I’ve never had this before, but the picture looked good

Time: 1 Hour 30 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 1/5

If you know me personally, you probably know that I really don’t like cooked spinach. I think spinach is fine if it’s raw in a salad, but as soon as you cook it I have no interest in eating it. This recipe from the Zaytinya Cookbook, however, just looked like it would be super tasty. Maybe this recipe can be an exception to my spinach rule.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

There is a recipe for phyllo in the cookbook that this recipe comes from, but I didn’t want to go through all of the work to make it. I just used some store bought phyllo. If you’re up to it, you can make it yourself, but I’ve heard that it’s usually not worth making your own. Other than that, I didn’t change or leave out any other the ingredients. I guess I should also say that I used just 10oz of baby spinach instead of a full pound.

Tools:

Sharp Knife

Cooking Review:

Prep & Boil Water: 22 minutes

While the salted water came to a boil, I chopped up the vegetables and prepped a bowl of ice water for the spinach.

Process Spinach: 9 minutes

I added the spinach to the boiling water and blanched it for 30 seconds before draining and transferring it to the bowl of ice water. Once cooled off, I drained the spinach again and used paper towels to squeeze out as much water as I could. Finally, I chopped the spinach and transferred it to a bowl.

Cook Leek & Scallion: 7 minutes

I heated some olive oil in skillet over medium low heat and cooked the leek for about 4 minutes until soft before adding in the scallions and cooking for another 3 minutes.

Mix Filling: 3 minutes

I mixed the leek and scallion into the chopped spinach, followed by the feta and black pepper.

Form Spanakopita: 16 minutes

I oiled a sheet of parchment paper and laid out a sheet of phyllo on top of it. I brushed some olive oil on top of the dough. I spooned about a quarter cup of the filling near the bottom end of the dough and rolled it up half way up in the phyllo dough. I folded over the sides and rolled it the rest of the way. I repeated this for the remaining filling.

Bake: 24 minutes

I transferred the sheet of parchment paper with the spanakopita to a baking sheet, brushed each one with olive oil, and baked for 24 minutes, flipping them after about 10 minutes.

Analysis:

These have potential. The contrast between the shatteringly flaky phyllo wrapper and the super soft, almost creamy filling is great. The problem is that there’s not much besides the textural experience. There’s very little flavor in the filling. I can kind of taste the cheese and vaguely taste the spinach, but neither is really enough to be meaningful. I was pretty disappointed with these. The only salt that is added is in the water when you blanch the spinach, and there’s no specific amount the recipe specifies. I think if some salt was added to the filling, it would help a lot. A sauce to go with it would help, too. I’m going to give this recipe a 5/10. The texture is great, but there’s pretty much no flavor.

Spanakopita