Spanakopita: simple never tasted so good

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Spinach, cheese, a flaky crust...sounds like a perfect snack. Since I was a small child, I have always loved Spanakopita. While other parents had to beg their kids to eat a bite of green leafy spinach, no one ever had to force me to eat it in any form, but I especially loved this savory Greek pie.

Spanakopita makes a great side dish for large holiday dinners. But it can easily stand alone as the main dish. 

Looking through my Greek recipes, there are lots of savory pies. Veggies and cheeses and spices cooked in a floury crust are great for meals on the go. Work food. It is said the spinach and cheese pie we now enjoy was inspired by food from the Ottoman empire, where the leafy phyllo dough originated. The Turkish dish Borek is a cheeseless version of spanakopita with a flaky dough.

Baklava, the sweet cousin of Spanakopita, made with nuts and honey nestled in phyllo was also influenced by Ottoman chefs. We'll post a recipe for that here in short order...I'm working on a change you might like.

This recipe might look complicated, but it's totally simple (if you use the store-bought dough that you can find in the freezer section at the grocery. Believe me, it is more expensive and much, much harder to make it from scratch.) Make it when you want to impress or just throw some together for a quarantine lunch.

Spanakopita 

Makes 4 main dish servings or 8-12 snack servings 

•  1 pound of fresh spinach
• 1 roll of phyllo dough (half the box of freezer dough)
• 8 ounce of feta cheese
• 1 cup of ricotta cheese
• 12 scallions
• 1 teaspoon each of oregano, mint and dill
• Zest of one lemon
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup of olive oil (or 4 tablespoons of melted butter)
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Thaw the dough. You can put it out on the counter for a couple of hours or thaw it in the fridge overnight. Leave the roll in the plastic packaging until you're ready to use it.

Rinse the spinach and chop it roughly or tear it apart.

Cut the scallions and cook them with the spinach until the onions are browned and the spinach starts to wilt.

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

Put the spinach, the scallions, the feta, the herbs, the ricotta and the lemon zest into a bowl. 

Whisk 2 of the eggs and then mix them into the items in the bowl.

Grease a medium (10" square) pan with oil or melted butter.

Lay down a sheet of dough, brush it with butter or oil, repeat until you have about 10 sheets done, add about a third of the filling, put down five sheets of dough with the butter/oil. Keep layering,

Make sure to end with a thicker, 10 sheet later.

 Mix the remaining egg with a teaspoon of water and brush the top layer.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.