Galaktoboureko (Semolina Custard in Filo)

Variations

• The name: Greek galakto- (milk) plus boureko (börek, a filo pie). Milk pie, more or less literally.
• Galatopita: the same custard baked with a single sheet of filo underneath, or none at all — the village version from Epirus, and often without syrup.
• Semolina grade: fine gives a smooth custard, coarse leaves a perceptible grain. Greek cooks sometimes mix the two. Start with fine.
• Against baklava — the syrup rule is the same, everything else differs: both are filo pastries soaked in syrup, and both obey the same rule that one of the two must be hot and the other cold. What differs is the filling. Baklava is nuts and butter, so it must absorb as little syrup as possible for the layers to stay crisp; here the filling is custard, so the syrup stays on the surface and the edges.
• Against spanakopita: the same filo, the same country, savoury against sweet. The rules for handling filo — butter every sheet, damp cloth, it shatters when dry — are identical.
• Against the custards in éclair and prinsesstårta: those are crème pâtissière set with starch and egg, thick enough to pipe. This is set with semolina, thick enough to cut. The same milk and sugar; how firm it can get is decided by what sets it.
• Against rasgulla: the opposite attitude to syrup. That one is boiled in syrup to absorb as much as possible; here the syrup has to stay near the surface, because custard saturated with syrup goes slack.

Tips

• Rain the semolina in. Poured in at once it forms lumps cooked on the outside, and no amount of stirring breaks them up. Stir with one hand and trickle with the other.
• Why it sets firm enough to cut. A starch custard thickens because the starch granules burst and thicken the whole liquid, and it stops at a gel. Semolina is coarsely cracked wheat, so each grain takes up liquid, swells, and locks against its neighbours. Cold, it is not a gel but a mass, and a knife leaves the cut where you made it.
• Eggs only once it has cooled. Below 60°C. Added to hot custard they scramble on contact into yellow specks that a sieve never quite removes.
• Filo lives under a damp cloth. Cover the rest every time you take a sheet. Dry filo cracks like glass and disintegrates the moment the brush touches it.
• Butter every sheet. Skip one and those two sheets fuse into a single thick one, and you have lost that many layers. Fingers work as well as a brush.
• Seal the sides. That is what the overhanging bottom sheets are for. Baked open, the custard runs out sideways and welds itself to the tin.
• Cut it before baking. A knife on baked filo shatters the top and gives you ragged pieces, and the syrup will not run in evenly either.
• Hot pastry, cold syrup. Both hot and the filo drinks too much and goes soggy; both cold and the syrup sits on top. The rule is the same one baklava obeys (what sugar does).
• Cut it only when completely cold. Hot, the custard is still soft. Three hours is the minimum; overnight cuts cleanest.
• Do not refrigerate it. In the fridge the filo takes up moisture and goes limp within a day. Uncovered at room temperature is right, and eat it within two days.