I love all things Southern. Biscuits, fried chicken, grits, there are just so many Southern dishes that I cannot get enough of! But I’m also Gabbie, or as noted on Family Food Fight a bit of a Culinary Beyonce, and that means I cannot resist adding my own spin to things. I have this gorgeous Greek Oregano plant growing in my garden along with lots of tomatoes, which I used in this recipe. My garden is where a lot of cooking inspiration comes from, and a desire to turn a normal recipe into something that reflects my love of flavor. This dish is just that, and absolutely perfect for entertaining.

My one request is that you splurge on the Dufour Pastry Kitchens frozen puff pastry. It has the most incredible homemade flavor. You would never believe it came from a box!

Gabbie’s Greek Tomato Pie

1 box Dufour Puff Pastry
2 c. halved cherry tomatoes
1.5 c. crumbled Kourellas brand Manouri cheese
1/4 c. olive oil, I used Villa DiTrapano
1 tsp. chopped fresh Greek oregano or 1/2 tsp. dried
1/2 tsp. anchovy paste
4 cloves garlic
1 tbsp. chopped chives
1 tbsp. chopped fresh dill
salt for sweating tomatoes, the anchovy paste and cheese are salty enough!
pepper to taste

Start by defrosting your puff pastry in the fridge, this took over 3 hours for me. Then slice your cherry tomatoes liberally salt them and set them in a colander to sweat liquid, frequently stirring them around to make sure the liquid drains—this step is important in making sure your pie doesn’t become a soupy mess. I left mine on the counter for about an hour.

Roll out your dough with flour getting it nice and thin and increasing the size of the rectangle by a few inches all the way around. Then transfer to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Take a fork and poke all over the pastry dough so it doesn’t over puff in one spot.

Mix together four cloves of minced garlic, the chopped fresh oregano or dried oregano, anchovy paste and olive oil. Brush the pastry dough.

Dot the dough with cut tomatoes and manouri cheese. I baked at 375 degrees for 35 minutes and turned up to 400 degrees for the last 10. Watch the dough, because everyone’s oven is different and I thought mine took a little long to bake but NOTHING is worse than raw dough. I let it rest for 15 minutes before cutting. Then garnished with fresh dill, chives, and many cracks of black pepper.

Enjoy! I promise if you brought this to a dinner party, it would steal the hearts of everyone there.

And a bit about Villa DiTrapano Olive Oil!

Our small batch extra virgin olive oil is made from our 400 olive trees on our property in Sezze Romano, Italy. The trees are mostly Itrana Olive trees with some Frantoia Olive trees.

We harvest our trees by hand once a year when the olives are young. We therefore, obtain less olive oil but a more flavorful one. The longer the olive stay on the tree the more oil when you get it but the oil is less flavorful.The oil you have is our “early harvest” from 2018.

We take the olives to a local mill within 48 hours from being harvested where they are cold pressed one time (first cold press) using no heat or chemicals to alter the flavor.

Each year are olive oil tastes a little different. The taste and amount of olives depends on the sun, the amount of rain, and the temperatures that vary each year. Some years certain trees produce and certain trees do not. We are completely at the whim of mother nature. The 2019 harvest is predicted to be a good one.

Our olive oil has a robust flavor with a hint of salt and peppery finish.

Our olive oil is then taken in containers to guarantee freshness to the port of Naples, Italy where it is shipped on a boat to New York. Our representative in the United States then pick up the oil in NY and we bottle it here in the United States.