Salty Cheesecake

I had been planning this cheese cake for New Year's Eve, but we kept eating one of the products or another, while I procrastinated with the preparation. 

I finally made it and it turned out to be an excellent appetizer, especially in combination with white wine. However, because I didn't want it too heavy, I reduced the butter and skipped the walnuts, so it came out more crumbly than it should be. It was completely fine and super delicious, but if I don't want it in crumbs, next time I should add more butter or nuts, to join the biscuits.

Ingredients:

• One pack (200 g) crackers
• 10 g butter (should be at least 50 g or 100 g walnuts)  
• 100 g cream cheese
• 200 g cottage cheese
• 200 g sour cream
• 2 teaspoons of chopped dill

Preparation:

Crumble the crackers in the chopper. Mix them with the butter and compact the biscuit layer in a cake form. Mix the cheeses and sour cream, add the dill and distribute evenly on top of the biscuit layer, Serve cold with white wine and enjoy!

The snowdrops in the garden behind our building are already in bloom. Can't wait for spring to be here already!

Buguirdi

I love simple vegetable summer dishes and as we live in a southern country, they are a natural part of our cuisine. This summer I expanded my cooking experience with new dishes, like grilled filled eggplants, various types of zucchini dishes and others. And this grilled cheese dip is my latest addition. It is called buguirdi (it is also bouyourdi and other spelling variations) and it was suggested to us by our Greek waiter as something unknown and rarely chosen by foreigners because of its unfamiliar name. It turned out to be simple, but super delicious and it was the first thing I wanted to try when we got back home.

There are many recipes online, I chose one, that sounded close to the dish we tasted in Greece.

The ingredients are simple and in Bulgaria they are things we usually have in the fridge at home:

• 250 g feta cheese - the Greeks favour sheep and goat cheese, as they have little land for cattle, in Bulgaria we make feta cheese mostly from cow milk and this is the type I used today. However, I really like the richer taste of mixed sheep and goat cheese and next time I may try buguirdi with a different type of feta cheese
• 50 g grated yellow cheese. Here we call it kashkaval and it is similar / identical to the original Kasseri cheese. I used again whole cow's milk cheese.
• 2 tablespoons Greek extra virgin olive oil
• Dried oregano - I bought mine in an olive shop in Greece and it claims to be from Olympus (I like the thought)
• 250 g grated tomatoes
• a dash of paprika
• a bit of spicy green pepper - this is where I diverged from the original recipe, as we had only Jalapeno peppers at home. I wish we had the traditional long narrow spicy green peppers, that are much milder, probably next time :)
  

The preparation is as simple as the ingredients:

Crumble the cheese in a cooking dish (preferably a clay dish, but mine were either too big or too small for this quantity for two persons, so i used an Jena dish). Sprinkle with sweet paprika on top. Layer the grated yellow cheese. Cover with the grated tomatoes. Add two table spoons of olive oil and sprinkle generously with dried oregano. Finally add the thinly sliced spicy green pepper.

Bake as layered in an oven at 190 C for 15 minutes, then take it out of the oven, stir to mix the tastes and continue to bake for additional 30 minutes. Serve hot with bread and wine (or beer).

I don't have the habit of taking pictures of our food in restaurants, but the buguirdi is the dish at the front of this photo my husband took of me, while we were dining. The one I made today was almost as delicious :)

Cheese Roll-Ups

A quick recipe for not very photogenic, but mouth-watering cheese roll-ups:

Ingredients:

• 500 g flour
• 250 ml warm milk
• 7 g dry yeast
• 1 egg + 1 white (1 yolk for glazing)
• 25 g butter
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp salt
• hard yellow cheese, white feta cheese, savory

Warm up the milk in a bowl. Add the dry yeast and the sugar and leave for 20 min to rise. Sift the flour in the bowl, add the butter, the salt and the eggs and mix the dough. Leave to double its volume for an hour. Roll out the dough to 1/2 cm thickness, spread the grated hard cheese, crumbled feta cheese and savory or other spices. Roll up like a sausage, cut into circles and arrange cut side down on a baking dish, covered with baking paper. Leave to rest for 30 min, glaze with egg yolk and milk and bake in a preheated oven at 180C.

