Tag: spinach pie

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry for Midsummer

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Home again and tired… I’m a bit late with the traditional Midsummer Post this year because I’ve just finished a crazy trip to lake Baikal along the Trans-Siberian railroad and then to Vladivostok and back on a plane. Still need some time to recuperate… And obviously yet another week or so of holidays to write posts about the trip. The day I arrived I was already baking (without any particular recipe, lazy style). In two days I felt ready for some more effort which means following a recipe. And here it is, my semi-improvised midsummer Greek spinach and cheese pie:

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry will make a thin crunchy pie with soft cheese and herbs. For the recipe of the Homemade Phyllo Pastry, visit food.com. Here is the improvised filling and what I changed in the pastry recipe:

The only change to the pastry ingredients was to add some freshly ground pepper. As for the procedure, I did not use the dowel to poll it out as thin as possible but rather just… well, rolled it out with a rolling pin and then stretched it as much as I could before it would tear apart (which it inevitably did). For this pie I used only half of the pastry recipe – three sheets on the bottom and three sheets on top, brushing them with olive oil. Still thinking what to do with the remaining half (this type of pastry is traditionally used in both sweet and savoury pies, but  already added pepper to it…).

Filling:

  • c. 350 g of soft white cheese like Adygea cheese (try Feta if you can get it but be careful with salt)
  • 400 g of spinach (I used frozen)
  • 1 egg
  • some fresh herbs of your choice, chopped
  • salt, pepper, seasoning of your choice
  • dried oregano
  • sesame seeds
  • bran, wheat germ, semolina or just flour

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Procedure:

First, I heated up frozen spinach without adding any water, so that the liquid evaporates. Then I left it to cool down a bit and meanwhile prepared the pastry. While the pastry was resting, I added cheese, egg, spices and herbs to the spinach. My idea was to get a less liquid filling not to lose the crunchiness of the pastry.

I laid three sheets of pastry onto the bottom, brushing them with olive oil. Then I sprinkled some wheat germ on top to absorb the liquid of the filling (you can use whatever absorbing ‘agent’ you prefer). Then I spread the filling over the bottom sheets and covered the pie with three more sheets, slightly pinching the edges. I brushed some olive oil on top too and sprinkled it with sesame seeds. I also pre-cut the pie which created this ‘pattern’:

Spinach Pie with Phyllo Pastry

Then I baked the pie at 200 ‘C for about 30 minutes until the top pastry layer achieved its golden colour.

Remarks: Thanks to all the precaution I took to reduce the amount of liquid in the filling, the bottom pastry layers was not soggy and the top was quite crunchy. Also, the pre-cutting worked out just fine. If you add all the 12 sheets into one pie, I would suggest making larger folds for the top pastry layers, so that you get a less dense dough part.

Result: A thin pie with a nice balance of pastry and filling. Perfect with a (Greek) salad on the side.

My midsummer series so far:

Adding this post to the Lunch / Dinner collection, where you will find other cheese and greens pies. For many more Greek and Greek-inspired recipes like Tyropita or Spanakopita, check out the By Country collection.

Will come back with my Grand Russian Tour posts, I hope soon.

G.

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Greek Spinach and Cheese Double Rolls

georgiagilmour4 Comments

With each new Greek recipe I post here my blog seems to become a more Greek rather than post-Soviet blog : ) But I just cannot resist the heartiness and the comfort of the Greek cuisine! Me speaking Greek language has opened to me so many variations on the same good old theme – a Greek pie.

Spinach Cheese Rolls from www.argiro.gr

One of my favourite parts of Greek cuisine is the multitude of various pies with all sorts of pastries and fillings. And to think that I only make those pies that do not have meat in them or do not require the pastry I cannot make (or too lazy to do that) myself?

Spinach Cheese Rolls from www.argiro.gr

Fairly recently I’ve posted a Greek recipe of a Spinach Cheese Pie with Cornmeal Crust which is an unusual thing even for the rich versatile Greek cuisine. This time I would like to share with you yet another Greek pie also made with spinach and cheese but the filling is wrapped in a more conventional type of pastry.

