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Village Bakery · Cheese Hand Pies

Kalitsounia

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The same word covers two completely different pies — savory ones stuffed with fresh mizithra cheese and greens, and sweet ones filled with honeyed cheese and fried.

Small hand pies of thin dough are folded or crimped around a filling of fresh Cretan mizithra cheese, sometimes mixed with wild greens or finished with honey, then baked or fried. Village bakeries and Easter market stalls across Crete sell them warm.

Why it's made this way: Crete's shepherding tradition produces abundant fresh sheep's- and goat's-milk cheese, and turning it into a portable hand pie made it easy for shepherds and market-goers alike to eat on the move.
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Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.