“Eat your spinach, you no good infink.  Eat it.  EAT IT.  Eat it.” -Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye‘s spitting image and reluctant, foul-mouthed father

Poor spinach.  It gets such a bad rap.  Sure, it gave Popeye his superhuman strength, but he didn’t like it much.  And so it carried on…..a wonderful reputation for nutritional value, but little accolades in the “it tastes yummy” department.  And then poor, sad, wilted spinach had to go and have a rampant E. Coli outbreak in 2006.  E.Coli:  the bad little bacteria associated with fecal contamination.  Yep, that’s right, the questionable spinach had traces of poop in it there for a while.  Let’s just say, people haven’t exactly been jumpin’ at the gun to get their hands on this stuff.

Spinach, I can assure you, means well behind all of the bad public relations.  Just maybe try to steer clear of it in yucky fast food situations where ingredient sources and preparation methods are sketchy at best.  (As if we needed further proof after Sally Davies‘ recent Happy Meal Project…..)  If you can get it from a reputable source and use it properly, spinach is really quite lovely.  Personally speaking, I’ve always preferred spinach of the cooked variety to spinach of the raw variety, so if you’ve never really been into it (and it would be understandable, you know, after all the poop…..), this would be a great place to start.

Before we proceed, I must tell you that this is my second-favorite way to eat spinach, and therefore not my first and most favorite way.  (There was this little trattoria in Venice, you see…..)  That said, it is no less capable of producing rampant werewolf-like cravings.  Spanakopita has it all:  spinach for vitamins and nutrition, feta for creamy, cheesy, melty yumminess, and butter-rampant phyllo pastry for crispy, flaky happiness.  Plus a whole bunch of other goodies in the background that make the stars of the show shine even brighter.

I’ve declared my undying love for Greek cuisine previously, and I suppose this post is just a continuation of that, along with others that will surely follow.  Spanakopita was first introduced to me behind the glass cases of the displays at the sadly-closed Michelle’s in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where it was made more like a casserole/lasagna situation:  layers of phyllo pastry on the bottom, filling in between, and more phyllo layers on top.  What we have here are little individually-sized triangles.  (Sort of like little Hot Pockets without all the whatever-it-is-they-put-in-those-things-that-makes-them-so-gross-and-scary.)  These are brilliant because they can be made way in advance (just freeze them after the assembly steps in #5 of the instructions below and bake them off when you’re ready to use them), they sit well at room temperature, and they’re great hot, warm, or cold.  (I prefer warm, myself…..)  You see a lot of half-assed recipes for spanakopita out there, but I really promise you guys that this one does everything possible to capitalize on the flavors and textures that are most desirable out of this recipe.  This is not a ground-breaker.  But it’s a treat I’ve loved to indulge in since I was a mini-Krista, and I’m definitely pleased to pass it on for others to enjoy.  Pass these around with some crisp, chilly Sauvignon Blanc at your next party, and make mouths happy.

Ingredients:

Neutrally-flavored oil, such as vegetable or canola

1 small-to-medium onion, washed, peeled, and diced very small

2 big, fat garlic cloves, washed, smashed, peeled, and minced very fine

1 10 oz. package of frozen spinach (chopped or whole leaf both work here), thawed  (NOTE:  Of course you could use fresh spinach/baby spinach here if you wanted.  Just keep in mind that you will need a LOT of it.  10 oz. of fresh spinach looks a lot bigger than 10 oz. of frozen.  And you’ll have to wash it well because it might be sandy still.  Oh, and you’re going to have to remove all of the tough stem ends, leaf by leaf, too.  The lesson here?  This is a great place to use frozen and not fresh.  Just sayin’.)

Zest of 1/2 lemon

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 large egg, lightly beaten with a fork in a medium non-reactive bowl, and reserved in the refrigerator

8 oz. fresh feta cheese, crumbled roughly  (NOTE:  Even though this is a Greek dish, and even though what I’m about to type is probably sacrilege…..I used French feta.  No matter what anyone says, it will always be my favorite variety of this particular kind of cheese.  It’s softer and creamier than the Greek or Bulgarian varieties, and just ever-so-slightly less tangy on the palette.  What can I say?  The French know their cheese.  Even when it’s not exactly “theirs,” culturally speaking.)

