Ina Garten’s Dinner Spanikopita

Here is a fabulous “Meatless Monday” recipe. This Spanikopita recipe is soooo good – the flavourful spinach filling with chunks of feta and pine nuts is mouth-watering. The recipe is from one of my favourites, Ina Garten, and her cookbook Back to Basics – which I of course highly recommend as well as all of her books! I only made a half recipe which made 6 large Spanikopita (I didn’t need 12!), and that was enough for my husband and I for dinner and lunch the next day (the kids weren’t in the mood for trying new things that night!). This recipe makes a lovely dinner with a side salad. You could also use the recipe to make appetizer size spanikopita, just cut smaller pieces of phyllo and use less filling. I loved that this made individual spanikopitas that baked perfectly and tasted just as good for lunch the next day (maybe even better!). I am really looking forward to making this again with my remaining 12 sheets of phyllo that I refroze.

The recipe is posted on the Food Network website, exactly as written in the book: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/dinner-spanakopitas-recipe/index.html

Follow the instructions as directed. However, here is my halved ingredient list below for your reference . . .

For a half recipe I used:

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup of finely diced yellow onion
• 1 big fat green onion
• 1 package of frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
• 2 large eggs (I never buy extra large – 2 large worked just fine)
• 1  1/2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
• 3 tbsp plain bread crumbs for the filling, plus 12 tsp more for sprinkling in between the phyllo sheets
• 1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp Kosher (coarse) salt
• 1/2 tsp of freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup of small dice feta cheese (I used President’s Choice light feta cheese)
• 1  1/2 tbsp toasted pine nuts (if you don’t have any don’t worry it doesn’t make or break the recipe but they were nice in the filling)
• 12 sheets of phyllo dough (defrosted) – packages usually contains 24 sheets – you can defrost and then re-freeze, just follow the directions on the package
• 1/4 cup of unsalted butter or margarine melted (I used my favourite margarine – Lactancia Healthy Attitude – worked beautifully)
• Kosher salt for sprinkling on top before baking (I didn’t have any sea salt and the Kosher worked fine and tasted great).