Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Spanakopita

How this particular recipe wormed its way into my consciousness I'm not sure. Yet, it's been brewing there for a few weeks now. It kept getting stronger as I bought ingredient by ingredient and finally sat down to peruse actual recipes. Top priority, as with most of my recipes, is not having to buy a ton of ingredients. Luckily, the only things I didn't have were the eggs and I just so happen to have a box of egg substitute lazing around my pantry. Okay, it's new and this is the first time I've really used it. It's also the first time I've ever used phyllo dough. Do you know just how many layers it takes to equal one pound? A lot. And according to the recipe, you brush each and every one with a butter/oil mix. I'm sure you can guess what happened.

Verdict: It's alright. I choose to blame the recipe on this one. I even followed it! Why do I only follow the bad recipes? Well, I did add garlic but that doesn't count. I would have liked more filling, less phyllo, and more flavor. I can't vouch for whether this is authentic or not, but I think it's a nice jumping off point for future tries.



The recipe can be found here.

After I peeled off the first few layers of crusty brown-ness, it was much better. Check your oven on this one because I think mine was done at about the 40 minute mark.



Still, it's about par this week for ugly food. I also made stroganoff. You can tell my the sheer mass of orange-crusted dishes in my sink.



And I tried my hand at a single-serving of mulled wine. Yes, it was lovely.

2 comments:

Mary said...

Single serving mulled wine sounds great! Do you have a recipe?

I've never made Spanakopita in a big pan like that, but I have made it as little triangles from this recipe on epicurious: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/107344
It's really good, and nowhere close to a pound of phyllo. Still all the butter though. Yummy!

Zylo said...

The one on epicurious looks good. I'll have to try that sometime.

The wine is something I just kinda made up as I went. I poured about a cup into a saucepan with one stick of cinnamon, 2 whole cloves, a few black peppercorns, and some honey to taste. Simmer until combined and... mulled. Very simple.