1 tsp. ground coriander

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg (preferably freshly ground – it really makes a difference)

Big handful of fresh oregano leaves, washed, dried well, and chopped very fine

Big handful of fresh parsley leaves, washed, dried well, and chopped very fine

4-6 strands of fresh chive, washed, dried well, and chopped very fine

1 1/2 sticks (3/8 lb.-ish) butter, melted

1 lb. package of frozen phyllo pastry sheets, thawed in the package in the refrigerator overnight

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

1.  First, make the filling.  The first thing you want to do is get the spinach as dry as possible.  (You don’t want any watery gobble-dee-gook ruining your perfectly crispy phyllo, now, do you?)  If you’re using thawed frozen spinach, then the best way to do this is get a clean cloth kitchen towel, dump all the thawed spinach into it, and then wring it out over the sink as best you can.  If you’re using fresh spinach, you have to add the extra step here of cooking them down in batches until bright green and wilted.  You just put a little oil in the biggest sauté pan you’ve got, heat it up over medium flame, and then add a few handfuls of spinach leaves at a time until you’ve wilted them all down.  Then you let it cool and wring it all out as described above.  Either way, once the spinach is as dry as possible, set it aside in a bowl lined with paper towels.

2.  In a sauté pan over medium flame, heat just enough neutral oil to coat the cooking surface.  When the pan and oil are nice and hot, add the onion and a tiny pinch of salt.  Stir quickly to coat with the oil.  Gently sweat the onions until they are soft and translucent, about 3-4 minutes.  Add the garlic and spinach leaves,  and incorporate with the onions.  Cook another minute or so, until spinach is warm and garlic is fragrant.

3.  Dump the spinach mixture into a large non-reactive workbowl and allow to cool to room temperature.  Add lemon zest and juice, the beaten egg, the crumbled feta, the coriander, the nutmeg, the oregano, the parsley, and the chive.  Stir to incorporate evenly, and season to taste with salt and pepper.  (NOTE:  If you’re worried about tasting this for seasoning while there’s a raw egg inside, just add it last after you’ve tasted/seasoned everything else together.)

4.  Preheat oven to 350ºF.

5.  And now for the fun part:  The Assembly.  Remove the phyllo pastry from the package, and very carefully lay it out flat on a clean working surface.  Immediately cover the stack of pastry sheets with a damp (NOT wet) kitchen towel, so that it stays moist.  (Sheets of phyllo are like very old, very fragile sheets of paper.  They dry out and crack very easily, and you must handle them properly.)  Have a clean pastry brush and the melted butter handy.  Carefully place one single sheet of phyllo pastry on a clean work surface, immediately re-covering the remaining sheets with a damp towel.  Quickly but gently brush a thin coating of melted butter over the entire surface of the phyllo sheet.  Add another sheet of phyllo directly on top and repeat the same process.  Repeat again with a 3rd layer.  After the 3rd layer, cut the sheets lengthwise in thirds, so that you have 3 even, vertical strips.  Place no more than 1 tbsp. of filling in a little mound near the lower left corner of each strip.  Fold the corner of the pastry up and over to the right so that it forms a triangle, and then keep folding this way, like folding up a flag, until you reach the end.  Brush the entire outside with a bit more melted butter, and place on a parchment-paper sheet tray.  Repeat all of these steps for the rest of the strips and all of the rest of the dough and filling.

6.  Bake for 20-30 minutes, rotating the tray half way through, until the triangles are a nice, yummy golden-brown color, and the pastry is super crispy.  Remove from oven, sprinkle with a little bit of kosher salt, and cool slightly on a wire rack.  I like these best served warm, but room temperature works too.

Yield: I got 1 1/2 dozen triangles out of this recipe before I ran out of phyllo and realized I had enough filling leftover for tomorrow morning’s eggs.  I totally win!  (NOTE:  If you are serving these as cocktail snacks or appetizers, cut each triangle in half with a sharp knife before placing on the serving platter.  Otherwise they’re just too ginormous.)