Galatopita – Greek Milk Pie

I love egg custard of almost any form. Heck, even my scrambled eggs are made with cream and have a slightly custardy taste and texture.

I have been watching Tubi episodes of Masterchef Australia where one of the judges is Greek. His greekness playing on my mind has meant that when I see Greek recipes I have paid closer attention than usual.

In general I lean towards Mediterranean flavors when dining but Milwaukee has not had hugely popular Greek restaurants for the past few years. It seems as if all the Greek cooks have opened Milwaukee “Greek family restaurants” which really feature basic American diner food. When we were newlyweds there were a couple really good places in town and we frequented them all as much as we could afford. When traveling we still like those flavors, and seek them out.

But, it’s worth a try…

The thing is, this is really an egg custard pie and you’ve seen me publish other egg custard recipes. This uses a thickening agent in place of as many yolks that you might expect — but hey, not every recipe is perfect. 🙂

---

---

---

Prep Time 30minutes minutes

Cook Time 50minutes minutes

Cooling Time: 4hours hours

Total Time 5hours hours 20minutes minutes

Servings 10 serves

Calories 223kcal

Ingredients

• 120 grams semolina ( the fine variety)
• 30 grams corn flour corn starch
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 lemon zest
• 1.25 litres milk 5 cups
• 200 grams sugar caster or superfine
• 75 grams butter

Topping:

• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons milk
• cinnamon and icing sugar for dusting

Instructions

• Preheat your oven 180 deg C and prepare a 27 cm round shallow baking dish. Rub liberally with butter and sprinkle a few tablespoons of semolina flour to coat the base and sides of the dish. (see note 1)
• In a large bowl combine the semolina, corn flour, eggs, lemon zest and vanilla. Whisk thoroughly to combine and set aside.
• Heat the milk and sugar on medium heat. Be careful not to let the milk boil rapidly — allow it to come to a gentle simmer. (see note 2)
• Slowly add one ladle of the milk to the semolina mixture and whisk until well combined. Repeat this step 2 more times and pour the tempered mixture back into the milk. Stir and allow the custard to thicken (this can take up to 5 mins), add the butter and whisk again. Pour the custard into the prepared baking dish.
• For the topping combine the egg, sugar and milk in a ramekin and whisk well. Pour over the galatopita and brush, ensuring it covers the whole pie.
• Bake in the oven for 45-50 mins. The galatopita is ready when it is puffed, and a skewer comes out clean. Allow the pie to rest and cool completely before serving. When serving, it’s best to top each slice with a sprinkling of ground cinnamon and powdered sugar. (see note 3)

Notes

1. If you don’t have the same sized baking dish use a 25 cm x 35 cm baking dish. It will produce a taller pie — please adjust the baking time accordingly.
2. Tempering the milk — I cannot stress enough not to boil your milk. To temper the eggs, we need it to be simmering. Otherwise, you will end up with scrambled eggs!
3. The topping creates a sort of caramel on top of the galatopita. You may find that it goes darker in certain places during cooking. Just place a piece of aluminium foil over that part.

Overnight Olive Oil Sourdough Bread

Overnight Olive Oil Sourdough Bread

RV Tank Sensors and Cupcakes

You’d think for $350.00 they could at least give you directions.

I ordered new tank sensors from our Winnebago dealer.  You may or may not remember that the older rv’s like our 2002 model had capacity sensors mounted inside the tank.  They were subject to sticking, and in the case of the backwater tank sometimes you’d get a hunk of poo stuck in the sensor and it stopped telling you anything worth knowing.

A few years ago an engineer figured out how to sense fluid level without sticking anything INSIDE the tank and voila,  sonar sensors were born.  I have no idea of they really use sonar, but that’s what they call them.

So, ours have not been working correctly for a long time ( spell that since we bought Journey) and Peggy goes crazy worrying about whether the tanks are full, so we popped the $350.00 to pay for new sensors.  There’s a local Mobile RV repair guy around and I was sure he could handle the install.  After all, it would seem all you have to do it stick ’em on the side of the tank.  

Well, they arrived.  Four nice little plastic bags full. One Circuit board and three bags of three sensors (1/3, 2/3, and full) .

What did not arrive were directions for how to do the install.  ARGH.  I’ll suss it out eventually, because after calling Winnebago direct I was no further along than before calling Tech Support.  There may be plenty of tech, but on this account no support at all.

