Spinach and Feta Rolls- Pg. 135

· by · in Older Stuff. ·
I have always wanted to make spanikopita and here was my opportunity!!  Needless to say I was really excited.  I got strange looks from the checkout guy at the store with five bags of spinach sitting on the conveyer belt, but hey, spinach cooks down.  Really.  And that was only a little over half the spinach the full recipe called for.  Ha.  

 I don’t think I modified this recipe in any way, which really is the point I guess.  I got the fresh feta from the market downtown, which was a huge plus and you could definitely tell in the flavor.  I had some left over and I got to bake it with roasted garlic on top for the boys later.  Very fun. 

And really, in the beginning everything went fine.  And of course being very confident in my Greek cooking skills for God knows what reason, I mean I’ve never really cooked it just eaten tons of it, I decided to make this as an appetizer for poker night. 

So now I’m parading my supposed Greek culinary proficiency in front of four hungry boys. 

Well the filling went great.  It took longer than I thought it would to blanch the spinach in batches, but the color was a delightfully vibrant green and the process was a success.  The pine nuts toasted fragrantly, the fresh dill I’d gotten at the downtown market smelled wonderful when I chopped it, it was like magic. 

And then there is filo.  The Devil’s bitch of a little sister. 

I started assembling my rolls right as the boys were arriving, and I’m positive the string of explicatives coming out of my mouth were making even the Navy guy blush. 

What was the deal??  I was supposed to be good at this, I was positive it was going to nail it.   I’d chosen this recipe because I thought it would be easy for poker night!

My ass. 

Eventually I figured out that filo dries out almost the second it’s exposed to air, so you have to keep it moist.  But it can’t be directly touching anything wet or it’ll get sticky and fall apart.  After the first few sheets crumbled pathetically in my hands, I started pulling them from the middle of the pile and that worked much better.  They were still very delicate, and I had to fold them over to basically double the sheet to make it stronger.  I got about 12 decently sized rolls out of it and I have to say, I’m pretty damn proud of myself. 

And holy crap butter.  I mean I always knew there had to be something on filo to make it crunch when it baked, but wow.  You think, hey spinach… healthy!  I’m pretty sure a plate of those things could give you a coronary.  Which is probably why most Greek women are a bit stouter than most. 

Well that and all they do is cook and shovel food into people’s mouths… a trait which, frankly, I find very endearing. 

I ended up baking them for 30 minutes instead of the called-for 20; our German oven doesn’t necessarily heat evenly and they needed the extra few minutes to get that crispness just right on the top.  The filling was nuclear hot when I pulled them out, so I let them sit for about five minutes before bringing them downstairs to the poker room.  That also gave the butter a chance to get the filo extra crispy. 

All in all, they turned out pretty awesome.  I’ve got some extra filo in the fridge and I might just tackle it again this weekend for shits and giggles; it bothers me that though I was successful with this recipe in the end, that cruel dough mistress basically took me to the cleaners last night.

4 responses to “Spinach and Feta Rolls- Pg. 135”

  2. My first experience with Filo was exactly the same as yours. Because I thought it would be easier and it was a two for one sale of course I bought two boxes thinking wow I'm saving money and really how hard can this be to handle, they do it all the time on the Food Network. Well,let me tell you after the first experience that second box of dough stared at me for months from the freezer daring me to reach for it……it ended up in the garbage as I moved out of the house and headed south to North Carolina. Ha! I showed the “cruel dough mistress” who was boss!!

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