A new year tends to bring all sort of philosophical musings, even in the kitchen. As 2008 drew to a close, I found myself asking the all-important question: What’s one thing I’ve always wanted to make, but never had the time or courage to pursue? And the answer was the same as it’s been over the last seven years since I’ve migrated to the US–to work with phyllo dough, to really see what it’s like, to study its papyrus-like delicateness and to transform it into something magical. We never had phyllo in the Philippines, or maybe I just didn’t know where to buy it, but I’ve always been fascinated, scared even, of what the stuff was.

Phyllo, also called fillo or filo, is the backbone of Turkish, Greek and Middle Eastern pastries. It’s paper-thin sheets of dough made from flour, water and oil, usually layered on top of each other with a brushing of melted butter in between. Once baked, the sheets puff up and form the characteristic crispy shell of many a mouthwatering treat, like the spinach- and cheese-filled savory pies called spanakopitas in Greece or the syrup-soaked, nutty confection called baklava in Turkey.

I had the chance to finally try my hand at phyllo when, some time in December, I found myself with some leftover chicken and the now-familiar itch in my hands to just MAKE something in the kitchen. I’d had a package of phyllo in the freezer for the longest time, but was always too intimidated to work with it, imagining the papery sheets disintegrating in my clumsy hands. I had all the ingredients for a Chicken Pot Pie, but wasn’t in the mood to turn out a crust from flour. After turning up some Sigur Ros on my iPod, I decided to set to work, hoping that my plan to use the phyllo as a crust for the Pot Pie would work.

And to up the philosophical ante on this first real post for 2009–I want to say, here’s the thing about scary things: Your imagination (well, mostly mine!) often transforms them into almost mythical monsters. The phyllo wasn’t the easiest thing to work with, but it certainly wasn’t a beast! I found that I had some trouble in the sections that had folded over in packaging (and tore easily), but the dough was actually quite forgiving.

I decided to try two versions of the Phyllo Chicken Pot Pie, a simpler, rustic one with about 10 sheets on top of each other and the ends tucked into the dish, and a fancier one with the buttered sheets cut into strips and scrunched on top of a base of about two initial sheets of phyllo.

Which one do you like best?

Mine’s the plain one because it seemed to go well with the comfortableness of everything that went into the dish: roasted chicken, potatoes, cream of mushroom soup, beans, corn, carrots and baby bella mushrooms. It’s the first one I dove into. Yum!

And with this post, I say a curly, “Hello, folks!  I’m back.”  I’m not lost in the sands of Tatooine somewhere, nor have I been sucked into a wormhole. I’ve just been around and busy and remembering something I read in a cookbook once: “Life happens when you’re not baking.” I sat down to write tonight to disprove that. I’d like to think that life happens especially because you’re in the kitchen, on adventures like tackling phyllo and making food that feeds the senses, and sitting down to write all about them.

I have so much to blog about! Happy new year to all, and here I go now, making my way over to your neck of the world wide woods. I may be slow in getting there, but I will! I can’t wait to see what everyone’s been up to!