Courgette Boreki

A couple of months ago I bought a nice cooking book while I was waiting to take the flight home to London from Athens Eleftherios Venizelos airport.  It looked like a nice book with traditional recipes and easy way to cook them.

However, when you are talking about cooking something traditional means that you need to have also the necessary ingredients.  Every time I was reading one of the recipes I was always thinking something like “yeah right mate, let me see you trying to find myzithra cheese in Central London.”

Unfortunately that’s the way it is, no matter how much you try you will never be able to find the necessary ingredients every time so you will have to improvise. To be honest that’s almost what I do all the time but it brings results, well most of the times…

The following recipe is my own version of a Cretan dish called boreki without phyllo pastry. As  i said ideally for this recipe you need to have Mizithra cheese but we cant have everything, so we improvise.

COURGETTE “BOREKI”

Ingredients

• 1 courgette sliced
• 4 medium sized potatoes
• 2 large tomatoes
• 300 gr of myzithra or in this case Feta cheese that i used
• 1/2 cup of oil
• 1-2 teaspoons of Olive Oil
• 4-5 mint leaves
• Oregano
• Salt, pepper

Method

Step 1

Cut the potatoes and the courgettes into rounds but not to thick as this will help to cook faster. I would say not more than 1cm but ideally less. Grate the cheese and cut the tomatoes in really small pieces.

Step 2

Mix the courgettes together with the tomatoes Spread half of the potatoes in an oiled dish and then add alternating layers of the cheese and the courgette mixer.Chop the mint leaves in small pieces and put them around the food.

Step 3

Finally add the remaining potatoes on top covering as much as possible everything and sprinkle with Salt, Pepper and Oregano. Pour the olive oil around and bake it in the oven for about an hour. Add a little bit of water if its necessary. If you feel that its burning cover it up with a baking paper.

Step 4

When you feel that the potatoes and the courgettes are soft enough stir the whole mixture one time so the melted cheese goes everywhere, bake it for 5-10 more minutes and remove it.

Enjoy!