Greek Recipes with May Lerios: Spanakopita

For 15 people

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• 4 lb of fresh spinach and chop off the ends (roots). Or, you can buy bags of pre-washed, rootless spinach normally used for salad mixes. Frozen spinach works fine, too.

Drain the spinach well (squeeze it with your hands), and chop it coarsely. To do so, you can dump the drained spinach in a plugged sink and use a knife to cut it, mix it, and repeating until well chopped.

Boil 2 cups water in a large pot, mix in the spinach, and wait until the mixture boils again. Stir often to make sure the spinach at the bottom doesn't burn. It may seem impossible at first, but you'll find out that spinach compresses tremendously while boiling and so all of it can fit easily in a regular pot; if you have trouble fitting all of it in at once, boil some of it, and then add more as the first batch compresses (you don't have to wait till it boils).

Drain the spinach and set aside until it cools down (about 1 hour); you can spread it out on a pan and put in the freezer for about 15 minutes, instead.

Wash and chop

• 9 fresh green onions.

Throw away the roots. Saute the onions until transluscent and soft at med-hi heat in a small pot with

• 3/4 cup of olive oil.

Let the onions and oil cool down for 30 min. Then, in a large cold pot without heat, mix in the spinach, the onions with the oil, as well as

• 8 sprigs fresh dill, chopped up finely, and

• 1 lb imported Greek Feta cheese (Wisconsin-made Athenos Feta is also fine to save money), well crumbled.

Stir until well mixed. Then add

• 6 beaten eggs.

The eggs are added last so that they do not come in direct contact with the hot oil and cook; this is also the reason you started with a cold pot.

Set aside the mixture. Open up and lay out

• sheets of phyllo dough (total quantity needed is 1 lb).

Layer four sheets on a baking pan (I recommend a 14x10x2 in³ pan) greased with

• corn oil (total quantity needed is 1/8 cup), margarine (one stick), or butter (unsalted). I prefer butter, which I melt in the microwave.

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The phyllo sheets should cover the bottom as well as the sides. Grease the top sheet after placing the pack of four on the pan, and put another pack of four, and so on until you've used half the sheets. Then pour the spinach mixture. Use up the remaining sheets (layered incrementally in four-packs, and greased) to cover the mixture. Make sure you grease the top-most layer. Score the top sheets (i.e. those separating the top from the spinach mixture).

Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) for about 1.5 to 2 hours, or until top phyllo turns golden brown. Occasionally, make sure that the vapor pathway (the scored top sheets) remains open.

Set aside for 2 hours. Place in fridge for 12 hours. Reheat in microwave first (for the mixture) and in toaster oven next (to make the phyllo crisp), and serve hot.

It is also possible to eat the dish 20 min after removing from oven, but a watery consistency should be expected. Make sure you don't cover the pan during those 20 min, otherwise the phyllo will turn soggy.