Old Rag Pie

Old Rag Pie is not the most glamorous name for something which, while being incredibly simple to make, will have you, and anyone who eats it, in raptures. The name is the English translation for the Greek Patsavouropita, created by bakeries as a way of using up old scraps of phyllo pastry: the "old rags" indicated by the title. They'd just go along their counters, collect up all the bits and turn them into this pie. For this reason, you don't need to worry about keeping your phyllo covered as you go, as is normally advised. It doesn't matter if it dries out a little as you make it, indeed this can even be desirable. In Greece, there are two variants, one sweet, one savory, but this version is the brainchild of my friend Alex Andreou (a bona fide--if it's not too rude to go into Latin here--Greek from Mykonos, and the source of other recipes, too) which merges the two, adding honey to salty feta, to create what I can best describe (in taste terms) as a Greek cheesecake. I have made this with a variety of phyllo pastries, and I have found that the more widely available brands are too damp and too heavily sprinkled with flour to do the job well. Luckily, those brands make a frozen phyllo, which doesn't seem to suffer from the same problems, which is why I stipulate this, below. (The other benefit of using frozen phyllo is that--given that feta has such a long shelf life--you can keep all the ingredients to make this in your freezer, fridge and cupboard without an extra visit to the shops.) However, should you be lucky enough to have access to good-quality, authentic phyllo, then please use fresh. And if you plan to freeze the pie before baking it, then you will definitely have to start with fresh, not frozen phyllo for sure. Since the packets of frozen phyllo come in 270-gram (9.5-ounce) weights, that is what I have used, but another 75 to 100 grams (3 to 4 ounces) or so wouldn't go amiss. So, if you can buy this in bigger packets, or are buying fresh by weight, go ahead, but don't break open a second packet for it. I'm afraid this Patsavouropita does make for an annoyingly difficult tin-washing-up later, but when you eat this, you'll know it's worth it.