I made half with savory and half without. I prefer the ones with savory.

Cheese Pirog

Today's baking was provoked and inspired by this video of pirog making. The talented lady in the video is making a sweet pirog with creamy poppy filling, but I wanted mine to be with cheese. So, this time I decided to improvise the dough and the filling, based on my experience with the last doughs I made.

Ingredients for the dough:

• 550 g flour + 50 g for the kneading
• 200 ml warm milk
• 100 g yogurt
• 1 egg + 1 white
• 4 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 7 g dry yeast

This time I decided not to activate the yeast separately, but instead sifted the flour, made a well in it, added the yeast, a tsp of sugar and the warm milk and left it to activate. In some 20 min added the rest of the ingredients and made the dough. Left it in a warm oven (50C) for an hour to rise, kneaded it and spread it in an ellipse.
For the filling I mixed 250 g white cheese and 150 g sour cream and spiced it with savory, oregano and pepper.
Cut the ellipse, placed the filling and braided it.

I placed the braid again in the warm oven (50C) to rest and rise and in 30 min glazed it with yolk and oil, set the temperature of the oven at 180C and baked the bread until the crust turned golden brown.

It's really very yummy with this creamy filling. Now I'm thinking of other fillings to try with this recipe.

Round Loaf with Cheese

Another round bread I made, of which I am secretly very proud :)
I was looking for a interesting recipe and methods of bread decoration and I came upon this wonderful blog.
It was pure serendipity that the dough I liked was refrigeratable. I began making the bread in the late afternoon, in between dinner preparations and when the dough was finally ready to be manipulated I was too tired. So, I covered the bowl with stretchy foil and left it in the fridge for the night. On the following day I had the dough ready to be made into beautiful fresh and delicious bread just in time for dinner.

Ingredients:

• ¾ cup of milk
• ¼ cup of yogurt plus a pinch of baking soda
• 10 g fresh yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp honey
• ¼ cup of oil
• 1 egg + 1 egg white (1 yolk + 1 tsp water + 1 tsp oil for glazing)
• 4 cups of flour
• 400 g white cheese

1 cup = 240 ml

Activate the yeast with1/2 cup of  lukewarm milk, honey and 1 tsp of flour. Sift the flour and add the ingredients and the starter. Knead the dough and leave it to rise for an hour. Knead the dough again to push the air away. At this point you can leave it covered in the refrigerator for a couple of days.

The preparation: cut the dough into four equally sized balls, spread each ball flat and cover with oil and cheese. Do not grease or cover with cheese the last sheet. Cut into 16 pieces some 2-3 cm from the center of the circle. Rotate each couple of pieces - the right one clock wise, the left one of the couple - anticlockwise. Place in the baking dish, cover and leave for an hour to rise. Glaze and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C.

Because of the solid amount of cheese I did not even attempt to replicate Diana's amazing decoration (her bread looks like a piece of art, really!). But I did take care not to overbake it this time and I actually found a little trick for better baking - cover the dish with aluminum foil the last 15 minutes before taking the bread out of the oven. The crust was perfectly baked and the inside was very fluffy and thready.

Heartily recommend that recipe, the bread was delicious hot and cold too.

Cheese Rolls

Sharing with you a very tasty recipe I found in a newspaper and was curious to try immediately - rolls with two kinds of cheese.

Products for 24 rolls:

• 100 g milk
• 100 g feta (white) cheese
• 100 g emmental or other yellow cheese
• 2 eggs
• 300 g flour
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 10 g fresh yeast

Mix the yeast with the warmed milk, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tbsp flour and leave to rise. Sift the flour in a big bowl, make a hollow and add the milk with the yeast, one egg and the white of the second egg (keep the yolk for glazing), oil, salt and crumbled feta cheese. Form a soft dough. Knead on a floured surface until smooth. Cover and let it rest and double its size for 30 min.

Divide into three balls. Spread each ball into a circle, cut into 8 triangles, place a piece of hard yellow cheese (for inst. emmental) and the base of each triangle and roll. Place the rolls on a baking tin, covered with baking paper and leave to rest for 10-15 min. Glaze with the yolk, mixed with 2 tbsp of milk and spread with sesame seeds. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C until lightly browned.