OUR PIZZA’S ARE GETTING BETTER AND BETTER

On a happier note –>

Our experiments with pizza in the RV are getting better and better.

Before going mobile we purchased one of those small Cuisinarts; not the big 7 cupped, or the even bigger 14 cupped, but the little ‘un.  We promised ourselves we’d throw the other one out — the motor still works but the mixing bowl is a scandal, all chipped and cracky. But after 30 years of use who isn’t?   We still have the old one, AND the new one but that’s another story.

The little one makes pizza dough using 1 1/2 cups of flour — just about the right amount for a pizza for two.  And we’ve been using it regularly for just that purpose.  The smaller batch of dough is able to be processed using the regular knife blade so that the kneading time is all done by machine and in about 15 minutes from start to finish I have a ball of dough (the longest elapsed time is waiting for the yeast to proof).  Plop the dough into a bowl, let it rise and a couple hours later you have dough ready to go into the oven.  OR, put the dough into an air-tight container and then into the fridge and you have the perfect place to let the dough mellow and age for better flavor before taking it back out of the fridge to warm, rise again, and make your pizza.

A Pizza Peel

I’ve been experimenting with cornmeal.  The best pizzas we’ve ever had all had a little cornmeal on the bottom.  Not necessarily in the dough, but more as a transfer aid to get the pizza off the peel and onto the deck of the oven.  In Milwaukee we had a large pizza stone and we used a peel to get it in and out.  Here, our little convection oven is barely large enough for the pizza much less carrying around enough ceramic tile for a tile oven floor.

So, I started mixing some cornmeal into the dough. That worked fine.  Not the same texture but the flavor was getting closer.  We’ve been doing that for a long while now — 10 years or more. After we arrived here we ran out of the Quaker cornmeal we have used all these years (It must be more of a Midwestern product than I thought).

Good Ole Quaker Cornmeal

There began one of those search for a replacements that can be so much fun when you move.  I went all over both our groceries here and I could not find a blue and yellow round container of corn meal anywhere. I looked high and low and I found bupkiss.

Go find a store employee. “Do you carry Corn Meal” I asked?  She gave me a quizzical look but offered to help me look.  This is what she came up with:

It looks the same, but isn’t.

Ok — a different brand. No big deal. Or is it?  The Albers is more finely ground than Quaker.  That means it absorbs water differently.  After a few attempts with varying amounts of cornmeal in the dough I think we’ve found something that works pretty well and yields a tasty, cripsy, dough.   To be fair — I can’t tell how much of the difference between what I remember as the flavor of pizza from our home stove with quarry tiles in it, and the flavor of pizza from our Microwave/Convection oven could be the result of cooking in a convection oven — but I truly feel that the improvement is because of the new cornmeal.

CUPCAKES

And, while we’ve been experimenting in the kitchen…. we’ve segued to cupcakes!  Actually, it’s not so much the cupcakes as it is the silicone baking utensils.

Silicone is such a treat when it comes to cooking.  I love my silicone spatulas and hot pads.  But I’ve been slow to embrace the idea of silicone in contact with food.  I know I’m being stupid (maybe) but if silicone caused so many problems when implanted in women’s bodies there’s this part of me that wonders if there could be some parallel using it for cooking (and the necessary HEAT) and having it ingested in some way or another.  I know that’s probably a stupid thought, but I use my wooden spatula, and pot scraper more than I use anything else.  But back to my story….

We bought our first set of cupcake cups in silicone.  We bought them to try baking in the microwave — not the convection oven.  We have owned microwaves since… well… since Carter was a pup …. and if you don’t remember that expression well, it’s a long, long, long, time.

I have never tried baking in the micro.  I know that’s silly.  Friends of ours bake in them all the time.  But I just like the process of baking with heat instead of baking with energy.  However, our volunteer who is leaving soon made a deal with me (actually he blackmailed me)  that he would stay an extra week if I would bribe him with baked goods.  And I was stuck!  I know what I want to bake — I have a killer recipe for muffin-method coffee cake.  But it takes forever to bake and I was looking for an easier way.  Hence the cupcake cups.  I might buy a couple larger size — you know, 9 x 9 or a standard loaf pan, which I guess is about 9 x 4 1/2.

Our first attempt at cupcakes worked out pretty well.  6 little cupcakes in 2 minutes cooking time.  Not bad. Actually, it’s pretty freakin’ outrageous!  2 minutes!

So, we’ll have to see where this may lead…..

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll talk with you tomorrow.