Bougatsa

A semolina custard in filo with no syrup anywhere, cut into squares with a blade and dusted at the moment it is served.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter), dairy (whole milk).

Ingredients

For the custard

• 1 litre whole milk
• 120 g fine semolina
• 150 g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 80 g butter
• 1 vanilla pod

For the pastry

• 350 g filo pastry
• 120 g butter, melted

To finish

• icing sugar
• ground cinnamon

Method

1. THERE IS NO SYRUP IN THIS AND THAT IS THE WHOLE DIFFERENCE from the other filo custard on this site. Galaktoboureko is flooded with cold syrup and left hours to drink it; this is dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon at the counter, as it is cut, and eaten within minutes. One is a sweet set pudding, the other is a breakfast pastry that must still be crisp when it reaches the plate.
2. SO IT IS CUT WITH A BLADE AND NOT A KNIFE, and cut AFTER baking rather than before. A scraper or a long blade pressed straight down through the crisp top, into squares, at the moment of serving. Scored first, the top loses its shatter.
3. Milk and the split vanilla pod brought to just below boiling.
4. Semolina and sugar whisked in off the boil, then back on a LOW heat and stirred constantly 8 to 10 minutes until it holds the spoon upright.
5. Off the heat, butter stirred in, then left 10 minutes to stop scalding.
6. Eggs beaten in one at a time, fast. Into a boiling custard they scramble.
7. Covered with cling film ON THE SURFACE and cooled to warm. A skin forms in minutes otherwise and it shows as lumps in the finished slice.
8. A tin brushed with butter. Six sheets of filo laid in, each buttered, overhanging. The rest under a damp cloth.
9. Custard spread in, the overhang folded over, then six more sheets on top, each buttered, tucked down the sides.
10. Baked at 180C for 45 minutes until deep gold and crisp.
11. RESTED 15 MINUTES ONLY. It is served warm, not cold, and a cold bougatsa is a different and lesser thing.
12. Cut into squares with a blade, then dusted thickly with icing sugar and cinnamon through a sieve -- after cutting, so the cut faces stay clean.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes