- I've a very special visitor today, hi Mom.
- Hi, John. (laughing lightly)
- Do you remember making one of my all-time favorite--
- Mine, too. - Her favorite, too.
Favorite dishes, its Greek spinach pie,
also known as spanokopita, and it is amazing.
Really paper-thin, flaky, buttery layers of phyllo dough,
on the top, on the side and on the bottom,
(mom laughs)
but in the middle, you have this light, herbal,
a lot of dill--
- Onions. - Green onions,
feta, lemon, then we have--
- Lots of dill.
- We mentioned lots of dill, some parsley,
and spinach, of course, you're gonna love this.
I definitely guarantee you're gonna love this.
Let's get started.
So, to make this recipe, you could use like,
a mountain of fresh spinach, beautiful, delicious.
Fresh organic spinach-- - Yes.
But, that's a lot of work because you have to
cook it in batches, no one has a pan that's like this big.
- I do.
- Oh my god. (whispering)
Almost no one has a pan that's this big,
that will like give you like that much spinach at the end.
So much water is in there.
So we're going to use frozen spinach,
which I think is basically--
- Just as good. - Just as good, yes.
- It's like 90% as good,
right? - I agree.
- The thing is, that frozen spinach
still has a lot of water in it.
(lively music)
To get that water out, you could use a nut milk bag,
which I have, but someone misplaced,
and I'm having a lot of feelings about it.
- I didn't do it. (laughing)
You could also, no you didn't do it.
You could also use a cheesecloth,
you could use a sieve, like a sieve, like this.
- And a tea towel.
- A teal towel, or - Paper towel, both.
- We're gonna use some paper towels.
So, Mom, show us how to do this.
- [Mom] So, we'll place it here.
- So I'm gonna dump this out,
and this recipe is calling for like
two and 1/2 pounds of frozen spinach.
You could use two pounds, you could use three.
It's kind of a, it's in easy proportions,
so you can move it around a bit.
So you can see all of that water's coming out of there.
And you don't want your spinach pie to be soggy, right?
- [Mom] Mhm.
- So here we have the rest of our spinach,
it's just one on camera for you.
You can see all that's left are these
nice, much, much, much drier solids.
- And you don't want too much water because
it will make your spinach pastry soggy.
And this is ready, and we can chop our greens.
- So I'm gonna dump this out and we'll chop it.
(bowl thunks)
(clattering)
- Just running the knife through,
(knife thudding)
and this is done, okay.
- Okay, so now we're gonna transfer this
back to out bowl to hang out for a while,
'cause we have some more chopping to do.
Okay, so next we have our green onions, or scallions.
These are a favorite of mine, how much is this do you think?
- Oh, about- - It's a bunch, but.
- It's over a bunch, it's almost two bunches.
- Oh. - I think two bunches.
Chop the ends a bit.
(crunching)
- This is great, I'm just like basically hanging out
and hovering over her, and my mom's doing all the work.
Yes! (whispering)
- You wanna do it?
- I'm giving you moral support right now.
(mom laughs)
- I like doing this, I mean I don't mind the work,
because the end product is so delicious.
It's vegetarian, and I love it.
Can you give me next the dill?
- Mmm, smell that.
(sniffing)
(mom laughs)
- Look at all this dill.
- It's about a cup of fresh dill--
prepped. - I mean that's a very,
that's like a cup of brandy on iPORT.
- It's such a wonderful mixture,
and the flavors with the spinach and scallions,
I just love dill in any manner,
but in this dish it goes really well.
You can always prep it, chop it,
and keep it in the freezer for another time.
Because if you get a lot of dill,
you can prep it, freeze it, and it really,
I have done that, by the way,
so that I can always have it available.
- Yeah, my mom has a very nice herb garden,
so she grows all these things,
has this bumper crop of sage--
I love sage-- - I need--
- But she doesn't like it.
- I need to develop a taste for it.
- Now we have, ah, fresh, I love flat leaf parsley.
I feel like it's a bit less--
waxy-- - Yeah, I have it yeah.
- [John] And kind of has a better flavor.
It's like a nice kind of
light, grassy flavor, in a good way.
- [Mon] Oh, I love the flavor.
- Oh, it smells so good.
This is the one addition I asked for
that she allowed, by the way.
- Because I have done it before,
- Right. - Some thing you can omit it,
or add it and the flavor is always spectacular.
Okay.
- Okay.
- We are done.
- Scallions. So, I'm gonna transfer this
all into the bowl of our greens,
and now we're gonna go onto--
- [Both] the eggs.
- So, a lot of recipes are using eggs,
basically just as like a binding agent,
but you have a special family edition.
- Well, I find that if you beat the eggs, the egg whites,
before and they get very, voluminous,
(John chuckles)
then you add the egg yolks, when you mix up these greens,
make sure it's-- - Right.
- makes like a souffle type, it's more delicate.
- Nice, so-- - So it braces.
- We're gonna separate six eggs.
The yolks, we'll just mix in,
but the egg whites, we're gonna fluff up
with the whisk attachment.
I'll use a standing mixer, but you could use
a hand mixer, too, and then we're gonna
kind of like, almost fold that in, right?
- We are going to, exactly.
- Huh-oh. (chuckling)
We are going to fold, we gonna beat the egg whites
and add the yolks at the end.
- Oh, okay.
So, we're ready to separate our eggs carefully.
Because we're fluffing them up,
we don't want to get any yolks in there.
It's not like when you're making one of my white cakes.
Okay so, my mom also uses her hands to separate egg yolks.
Clean hands, very soft, they're not gonna break that yolk.
- And very organic, it just feels so healthy.
- Okay, I'm gonna help, too.
(glass ringing)
- If you have the eggs at room temperature,
they will beat really fast.
- Well these eggs are so fresh,
you can feel because the egg whites
are like very jelly-like.
All right, so we're gonna add this in here.
I always begin on low, get those egg whites broken up,
because they're like little sacs
of gelatin almost, the albumen.
So then, gently increase the speed until you get to high,
and we're just gonna of fluff 'em up.
(mixer whirring)
And.
Okay, so, these are real fluffy, look at this.
No sugar in there, just fluffy egg whites.
It's a soft peak, actually, I'm impressed.
I'm impressed with this machine that did all the work.
(mom laughs)
Thanks, machine.
All right, so what's next?
- Next, add the egg, the yolks.
- Oh, this is very interesting.
- Very quickly.
- [John] Okay, and then just mix it up?
- [Mom] Mhm.
(mixer whirring)
We've got our delicious and rich foamy eggs,
no longer at the soft peak stage,
but they're still nice and foamy.
You can go away for a minute.
We have our nice, foamy eggs,
but now it's time to do the base of the phyllo dough.
You want some melted butter, now, if you can,
you can clarify the butter, too.
- I do.
- What's clarifying the butter?
- Well you boil it, to eliminate the dairy--
solids like this. - So all these dairy solids
- Yeah. on the bottom--
- It would-- - go away?
- Eliminate it.
- If you use European butter, though?
- They don't have it,
- They don't have the milks solids, though.
- Because it's more fat in it.
- Yeah, you can just use European butter, too.
This is filo dough, it comes in a roll,
it's in the freezer section.
The main thing you have to remember,
is to defrost it at least overnight.
So we're gonna lay it here, open it up, right?
- [Mom] Mhm.
- These are paper-thin sheets of dough.
So you can use a pastry brush,
I'm using a giant artist brush,
and this one works really well,
it has really high-quality bristles.
It's actually a little bit bigger so it fans out.
- Good.
- So, we're gonna brush the pan first of all, right?
- Mhm.
- So we wanna have, the butter's like glue.
It's letting everything stick together,
and it's also gonna crisp the dough up,
to make it into a beautiful, flaky pastry.
(lively music)
Let's get that all in there.
So here's our first layer.
So thin you could almost read through it.
If they have little tears in it, it's not a big deal.
- Ah, wait, wait-- - Wait.
(John chuckles)
- I find that it's better to do it this way,
that you can manipulate your edges better.
- Interesting, okay.
- And you brush the butter really delicately,
you don't want to--
- [John] Yeah, I was watching some other people make these,
and they were just pouring butter in there.
You could also, for those of you
who are more cholesterol-conscious,
could use olive oil to do this as well.
- Get this.
- Okay, so now we're gonna put the next layer in.
- Okay, may I so that I can do show.
- Yeah, go ahead.
- So you overlap it.
- Mhm, I see, it looks very nice.
- And then you can turn it around
and do the same-- - Right.
So you can always get double folds all around.
= My mom had a little baking class the other day,
(mom chuckles)
and showed all of her friends how to make this dish.
So she is like, (snapping)
en pointe with everything today.
