Spanakopita – a Greek, savory, pastry of goodness. A treat filled with spinach and feta cheese, brushed with butter and baked to a golden sheen. Yum!

Store bought doesn’t work for me. Perfect triangles, but never enough filling. I’m a freak about spinach and once you add cheese, game on! In case you haven’t seen previous posts, I have spinach as a recurring ingredient.

Planning on making Spanakopita in a couple of days? Toss the frozen spinach straight into the fridge from the store. It will be thawed when ready to use. If you get the frozen spinach in a box, put the box in a container to avoid spinach “juice” all over.

Don’t let Filo scare you either. Just don’t open it before your filling is made.

Grab a couple of paper towels, wet them and squeeze out the water, so they are moist, not dripping. Open the package – Yikes! There are lots of very thin sheets of dough. (I told you don’t be scared.)

Unroll, leave it on the plastic sheet it’s rolled in and cover with the moist paper towels. It won’t dry out, now.

I also like the option of making my triangles a variety of sizes. Larger triangles make a great lunch with salad or fruit.

I usually make, freeze on parchment and store in a zip-lock bag in the freezer. Then if I’m feeling a like Greek, I’ll pull out a few triangles and bake them off. Mmm.

Spanakopita

Ingredients

8 oz Cream Cheese, softened
20 oz Frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1 Bunch Green Onion, white and green sliced
1 1/2-2 tsp Greek Seasoning
6-9 oz Feta Cheese, crumbled
1 lemon
2 eggs, room temperature
Fresh ground pepper
1 pakage Filo dough sheets, thawed
1 cup butter, melted (2 sticks)

Instructions

Squeeze out the water from the thawed spinach. put the spinach in a couple of paper towels and squeeze. Repeat until there is no water left in the spinach. It will look like a tight log of spinach.
Using a mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the spinach, mix until combined.
Add the green onion and Greek Seasoning, mix. Add the Feta cheese, mix
Grate the lemon skin(yellow only) into the mixture and squeeze the lemon juice in too. Combine.
Add the eggs, and a couple of grinds of fresh pepper. Mix in completely.
Open one Filo roll at a time. Cover with moist paper towels to keep from drying out. Take 2 sheets of filo (covering the remaining), place on cutting board and cut into strips. Spoon filling onto end of strip and fold triangles up the strip, sealing in the filling.
brush all sides with melted butter and place seam side down on parchment lined baking sheet.
If baking place about 1 inch apart.
Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
If freezing, place close together to maximize space on sheet tray. Once frozen can be stored zip-lock bag in freezer and baked from frozen approximately 25 minutes, at 375.