Good Old Fashion Spanakopita

I don’t know about you, but I love vegetables. Cauliflower, carrots, asparagus, snap peas (YES!) broccoli, peppers, lettuce and so on. But I especially love spinach and my absolute favorite dish with spinach is definitely spanakopita, AKA spinach pie. Usually, this is made with filo dough, but in the villages and the older towns in Greece, the villagers don’t have filo dough. So what do they do? They make their own. Of course it’s not nearly as thin, but I sometimes prefer the homemade dough. If you’ve never had this, and you like spinach – I would definitely suggest making this recipe. Even if you don’t like spinach, you will change your mind after trying this. Spinach with lots of feta cheese, onions and herbs, tastes so much different than plain bland spinach.

Ingredients:

For the dough: (you can use really any dough you want, I used whole wheat dough)

2 cups whole wheat flour

3 cups white flour

2 cups water

1 T olive oil

About 1 T butter

1 T vinegar

1 tsp. salt 

 

For the filling:

2 cups cooked and drained spinach

2 small onions, or 1 medium onion, diced

A few green onions, diced

¼ cup fresh dill, chopped

¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped

12 oz feta cheese

1-2 T soft goat cheese

1 egg

Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure: Preheat oven to 375 F. Make the dough, adding as little or as much flour and water as needed. Let the dough sit in the bowl and begin to prepare the rest of the ingredients. 

Place the raw spinach in a pot and let it cook until it has shrunken down in size and liquid is beginning to come out. 

Don’t cook it completely because it will be cooking more in the oven. Once it is at that stage, pour it into a colander and squeeze all excess liquid out. This is a very important part of the recipe, because if the spinach is wet at all, the pita will become soggy and disgusting. Once you think all of the liquid is out leave in the colander on the side, so that any extra liquid will continue to come out. 

In another pan, pour the oil and fry the onions until they are tender but not caramelized. 

 

Similar to the spinach, the onions will cook more in the oven, so we don’t want melted onions in the pita. Add the chopped parsley and dill to the pot and let them cook for about a minute or so.

In another small pan, melt the butter.

While the butter is melting and the onions and fresh herbs are cooking, take the feta cheese, goat cheese, and the egg and mix it all together in a bowl. 

Once it is all combined remove the pan from the burner and add the cheese mixture to the onions and herbs in the pan. Now add the cooked, strained spinach and mix everything together.

Now that the filling is done start with the dough. Butter a dish. Take the dough and cut it in half, then cut it in half again so that you have 4 equal pieces. Roll out the dough as thin as you can and place it in the dish covering all of the dish. 

Cut any excess off. Butter the dough and then roll out another piece of dough. Place that one on top of the first one and pat it down flat. (I found a recipe that mentioned that double layering the dough should make the bread fluffier and thicker, which is more of the old style so I wanted to try it. In order for this to work, each layer must be thin, so this is an optional step) Now butter it again and pour the spinach mixture into the center. 

Spread it out evenly and roll out the third piece of dough. Do the same as before, butter and add the fourth piece on top. 

Lightly slice the top layer of dough into pieces 12 pieces. Instead of using the melted butter on top, take raw butter and ‘smear’ it all over the top of the dough. 

This will make a crispier crust so I would recommend doing it. Now place it in the oven for about 40-45 minutes, or until the top is brown is no longer doughy.  

Let it cool a bit and then it is ready to serve!