When we were in Corfu, Greece we had fabulous Spinach Pie Rolls. I found something similar with a cheese filling in NY, but it wasn’t as good without the spinach. I do love cheese so combining the two, I now have my own version of the Spinach Pie Roll.

Spinach Pie Roll 5

Spinach Pie Rolls

Filling

  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 1/2 cup chopped onion
  • 2 scallions, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons chopped parsley
  • 10 ounces frozen spinach
  • 1 cup whole milk ricotta
  • 1 cup crumbled feta
  • salt and pepper to taste
Assembly

  • 28 phyllo sheets + extra for patching
  • olive oil for brushing

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (325 degrees F with convection). Cover a cookie sheet with wax paper.
2. Heat olive oil in a large saute pan on medium heat. Add onions and stir around for a minute. Add scallions and garlic, stirring for another minute. Add parsley and frozen spinach and stir until there are no frozen pieces and it is all evenly heated. It should be dry. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

spinach mixture

2. In a large bowl mix together ricotta, feta, and spinach mixture. Season to taste.

spinach and cheese

3. When you work with phyllo, you have to work quickly. Always cover any sheets you are not using with a wet paper towel. Lay one sheet down, brush with olive oil. Lay another sheet on top, brush with olive oil again. Repeat until you have a total of 4 sheet, without olive oil on the top layer.

4. Form a log of spinach and cheese mixture along the length of the phyllo, a little bigger than 1″ in diameter.

Make Roll

5. Roll it up. When you get to the end, brush a strip of olive oil to seal it.

Make Roll 2 Make Roll 3
Make Roll 4 Make Roll 5

6. The hard part is now rolling it like a cinnamon bun because it cracks pretty easily. I find it best to start curving it and finding which side like to curl more. The inside needs to bend more than the outside of the curl. (If it does crack, you can patch it up by making something like a phyllo band-aid. It’s just like the 4 layers you made before but cut it in strips to use as bandages.)

before baking

7. Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you have 7 rolls. Place them on the cookie sheet with wax paper. Bake for 18 minutes or until golden.

Spinach Pie Rolls

They reheat nicely too!
posted by jessica at 02:20 PM Filed under Mediterranean, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.