SPANAKOPITA

Greek spinach and feta cheese pie

Ingredients

• 500 g fillo dough
• 120 ml olive oil
• 1.5 kg spinach (5 packages, if you use frozen spinach)
• 100 g unsalted butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped.
• 3 leeks, washed and chopped.
• 500 g feta cheese
• 5 eggs
• 100 g breadcrumbs
• 250 ml milk
• 5 ml salt
• pepper

Procedure

1. If you are using fresh spinach, wash it, dip it for a minute or two in boiling water to blanch it, and then chop it. Drain the spinach and squeeze most of the water out of it.
2. Wash thoroughly and chop the white part of the leeks. Peel and chop the onion. Saut\o'ea' the chopped leeks and onion in the butter.
3. Add the spinach, salt and pepper. Mix everything together and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. While the spinach is cooking, grate the feta cheese (I use a food processor). Alternatively, you can crumble it into small chunks.
5. Remove the spinach from heat and add the cheese, eggs (beaten), breadcrumbs and milk. Mix everything together and set aside.
6. Grease a square baking pan with a little olive oil. Take one sheet of dough and place it on the bottom of the pan towards one of the corners, in such a way that the dough sticks out a little from two of the sides of the pan. Brush the sheet with olive oil. Repeat this step until you have used about two thirds of the dough, alternating corners and always brushing each sheet of dough with olive oil.
7. Pour the spinach mixture into the pan. Level it, and fold in the sides of the assembled crust. Brush the dough with olive oil.
8. Take one sheet of dough and place it on top of the pie, this time without any bias towards any of the corners. Brush the sheet with olive oil. Repeat this step until you have used all the remaining dough, always brushing each sheet with olive oil.
9. Gently tuck the edges of the top sheets of dough under the sides of the pie. Brush the top with olive oil. Using a sharp knife cut the top of the pie as if you were cutting it to serve it, but don't go all the way to the bottom. Sprinkle the pie with 1 Tbsp of water and bake it at 175C for 45 minutes.
10. Let the pie cool, and serve.

Notes

Unless you work quickly when assembling the dough layers, the unused pieces of dough will dry out. Until you become nimble with this process, you can cover the unused dough pieces with a damp dishcloth to prevent them from drying out while you fumble with the construction of the pie.

The pie keeps well out of the refrigerator for a few days and can (indeed, some claim must) be eaten at room temperature.

Because of the way the pie is constructed, pieces cut from the corners and sides of the pan are particularly crunchy, and a lot of people consider them the best part of the pie. This suits me just fine, because I like the middle pieces which have more filling!

The original recipe called for twice the amount of olive oil, but I find that I don't need that much.

Rating

Contributor

 
Kriton Kyrimis 
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA 
kyrimis@princeton.edu allegra!princeton!kyrimis 
 

Original header

Path: decwrl!recipes
From: kyrimis@Princeton.EDU (Kriton Kyrimis)
Newsgroups: alt.gourmand
Subject: RECIPE: Spanakopita
Message-ID: <13981@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: 15 Jul 88 05:31:53 GMT
Sender: recipes@decwrl.DEC.COM
Distribution: alt
Organization: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Lines: 102
Approved: reid@decwrl.dec.com


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