Called Orange Pie on menus in Greece, the delicious creation was more like an orange cake to Americans. (Cathryn Knexzevich)

Neither my friend Cathy nor I knew much about Greek food when we embarked on a recent 10-day foray in Greece. The trip, which began with two days in Athens before we joined a seven-day Celebrity cruise, introduced both of us to tastes that surprised and delighted us.

We discovered that feta cheese in its native land is tangy but not as sour or dry as the version found here. And we learned that Greece has many more delicious cheeses.

Those who may have missed the first story in the cruise series, published last week, can find it on my blog HERE.

The chef at the delightful Piraeus City Hotel shared a recipe for the Orange Pie we first sampled at the hotel’s charming Niners Roof Garden restaurant. I’m passing it along to readers today.

To us, the Orange Pie was much more like a cake, but it tantalized our taste buds enough for us to order it twice and then request the recipe. Being a diabetic, I had only a taste both times, but it was enough for me to want to know how to make it myself.

Chef John Tsorbatzoglou kindly shared the recipe, neatly writing the ingredients and their amounts in grams and milliliters and including fresh arbaroriza leaves to flavor the syrup poured over the top before serving. Like many Americans, my knowledge of the metric system is minimal and my math for making conversions from grams and milliliters to ounces and cups far less than perfect. And I’d never heard of arbaroriza leaves, which Google revealed is a type of scented geranium.

Chef John Tsorbatzoglou works at the stove in the Niners Roof Garden restaurant at the Athens port of Piraeus. (Janet Podolak)

I know that success in baking requires more accuracy than in making a soup or a stew, so I can only hope my translated recipe works. It’s been a mind-boggling exercise when considering that liquid and dry measures vary and that the British metric conversions in many cookbooks also are different.

So in cases where the measurement is slightly less than a cup, I call it a “scant cup” (such as the 240 grams of vegetable oil). And if it’s slightly more (such as the 450 grams of sugar in the syrup topping), I call it a “heaping cup.” I’ve left the chef’s original measurements in parentheses for those who prefer to make their own conversions.

I emailed the chef, asking him to confirm my conversions and to help me find a substitute for the arbaroriza leaf (scented geranium) that is not found here.

“Just leave them out,” he said. “They grow everywhere here, and there is nothing quite like them.”

Here’s his orange pie recipe, which comes from his grandmother. We discovered many versions on menus throughout Greece.

Orange pie, first encountered at the rooftop garden restaurant of the Piraeus City Hotel in Athens, was a delicious cake-like dessert. The chef shared the recipe so we could make it at home. (Janet Podolak)

Recipe

Greek Orange Pie

Ingredients

1 package filo pastry (about 2 pounds)

Heaping ⅔ cup sugar (160 grams)

Scant 1 cup vegetable oil (240 grams)

4 eggs

Juice from 3 freshly squeezed oranges

Scant 2 cups Greek yogurt (450 grams)

Orange zest from one of the oranges (grate off zest before squeezing orange)

1⅓ tablespoons baking powder (20 grams)

½ teaspoon cardamom

For syrup:

2 heaping cups sugar (450 grams)

1¾ cup water (400 milliliters)

Scant ⅔ cup orange juice (160 milliliters)

Zest from 1 orange (grate off zest before squeezing orange)

Instructions

Open the package of filo pastry and let it dry for about two hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grate orange skin (zest) from two oranges and divide, setting aside half the zest for the syrup topping.

Cut oranges in half and thinly slice two slices from two of the halves before juicing them.

In a mixing bowl, add the sugar, vegetable oil, eggs, Greek yogurt, juice from three oranges, zest from 1 orange, 1⅓ Tablespoon baking powder and mix together.

Break the filo pastry into the mixing bowl.

Stir well with a silicone spatula and add the mixture to a 10-by-12-inch greased baking pan.

Place thinly sliced orange slices on top. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Remove to rack to cool.

Meanwhile, make the syrup by heating water and sugar to a boil while stirring vigorously.

Add orange juice and zest and let the syrup cool slightly.

Once the pie has cooled, pour warm syrup over the orange pie.

Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

— Adapted from a recipe courtesy of John Tsorbatzoglou