A year ago – Cheesy Potato and Leek Bake with Sourdough Bread

Two years ago – Autumnal Comfort Sweet Treats

Three years ago – An Easy Bread and A Not That Easy Bread

Spanakotiropita se Rolla or Spinach Cheese Rolls (Σπανακοτυρόπιτα σε ρολά) adapted, translated and posted here with the kind permission of Argiro from www.argiro.gr will make two huge or three-four medium rolls with tasty pastry and salty filling. See my remarks in italics.

Ingredients

For the pastry:

  • 600 g all purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 Tbs vinegar – I used Greek red wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • water, about 2 cups – I used less
  • 4 Tbs butter or margarine, melted

For the filling:

  • 1 kg spinach – I used a bit less of frozen spinach which I defrosted and cooked in its liquid a bit
  • 10 spring onions with the green parts – I used less
  • 1 bunch dill
  • 2 eggs – I decided to leave them out
  • 500 g Feta – I had just a bit of real Feta left from this recipe so had to add 2 blocks of 5% fat cottage cheese (tvorog)
  • 100 g hard cheese (originally Kefalotiri)
  • salt – I also added the Georgian mix called Khmeli-suneli and some Provence herbs
  • freshly ground black pepper

Procedure

Making the pastry: In a bowl place the flour, salt, olive oil, vinegar and then add the water bit by bit, kneading the pastry until it doesn’t stick to hands and is very pliable. Divide the pastry into ten small balls. Roll each ball out on a floured surface to a size of a fruit plate. When you have the first 5 circles, brush one with the melted butter, cover with the next one, butter this one too and go on like this until you get to the fifth circle. Do not grease this one. Place the five circles in a dish and cover it. Proceed with the remaining 5 balls. Place both piles in the fridge for 1 hour so that the butter is chilled and the result is almost that of a sfogliata pastry (=puff pastry).

Now to the filling: Clean, wash and finely chop the spinach (I used frozen spinach that I cooked in its liquid), place it in a bowl, adding the finely chopped spring onions. Add 1 tsp salt and knead the mixture so that it releases the liquid (I did not do that). Leave it for ten minuted. Squeeze the mixture with your hands to drain it completely. Place it back in a bowl and add dill and beaten eggs (I didn’t add eggs). Add the grated cheese, season with salt and pepper and mix well (I couldn’t help seasoning the mixture with some herbs).

Assembling and baking: Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Divide the filling in four. Roll out the first pile into a large rectangular of the same size as your baking sheet. Place tablespoons of filling along both long sides of the pastry. Roll each side up to the middle until the two stick together. Transfer this double roll onto the baking sheet (I rolled the pastry on the paper already). Do the same with the second pile. Brush the rolls with some butter, sprinkle with water (and some sesame seeds if you wish). Bake on the bottom rack for about 1 hour and 15 minutes till it browns nicely (my roll took just about an hour and I placed it on the middle rack).

Spinach Cheese Rolls from www.argiro.gr

Remarks: I did not bake all the rolls at once, I put the remaining half of the pastry in the fridge wrapped in plastic and the filling too. The next day I added some cooked corn groats to the leftover feeling (don’t kill me for that!) and made two smaller pies. One of them was only half-vegetarian as I filled one side of the roll with minced meat for my Father.

Spinach Cheese Rolls from www.argiro.gr

Result: The perfect comfort food for me. Oh that flaky pastry and that salty soft filling… Be careful with the salt though if your Feta is a real one. And of course all the sesame seeds will eventually fall off but who cares!

Recently made this good-looking Pistachio-Walnut Sourdough Bread with my rye sourdough culture – no hope that I will taste it though as I will soon be travelling again and I left it at my parents’ place unguarded… 🙂

G.

Greek recipe · pies · vegetarian

Spanakopita and Mediterranean Vegetable Millefeuille

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

August is running fast towards September, the light has changed, the rain has  and the weather is far from that heat wave we had just a couple of days ago.  It’s been raining today, there was some lightning and thunder and then just a minute later there was this blind rain as we call it in Russia – it just ignores the sun and pours down anyway 🙂

Mediterranean Vegetable and Mint Pesto Millefeuilles from kopiaste.org

This mid-August post is dedicated to a couple of Greek vegetarian recipes, so please welcome the first of them, bringing the Mediterranean flavours to your table wherever you are:

