A Great Greek Dish and All That Went Into It

Today I made spinach pie, which turned out great. But in the process of making it, I injured my foot. Luckily, it wasn’t serious. But I learned a lesson about being aware of one’s counter space…

Let’s rewind a bit.

I recently checked out a fabulous cook book from my local library: Spices of Life. I was pleased to flip through and discover a recipe for flaky spinach pie, a favorite of my youth. In the NY Metro area, where I grew up, there are a lot of diners owned by Greeks, and whenever I visited one of these fine establishments, I would get my delicious vegetarian-style default: the spinach pie. Now, it was time to return to these roots…

The recipe was not too complex: sauteed scallions & spinach, chopped and added to crumbled feta, chopped dill, eggs, salt and pepper. Somewhere in between rinsing the piles of spinach this recipe required, though – I had a breach in kitchen safety, as I accidentally let the counter get too slick. This most likely was the cause of a plate flying off the counter and landing hard on my toes, with its edge down in some kind of vertical earthenware handstand. My feet were in sandals and thus unprotected from the full force of the plate’s gravitational pull to the floor. Needless to say, lots of temporary pain ensued, but it soon it seemed that happily my foot was on the mend. So I continued…

This was my first time working with phyllo dough and I thoroughly enjoyed holding up the almost paper-thin light tan sheets and plastering them in the pan on the bottom and top layers of the pie. I ran out of olive oil to brush in between the layers at the time of layer #8, but substituted some new Asian saute oil which worked out A-Ok. Perhaps a little too much browning occured in the 50 minutes of cooking at 350, but oh well – it was still quite delicious, and with the small salad on the side I felt like I had created my own slice of diner. Where’s Guy Fieri? He should try some of this…