RECIPE: HILOPITES
I spent the day with Yiayia, learning to make the Greek pasta dish that greeted me when I arrived home from school each day
When my maternal grandparents migrated from Greece to Australia in the early 1960s, they settled in the regional NSW town of Bourke, some 700 kilometres i]]west of Sydney. This is where my Yiayia, Effie, began adjusting to one of the basic elements of married life, learning to cook a dish her mother in law had perfected, and one her husband in his homesickness for Greece, yearned for.
So this is how the recipe for hilopites, a traditional Greek pasta made from flour, eggs, milk and salt came to be a staple dish in our newly settled family. Yiayia Effie implored her sister in law to teach her the recipe in the dusty outback so as to please her husband, and it became one that over the years she would perfect, and use to comfort her children and grandchildren in times of sadness or illness.
Ingredients
For the dough (makes roughly 300g dried pasta):
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
Pinch of salt
500g plain flour
For the sauce:
1 cup hilopites
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 litre of water
Recipe
**A note - it is recommended you use a pasta machine to stretch and cut the dough, but you can absolutely make it with a rolling pin
Dough
Whisk eggs in a bowl until beaten and frothy
Add milk, salt and flour to the egg mixture
Mix with hands until a smooth dough forms and the bowl is relatively clean, add more milk or flour if needed
Cover the dough and leave to rest at room temperature for 10 minutes
Once rested, divide the dough into smaller balls (roughly the size of a tennis ball)
Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough and flour the surface on either side
Roll each piece through the pasta machine, first at the widest setting, then again through the middle setting, then once more through second last or third last setting until it is thicker than a piece of paper but slightly opaque
leave the pasta sheets to dry for 1-2 hours
Once relatively dry, wrap each sheet around a thin wooden stick or narrow rolling pin and cut down the centre of the stick
At this stage you can cut the pasta into long strips (1 cm wide) by hand, but it is simpler to cut by rolling through the pasta machine on a fettuccine or linguine setting
Once cut into long strips, cut each strip into tiny squares - this is the traditional shape
Leave the pasta to dry on a cloth, spaced out, for 24 hours
Sauce
My Yiayia uses hilopites in two primary dishes, baked in the oven with a whole chicken (similar to giouvetsi) or plain, in a tomato-flavoured broth, as instructed below.
Bring 1 litre of salted water to the boil
Add 1 cup of the dried pasta, 1 tbsp of butter and 2 tbsp of tomato paste to the boiling water
Stir to mix, then leave on a rapid simmer, uncovered, until the pasta absorbs the water, stirring occasionally to unstick the pasta
Garnish by grating mizithra (dried ricotta) or feta cheese over the pasta, and with a squeeze of lemon to enhance the sweetness of the tomato broth