Mediterranean Vegetable and Mint Pesto Millefeuilles from kopiaste.org

A year ago – tasty sourdough mini rolls in Summer Goes On with Sourdough Mini-Rolls

Two years ago – baked potatoes the Greek way and a creamy apple tart starring in Pommes. Pommes de Terre too

It’s a pity there’s no recipe for this first dish available online anymore as the author, Ivy, has removed it from her blog, kopiaste.org. I do respect and support Ivy’s idea of inciting people to purchase her recipe book instead cause they are really nice! I’ve tried quite a number of them and some of them I shared with you on this blog  – check these Πατάτες Λεμονάτες (Patates Lemonates or Lemony Potatoes) and Gigantes Plaki sto Fourno (Giant Baked Beans).

Mediterranean Vegetable and Mint Pesto Millefeuilles from kopiaste.org

Mediterranean Vegetable and (Mint) Pesto Millefeuille adapted from kopiaste.org will make a pie-like dish with an unusual double salty cheese crust and spicy garlic-y ‘pesto’ and vegetable filling. I will not reproduce the recipe here, will just share with you the way I did the recipe:

As with several other Greek recipes made recently (here and here and here) I omitted potatoes and add 0.5 kg aubergines instead which went well with the courgettes. As for the mint pesto which is placed in between the veggie layers I blended fresh coriander + onions + garlic + spring onions + pumpkin seed oil – so no mint but still good! Instead of 2 peeled tomatoes I used tomato sauce which anyway needed using.

The batter which will then become the double crust of this vegetable pie is made of various types of Greek soft white cheese. I had none so I had to ‘borrow’ some white brine cheese from the Greek neighbours (Serbia) which also gave me some whey (to substitute milk). To this I added the usual Adygea cheese, which seem to have become the multi-purpose cheese destined to substitute everything from mozzarella to Feta in Russia!

Mediterranean Vegetable and Mint Pesto Millefeuilles from kopiaste.org

Remarks: From my experience I would suggest adding salt to the veggies as well, probably rub them with some salt, cause if you do not get the pesto with your bite, the veggies seem a bit bland.

Result: Something different, I should say! I mean, this cheese crust which has just a couple of tablespoons of flour in it is quite a find! The pie will eventually fall apart when you try to cut it in smaller pieces but with every bite you’ll get cheese, veggies and garlicky pesto. No juices from veggies hanging around at the bottom of the dish thanks to sautéing.

You can see the layers of the ‘pie’ clearer in this photo:

Mediterranean Vegetable and Mint Pesto Millefeuilles from kopiaste.org

***

And there’s more! Enjoy the Mediterranean / Greek flavours with this enormous spinach pie, so very traditional in the rich Greek cuisine, a true treasure for the vegetarians! Greece was the place I actually tried spinach for the first time – and they do know how to make it ‘play’ with the other ingredients transforming it from a bland greenish plant into the chewy comforting food.

Spanakopita from www.toarkoudi.gr

The trick of this pie’s pastry is the added orange juice (and flesh from the orange, if you’re more lucky with fresh oranges than I was), you will certainly feel it when you take the pie out of the oven! The Greeks always eat spinach with some lemon juice, so I guess this addition of a citric acid is somewhat typical. And of course giant dark black olives from the Halkidiki region in Greece (where Thessaloniki is) is a must for this pie!

Spanakopita from www.toarkoudi.gr

This pie is huge, really. Very Greek : ) So please invite your friends and make a Greek party! Also check another spinach pie recipe from the same source, Hortopita me Spanaki (Greek Spinach Pie) which I made back in February.

Spanakopita from www.toarkoudi.gr

Σπανακόπιτα (Spanakopita) or Greek Spinach Pie with Whole Wheat Pastry adapted and translated from www.toarkoudi.gr will make a large pie with salty green-y filling wrapped in the pastry with tangy orange flavour. See my remarks in italics.

Ingredients:

for the pastry:

  • 2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 cup all purpose glour
  • juice and flesh from 3-5 oranges – I used plain orange juice
  • 2 Tbs salt
  • baking powder
  • olive oil – Greek, please!
  • water

for the filling:

  • ½ kg fresh spinach – I used 400g frozen spinach + added some wheat bran to suck in the juices
  • olive oil
  • 4-5 fresh onions – I used 2 big onions
  • ½ bunch of fresh coriander
  • ½ bunch of fresh dill – I used fresh basil + dried lemon balm (aka balm mint or Melissa)
  • ½ bunch of fresh parsley
  • 2-3 eggs – I used 2
  • 2 leeks – I used sorrel
  • nutmeg
  • salt
  • pepper
  • milk – didn’t find the use in the recipe, probably to brush the crust?

extra, if you want to add some cheese:

  • 50 g low-fat Feta – I used Adygea cheese, for the lack of both
  • 50 g grated hard myzithra

Procedure:

Mix the whole wheat flour with the all purpose flour, add some salt, a bit of olive oil and the baking powder. Add freshly squeezed orange juice, making sure that you add the flesh too.  Knead with one hand, adding either extra flour or water with the other, as needed. You should get elastic homogenous dough. Leave the dough covered for one hour in the fridge.

Sauté onions in a little bit of oil, add the leeks (I opted for the fresh sorrel from our dacha), spinach (I didn’t defrost the spinach), parsley and half of the coriander leaves. Leave the greens to cool and drain them (that was tricky, but I guess I got rid of most of the juices by sautéing already). Transfer to a bowl, add the rest of the coriander, the eggs, dill, nutmeg (Greeks do love adding nutmeg or how about cinnamon to meat, which is very weird for the Russian cuisine), salt and pepper and, optionally (but really great!) the soft white cheese.

Roll half of the dough out and place it on a greased oven-proof dish. Add the filling and cover it with the second half of the dough (also rolled out to match the size of the pan – I used a round pan lined with parchment paper). Bake at 180 C’ for 45 minutes to 1 hour (it took my oven 45 minutes to get the top crust golden brown).

IMG_0151

Remarks: Although this recipes also uses sautéing to take away the juices, the pastry gets soggy and less crunchy after keeping the pie in the fridge. At the same time, the spinach filling really gets so infused with its own juices that the pie becomes even more … spinach-y!

Result: An impressive large Greek-size pie with lots of spinach in each portion! Do add some white cheese, I think this pie gets even better with it.

Even more Greek recipes can be found under ‘Greece’ on this page.

P.S. Just tried an Italian recipe using aubergines – will share it with you if I get the chance to take a photo! : )

G.

Greek recipe · no-dough · pies

Two Spinach Pies and Spinach…Rice

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

And finally – I would like to share with you two recipes from the Balkan cuisine, don’t ask me how long I’ve been meaning to do that!

Back in December 2013 I was planning a Bulgarian party (which never happened) and before I knew no one was coming I made an imitation of Banitsa with spinach, sort of Spanakopita (Greek Spinach pie). Banitsa is a traditional Bulgarian pie with fresh cheese which also exists in spinach ‘edition’. In my version of the pie I used two recipes – the phyllo pastry recipe from a blog on Mediterranean diet and the filling from some ski resort website : )  I should have posted this recipe a long ago cause it might be used for the New Year’s meal, when you make wishes for the upcoming year… For the lack of guests to eat the pie and read the wishes hidden inside each bite of the pie, I took my Banitsa to work and here’s the only surviving photo of it:

Banitsa

Two years ago: Two Rrrrrye Breads (Raisin and Riga)

A year ago – Polenta, Sempre Polenta and Broccoli

So let’s reconstruct the Spinach Banitsa as I did it: 

Spanachena Banitsa (Bulgarian Spinach Cheese Pie) with pastry adapted from www.hestiaskitchen.com and filling + preparation from www.villastresov.com will make a truly savoury pie with a wish hidden in every bite!

The phyllo pastry recipe is one of those times when I have this recipe copied long ago into my to-do-bi-do-bi-do collection and since then the website has moved or changed names. Sometimes I fail to find those recipes online…

Follow the links above to see the recipes, to which I made these changes:

Pastry: I followed the recipe but did not add sourdough because mine is from rye flour. But without any sourdough culture the pastry turned out just fine! I rolled out two very thin layers for the bottom and 2 layers for the top, thus imitating the phyllo pastry which usually has several layers of very thin pastry sheets.

Filling: I defrosted 400 g of finely chopped spinach (the only sort I could find here), drained it and mixed with crumbled Adygea cheese (you can substitute with some fresh cottage cheese) + added some really salted Bulgarian white cheese (drained from brine and soaked in cold water for some time). I did not add any salt as this Bulgarian brynza is very salted. I just chopped in some fresh basil. Mixed everything well.

Optional: Traditionally this pie is eaten for Easter and there are these tiny bits of paper with wishes written on them. I made 6 wishes, folded and wrapped them in aluminum foil but sure enough the juices from the cheese got inside, however you could read the wishes OK. Just try not to forget to warn your guests to chew carefully on this pie =)

Assembling the pie: So, 2 layers on the bottom then the filling then two top layers (although a more authentic way will be to make more layers with filling), pinched the edges, decorated the top with check board pattern (without actually cutting through) and made some holes in the top (I would suggest to make even more because the pastry puffs up a lot!). I used baking paper which helped lift the pie later. I did not brush oil in between the layers, just forgot about that.

Baking: Just about 40 minutes at 180 ‘C, be careful the pie gets really brown quickly.

For a plain Banitsa pie with just cheese and eggs, see the link above.

Result: This was my first time trying to create a Bulgarian dish + the first time baking with spinach! We do not eat it almost at all here, you can find it frozen not in every supermarket and I just used to skip recipes with spinach before. The pie is nice, haha, interactive with these little wishes that even you forget where you placed them and that you actually did place them there ; ) A very much like a big Spanakopita, well, Greece and Bulgaria are neighbors!

BTW, let’s visit the neighbors and see what they make of their Greek spinach:

Spinach pie from www.toarkoudi.gr

Hortopita me Spanaki (Greek Spinach Pie) adapted from and translated from Greek with the kind permission of www.toarkoudi.gr – will make pretty spinach snails =) The dough ingredients can be cut in half and yet you will get 6 pies, although the filling is definitely not enough even for this half. My remarks are in italics.

Ingredients:

To make the pastry:

  • 1 kg flour – I cut the ingredients in half and still got a lot of dough!
  • 0.5 l water
  • vinegar – I skipped it
  • salt

To make the filling:

  • 2 eggs
  • 0.5 kg spinach – I defrosted 400 g of finely chopped spinach
  • 0.5 bunch of fennel, chopped – I had no fennel… also one of those things we hardly eat here in Russia
  • 2 onions, chopped – I chopped one red and one yellow + some spring onions
  • salt & pepper + I added some herbs
  • 0.5 cup milk – skipped that
  • 250 g grated feta cheese – for the lack of which I used a mixture of Bulgarian brynza + Adygea cheese, and considerably more
  • 1 cup sunflower oil – I just brushed pies with olive oil

Procedure:

1. To make the pastry: put all of the ingredients in a bowl and knead until you get soft dough. You might need to adjust the amount of flour or water. Leave the dough to rest.

2. To make the filling: Really easy, just mix all the ingredients in a bowl, but make sure that you have drained the greens really well so that the filling is thick enough and does not contain too much water. My filling got a bit velvetish because of the red onion:

Spinach pie from www.toarkoudi.gr

3. To assemble the pie and bake: The original – not halved – dough recipe will make 10 sheets of pastry. Roll out each of the dough parts, put some filling on the edge and roll up into a cigar, then create a snail-like shape. Place the ‘snails’ on a greased baking sheet (I used baking paper, really helps to avoid all the cleaning!) and bake for 40 minutes at 180 ‘C. The pies will get brown (mine did not). 

Result: Crunchy snails with soft filling=) Well, I’m vegetarian but the similarity is not just in the appearance! I froze a part of the pies once they cooled down and my parents reheated them afterwards.

spanakorizo

IDEA: You can use leftover spinach / spinach water left from draining spinach to make a lighter version of spanakorizo (σπανακόριζο, literary spinach rice), one of the dishes Greeks serve during Lent and, well, anytime. I just cooked a mixture of wild + regular rice in this spinach water as I would do with any rice, and as a result it gets all green and… well, green : ) The real σπανακόριζο is a rather soup-like dish with equal amounts of spinach & rice, so it’s even greener .)

Fouf, I did it! ; )

Enjoy the pies and let us all hope for the spring to come!

P.S. Going to Novosibirsk in a month! Finally will get that far in my own country… Siberia, I’m coming!

G.