Greek cuisine

Spanakopita

Name: Spanakopita
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 90 min
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Greek cuisine
Ingredients: 1 kg Spinach; 300 g Feta; 450 g Filo pastry; 6 Spring onions; 30 g Dill; 3 Eggs; 150 ml Olive oil; 1 pinch Nutmeg; to taste Salt and pepper

Σπανακόπιτα

A filo pie of spinach and feta. The spinach is squeezed bone dry, or the base stays raw.

Prep: 40 min
Cook: 50 min
Total: 90 min
Difficulty: Medium

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Spinach1 kg
Feta — crumbled300 g
Filo pastry450 g
Spring onions6
Dill30 g
Eggs3
Olive oil150 ml
Nutmeg1 pinch
Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Chop the spinach, salt it and leave it twenty minutes. Squeeze it dry by the handful — more water comes out than seems possible.
25 min
2
Fry the spring onion in a spoon of oil until soft and let it cool.
8 min
3
Mix the spinach with the onion, feta, dill, eggs, nutmeg and pepper. Taste before salting: the feta is salty already.
6 min
4
Line the tin with seven sheets of filo, brushing each with olive oil and letting the edges overhang.
10 min
5
Spread the filling, fold the overhanging edges in and cover with six more sheets, brushing each one.
10 min
6
Score the top into portions without cutting through to the filling, flick water over it and bake at 180 °C for fifty minutes, to a deep gold.
55 min

About the dish

Spinach gives up an enormous amount of water. It is salted, left twenty minutes and squeezed by hand — a kilo loses about a cupful of liquid that would otherwise end up in the pastry.

Olive oil goes between the filo sheets, not butter. This is a Greek pie, and the flavour of the oil reads as a component in its own right.

The top sheets are scored before baking. Steam escapes through the cuts and the top rises in layers instead of ballooning and collapsing.

Worth knowing

— Flicking water over the top guards against the filo drying: the steam stops the sheet edges curling and blackening.
— The pie must rest twenty minutes. Hot, it will not cut and the filling has not set.
— Thaw filo overnight in the fridge. At room temperature the sheets weld into one lump.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 480 kcal
Protein: 16 g
Fat: 32 g
Carbs: 34 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter