Greek Artopita
Greek Artopita
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Greek Artopita
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Post #1 - November 1st, 2007, 3:01 pmHi,
Does anyone know where a recipe could be found? Is this a Greek national dish or a Greek-American dish found in Chicago? Unless there is an alternative spelling, there really is not much information about this spinach filled pastry.
Thanks in advance for any leads.
Regards,Cathy2
"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
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Post #2 - November 1st, 2007, 4:10 pmDo you possibly mean Tiropita, which is a feta cheese filled filo dough triangle, similar to spanokopita (spinach pie)? If so, yes.Steve Z.
“Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven
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Post #3 - November 1st, 2007, 4:32 pmstevez wrote:Do you possibly mean Tiropita, which is a feta cheese filled filo dough triangle, similar to spanokopita (spinach pie)? If so, yes.
My understanding (gleaned mostly by reading the menu at Artopolis, so...) is that artopita is the category that spanakopita and tiropita fall under. That, of course, does not answer Cathy2's question.
(Edit: The more I ponder this since posting (and doing a Google search), it strikes me as an invented word that enables Artopolis to use things like emmenthaler and still read as authentic.)
Kristen
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Post #4 - November 1st, 2007, 8:48 pmI'm pretty sure that "artopita" was invented by Artopolis.
Artopolis wrote:Artopitas are the ultimate Artopolis creation.
It's puff pastry rather than phyllo. I'm sure you could adapt any spanakopita recipe.
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Post #5 - November 2nd, 2007, 9:38 amIn my 43+ years as a Greek, I never encountered the term artopita until I saw them at Artopolis, so I am pretty sure it is a made up marketing term. In my familiy, our generic name for the food group of filled phyllo pastries was "pita." You put the name of the filling in front of the word "pita" to describe the different kinds: Spanakopita= spinach filled. Tiropita = cheese filled. Kreatopita = meat filled. Prassopita = leek filled. Kolokithopita = winter-squash filled. Rizopita = rice filled (odd but rather tasty if very starchy). Those are all the variations my mother makes. The phyllo was the same, just the filling changed. So I think Artopolis coined "artopita" as the generic term for all of their savory stuffed pastries. That said, I do like their artopitas. Are we sure its puffed pastry that they use for the artopitas? I know it's not phyllo but the pastry struck me as a bit sturdier than puff pastry.
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Post #6 - November 2nd, 2007, 9:47 amAnybody know the etymology of the word "pita?"
I've often wondered as this word seems to travel around the silk road area, but there's a wide range of bread and stuffed pastry named for it.
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Post #7 - November 2nd, 2007, 9:54 amMhays wrote:Anybody know the etymology of the word "pita?"
I've often wondered as this word seems to travel around the silk road area, but there's a wide range of bread and stuffed pastry named for it.
Here's what the OEDsays (some of the characters are going to get messed up from my copy & pasting):[Partly < modern Hebrew pitt{amac}h (< Balkan Judaeo-Spanish pita slightly leavened flat bread), partly < the etymon of the latter, modern Greek {pi}{ghacu}{tau}{tau}{alpha}, {pi}{giacu}{tau}{alpha}, {pi}{giacu}{tau}{tau}{alpha} bread, cake, pie, pitta (a1108 in medieval Greek as {pi}{giacu}{tau}{alpha}), partly < Serbian and Croatian pita (1685), and partly perh. also < other languages of the Balkans (cf. Albanian pite, Bulgarian pita); further etymology uncertain and disputed.
The relationship of the forms in the different European languages is unclear. Various ancient Greek etymons have been suggested, but the word appears to be of fairly recent appearance in Greek (as is suggested by the variable spelling); also, a plausible transmission from ancient Greek into the various other modern languages is difficult to establish. Modern Hebrew pitt{amac}h is written as if descended from an Aramaic form (cf. Old Western Aramaic pitt{schwa}{tundl}{amac}, Eastern Aramaic pitt{amac}, related to Palestinian colloquial Arabic fatte crumb, piece of bread) but there is no continuity between them. The Arabic word for this type of bread is kim{amac}j (< Persian kum{amac}j). Turkish pide (1890) is a loanword, prob. < Greek.
An ultimate origin in Germanic has been suggested by G. Princi Braccini (Archivio Glottologico Italiano 64 (1979 ) 42-89), perh. < an unattested Gothic *bita, cognate with Old High German bizzo bite, morsel, lump, cake made of flour (see PIZZA n.), whence the word spread first into Rhaeto-Romance and the languages of the western Balkans, and then beyond, cf. Romansh (Engadine) petta, Ladin (Ampezzano) peta, Friulian peta, all in sense ‘thin flat bread’, post-classical Latin petta, a kind of bread or flat cake (1249, 1297 in Friulian sources), Albanian petë thin layer of dough or pastry crust, Vlach pit{abreve} pie, tart, Romanian regional pit{abreve} bread, Hungarian pite pie, tart (1598); Italian regional (Calabria) pitta pitta, is prob. < Greek. However, the theory of Germanic origin presents certain phonological difficulties. An alternative theory has been proposed by J. Kramer (Balkan-Archiv 14-15 (1990 ) 220-31) who sees the word as ult. of Illyrian origin.]
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Post #8 - November 2nd, 2007, 10:21 amkl5 wrote:My understanding (gleaned mostly by reading the menu at Artopolis, so...) is that artopita is the category that spanakopita and tiropita fall under.
This line of thinking sounds (literally) promising. Last evening, mulling this over with Cathy2, I found the term "hortopita" in The Foods of the Greek Islands (Kremezi, 2000). From context, it appears that Kristen is on the right track: that this refers to a category. If you don't pronounce the hard "h," a version of artopita, "ortopita" results. Perhaps Antonius or Amata can weigh in on this.Man : I can't understand how a poet like you can eat that stuff.
T. S. Eliot: Ah, but you're not a poet.
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Post #9 - November 2nd, 2007, 3:09 pmI found the term "hortopita" in The Foods of the Greek Islands (Kremezi, 2000). From context, it appears that Kristen is on the right track: that this refers to a category. If you don't pronounce the hard "h," a version of artopita, "ortopita" results.
As I had mentioned in my post above, Kristin is right that "pita" refers to a category. But I'm not so sure that "artopita" would have been derived from "hortopita". "Horta" is "greens" in Greek so hortopita would refer to phyllo pastry with a filling made of greens as opposed to a filling made of spinach (spanakopita) or cheese (tiropita). At least in my part of Greece, we referred to all filled savory phyllo pastries as "pita" generally and then added the name of the filling before "pita" to refer to a specific type. I do think artopita is a name the folks at Artopolis created to encompass the larger collection of their phyllo pastries.
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Post #10 - November 2nd, 2007, 3:19 pmHellodali wrote:In my 43+ years as a Greek, I never encountered the term artopita until I saw them at Artopolis, so I am pretty sure it is a made up marketing term. In my familiy, our generic name for the food group of filled phyllo pastries was "pita." You put the name of the filling in front of the word "pita" to describe the different kinds: Spanakopita= spinach filled. Tiropita = cheese filled. Kreatopita = meat filled. Prassopita = leek filled. Kolokithopita = winter-squash filled. Rizopita = rice filled (odd but rather tasty if very starchy).
That seems to be true in my (the Chow Poodle's) family as well. Besides the ones you mention, my favorite is kotopita, which is chicken filled.Steve Z.
“Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven
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