You will need a food mixer and bowl
Plain flour
Corn flour
Local loose butter
salt
black or red pepper
Cheddar cheese (not processed)
Buffalow cheese (Feta)
5 eggs
Milk
One large WHITE onion
Half a green SWEET Pepper, not a hot pepper
One large tomatoe
A 7" round metal baking tin about l" deep.
First put flour and butter in fridge to ensure it is cool.
Prepare onion and pepper by cutting small making sure you cut away any white pith from the green pepper, and no hard skin or core from the onion. Gently sweat these in a non-stick frying pan with a little butter and oil. When the onion becomes transparent, stop the cooking. leave to stand.
Prepare the pastry. Take about one and a half mugs of plain flour. Sift it well to remove inpurities, insect larvae, grit and bits of wood etc. Add salt and pepper to taste. Do NOT add any raising agent. Add a level desertspoon of Cornflour. Mix all together and sift well into a mixing bowl.
Take approximately just slightly less than half a mug of loose local butter, and cut it into the flour with a sharp knife into fairly small pieces. DO NOT rub in. Some things are best rubbed by hand. Pastry is NOT one of them! Now, with the MIXER begin blending the butter and flour on slow. Gradually increase the speed as the butter becomes broken down. Finish on Fast speed so that the incredients resemble fine breadcrumbs, but do not over mix.
Whilst mixing at high speed add a teaspoon of bottled water at a time until the breadcrums begin to stick together. DO NOT make the pastry wet so that it sticks to the fingers when tested. It should just about bind together without stickiness. If it is too wet the pastry will resemble concrete when it is cooked. I should add that mixing these particular incredients with a food mixer will make the pastry short. If using non-Egyptian ingredients (fine flour) then it will be too short, but we are doing it the Egyptian way here!
Pop the baking tin in the freezer for a minute or two. Make sure the rolling out board is very cold. If necessary put it in the freezer for a couple of minutes together with the rolling pin. Everything must be as cold as possible.
Flour the hands and ball together the pastry, and if necessary knead lightly so that it all sticks together without sticking at all to the hands. If the pastry sticks to the hands, it is too wet. If not wet enough, it will crack when rolling out. lightly flour the rolling surface, rolling pin, and roll out pastry to about one eighth of an inch thick. Roll it around the rolling pin and carefully insert the pastry on the top of the baking tin and begin to press into shape so that it fits the tin perfectly. Cut around the top edge and decorate with a fork if you wish. Put in fridge to relax whilst you prepare the egg custard mixture.
Switch on Bottle Gas. If your oven thinks it is a furnace, turn the requlator to the lowest setting.
Take a medium size cooking pan. Break five eggs into it. Mix with mixer until blended. Take a good rounded desertspoonful of feta cheese and blend with the egg mixture. Do not add any salt as there is a great deal of salt in the Feta cheese. Mix up a couple of desertspoonfuls of flour with milk to form a creamy texture, and add this to the egg mixture and blend in. Add at least a quarter kilo of milk and blend in. Take some hard cheddar cheese about the size of two cigarette boxes and grate it. Add this to the egg mixture with a fork or spoon.
Pour all this mixture into the prepared pastry case. Add the green pepper and onion a spoonful at a time, and gently stir in. Do not add these ingredients to the mixture until nearly ready for baking as they will tend to all sink to the bottom. It is best to have them evenly distributed. Finally, thinly slice up a tomatoe, removing any hard bits and very carefully lay them on the top so that they float, and will form a decoration.
Put in the oven on the top shelf and bake for at least half an hour. You can test if it is cooked by inserting a knife in the middle. The filling should rise above the sides of the pastry shell, but will sink back after cooking. If the centre is not quite firm, bear in mind it will continue to set after cooking. Too much cooking and it will become hard and solid. The pastry round the edge should be just starting to turn brown. An extra five or ten minutes cooking should do no harm. You have to know your oven rather than time exactly. It is not affected by opening the oven door, so you can keep a close eye on it.
When cooked, allow to stand until the filling is set and sinks back, then place a large plate on top, turn it over to remove it from the tin, and with another plate turn it back so that it is right side up.
Onions in food cause bacteria very quickly, so this must be eaten before 3 days, and kept refrigerated. It can be frozen by the desperate, but this does spoil the texture and flavour. This receipe does not include cream, but half of the milk can be substituted by single pouring cream for an extra rich flavour.
Let me know how you get on, and I will tell you where you have gone wrong if it doesnt turn out absolutely perfect every time.
Experience is not what happens to you;
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