Spanakopita Recipe

Spanakopita is a Greek spinach pie which is a perfect treat for those who  still consume cheese or dairy products. Most of the Greek restaurants that I have been to, have a triangle shape for spanakopita. I kept delaying to make this, because I was thinking we just can’t be such in a rush while we work with fillo pastry and have to be gentle.  I bought the fillo pastry at the special store due to the L-cysteine issue.

I had 3 different shape of spanakopita, two shapes were round just different in size, another shape was triangle. To be honest it was easy to make the the round one, just put the fillo into several layers, add filling and put on several layers again.

Spanakopita
Recipe by several sources on the internet

Ingredients:
1 pkg phyllo/fillo pastry, cut into the pan size
Melted butter or olive oil (to brush on the phyllo/fillo)

For the Filling:
400 g frozen spinach
1 onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 green onions, including green stems, finely chopped
4 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
300 g feta cheese, crumbled
2 eggs, beaten
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp Olive oil

Directions:
Preheat the oven at 350F

Filling:
1. Thaw frozen spinach thoroughly, drain really well by pressing down /squeezing the water from it. Place in large mixing bowl.

2. Place frying pan on stove at over medium to high heat, add the olive oil. Add onion, stir and cook until translucent; add green onion,and garlic, stir and cook until soft. Just before they are ready, add dill. Toss the pan and do a quick mixing with a wooden spoon. Remove from the heat and let it cool.

3. Combine dill mixture with spinach, add egg and feta cheese, season with freshly ground black pepper and salt. In this case, I didn’t add salt since feta cheese is already salty enough.

Assembling
1. Take a muffin pan, brush the bottom with a small amount of melted butter. Separate a sheet of fillo from under damp tea towel and place it into the pan. Fillo pastry must be covered at all times with a damp tea towel or it will dry out. Brush a layer with butter, place another sheet of pastry on top. Brush with butter as well. Continue layering until you have used 4 sheets of filo. But do not add the butter to the top sheet.

2. Pour in the spinach mix over the top of the pastry layers. Push down and spread it evenly around the pan using your spoon. Carefully top it with 4 more layers of the fillo with the same steps as we do for the bottom layers. The different is, you need to brush on the very top layer with butter.

Finishing
Transfer the dish into the centre of the preheated oven. Bake for 30 minutes or until it is crispy and a light golden brown then remove.

These steps above are applied for mini round shape of spanakopita. For the triangle one, it will be different on assembling parts and baking time. Please do refer to this link to have more explanation regarding the triangle one.