Spanokopita is one of my most favorite foods in the world. Probably because it has spinach and cheese in it – two things I could eat all day. I must confess that I have never made it though! So I was delighted to see the recipe for Spinach Phyllo Pie in June Martha Stewart Everyday Food. It looked so easy, that I could not believe I had never tried it before.

The first step is to cook onions, garlic and spinach. I bought frozen spinach so I didn’t have to wilt my spinach. The recipe calls for a white onion, but I had some red onion hanging around so I used that up.

An important step that I didn’t pay attention to is that you need to get your phyllo dough defrosted. On the package it says to let it sit in the fridge overnight. Eek! Didn’t do that, so I stuck it in the microwave on defrost and all was well.

You lay out a sheet, brush it with butter, then put another sheet on top. It’s not hard to work with if you are careful when moving the sheets of phyllo since they can rip.

Once you get all ten sheets ready, you place the spinach mixture down the center, then fold each side of the phyllo in, so that you have a flat log.  This was not hard to do at all.

Once you’ve got it sealed shut, you cut some diagonal slices on it to make it look pretty.

This takes longer to cook than it seems like it should – 45 to 50 minutes, although I cheated and put it on convection to get it done.

The result? It was very good. But you knew I was going to say that since it has spinach and cheese in it! I have to say I still prefer the traditional layered spanokopita, but this was a good alternative. It definitely looked gorgeous when it came out of the oven.