Taste this specialty of the Serbian cuisine!!!
Gibanica
Traditional gibanica (cheese and egg pie made with phyllo pastry) is almost a synonym for the Serbian cuisine. Skilled cooks take pride in their puffy, golden-brown gibanica, but even the beginners can easily make it. This recipe contains advice for foreigners who cannot easily find original ingredients in their countries.
Ingredients:
500 g phyllo pastry 35 x 35 cm (14'' x 14'')
Stuffing:
400-500 g white cheese (or a mix of feta and cottage cheese with 25-45% fat)
1 cup oil
1 tbs carbonated mineral water
4 eggs
Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 200-220 oC (400 oF). First make the stuffing: smash the cheese with a fork; add the eggs and steer; add the oil and mineral water and beat thoroughly.
Grease a round baking dish with butter, pour some cold water over and leave for a little time (oil and water will make a protective film and prevent the sticking of the pastry to the baking dish). Shed the water.
A cup of oil is there to make gibanica well cooked on all sides. Don't be afraid! Excess oil will be drained before serving. Thus gibanica will not be too greasy and heavy.
Mineral water gives moisture and helps the rising. You can use milk instead, but then you have to add some baking powder into the stuffing.
Old-school chefs insist on adding kajmak into the stuffing, but it can be substituted by sour cream.
Leave two sheets of phyllo pastry aside. Place another two sheets on the bottom of the dish letting the rest hang over the edges. Loosely crumple each of the remaining sheets, dunk it into the stuffing and place at random. Repeat until the baking dish is full. Cover gibanica with the two sheets you've left aside and bake until the knife inserted in the centre comes out clean (about 1 hour).
When it is almost cooked (lightly browned), take it out from the oven and drain the excess oil (as much as possible). Sprinkle with cold water and return to the turned-off oven for 15 minutes.
Serve warm, accompanied by cold yogurt or sour milk.
Taken from www.ub2009.org
