have not gone apple picking even once, which is kind of crazy. However, being married to a Serb, I have eaten pita od jakuka many times and love this pie. Lenja pita is another favorite of mine. Thanks for the beautiful post.

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  5. Postovana Aleksandra, tek pre nekoliko dana sam otkrila vas blog (sada vec cuvene vanilice:). Odusevili ste me fotografijama, receptima i pricama koje idu uz svaki vas recept. Naidjoh na pitu od gotovih kora sa jabukama, ali nisam nasla jos uvek lenju pitu. Jabuke, cimet, orasi. Sta cete bolje?! Zelim vam da nastavite sa sjajnim receptima i jos lepsim fotografijama. Srdacan pozdrav.

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    Replies
    1. Draga Tanja, bas mi je drago da smo se eto "digitalno" upoznale... Hvala puno sto ste posetili blog. Bice i lenja pita jednog dana, toliko divnih recepata, pa ne moze sve da se postigne. Nadam se da cemo ostati u kontaktu. Puno pozdrava, Aleksandra

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  6. Sada kada sam vas pronasla, ne nameravam tako lako da vas napustim:) Zelim vam srecne predstojece praznike i da ih provedete u drustvu onih koje najvise volite.

    ReplyDelete

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