- The best thing is to prep.
And I find that when you have friends over,
it just was like the best thing ever.
It was like we were talking and they were loving the--
- There was some wine open--
I'm sure. - the lesson.
Yeah, but when you're busy, I didn't have time.
I wish I could be an octopus.
- Here's your next sheet, Dr. Kanell.
So I laid my sheets as lengthwise,
like (breath blows) then I just move them around
a little bit so they all got covered, and it worked fine.
And if you're wondering, you have to work fast with this,
because the filo dough does dry out.
So you could just cover it
with a paper towel or two, if you need to take a break.
- [Mom] Yeah.
I've usually used like a slightly, slightly damp
paper towel to cover my filo dough,
but my mom said not to,
because it will add too much moisture to the dough.
So here's the deal, this is fastidious,
you know you like layer, layer, layer, layer, layer,
butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter.
But, the prep work is actually super simple.
So I know that when you make this dish,
you often make two of them, right, at once?
- [Mom] Yes.
- Because it's kind of like a little assembly line.
And then, what my mom does, which is just genius is,
she has one to bake, for the day of,
and then she has one little sneaky hostess one
in the freezer that she keeps,
so like at a moment's notice,
she can put on like this amazing dinner
with all these things she's made ahead of time.
- Yeah, but works really well in the freezer.
So this is already like that,
and it doesn't matter, just keep going.
- Yeah, if you have a little tear,
it's not a big deal at all.
The only thing that needs to be like
a little bit nicer, is the very top layer.
This is our last layer for the bottom,
so while she's adding it in,
I'm gonna fold the filo dough back up,
and just make sure it's totally covered,
so it doesn't get exposed to the air.
Once it gets exposed to the air, it dries out--
- It's get brittle. - And snap, and turns
into like crumpled paper, just like falls apart.
- And now we're ready to--
- So walk me through, what's gonna happen next?
- We're gonna set this aside.
- Yeah, and.
- And we have our greens mixture,
- I need the big bowl.
- My big bowl-- - I have big bowls.
- We have, I have like a pound and a quarter of feta here.
- Okay, so all the grains go in.
Crumble the cheese.
Okay, so we put the cheese, we gonna put some lemon, please.
- Yes, Ma'am, so I wanna whole lemon in here.
No seeds, please, you can add more lemon,
my brother and I are just addicted--
to lemon-- - I am--
- We can put lemon in everything.
- I am addicted to it as well.
- When I grew up, you never, she added like
almost no salt to anything, it was just like
lemon or vinegar for like that bite.
- Yeah, that's true.
- So a little salt for the-- - How much?
Like a?
Like that? - Do ya--
That's like half a teaspoon.
- Put a little more because we have
the spinach that is unsalted,
and then the greens are no salt--
- So I'm gonna mix this up a little bit,
just so it's not only going on the feta.
- Then we gonna do some pepper.
- So you're basically salt and peppering it to taste.
- Yeah.
(cracking)
I love black pepper.
- [John] I do, too.
- [Mom] I can have tons of it.
- So now we have our beautiful, fluffy folded egg mixture,
And what's gonna go? - Yeah.
- Just pour it in? - Mhmm.
- So I'll do this, all at once?
- Yes.
You want to do it last minute,
because when you incorporate all the ingredients,
the eggs become more watery,
and if you do it last minute, it can be more like a souffle.
So, you can see that it was absorbed totally.
- [John] Yeah, that looks perfect.
So now we're ready to add it back
into our baking dish and just spread it around.
- That's beautiful and cheesy and--
- Here, lemme help, just move it around there,
and we're gonna kinda spread it out, so it's nice and even.
- Here, let me smooth it.
- Hm, okay.
You could also add in like half a cup
of Parmesan cheese that's freshly grated,
- No, eyebrow, raising the eyebrow.
{John chuckles)
- [John] What else could you do?
- [Mom] You can put Gouda.
- Oh, you could put some fresh oregano in there.
- No.
(John laughs)
- Now we're back to our filo dough operation.
The way she's doing it is very smart,
because she's controlling the edge
so it'll have like a nice, kind of like slightly layered
appearance at the very end, I did mine totally different.
So-- - Options, you had choices.
- Yeah, there's a choice, so in mine,
I folded the edge under, almost like a pie crust.
And it also looked nice as a rolled edge.
So, to make this, you have to keep warming the butter,
or keep your butter in a warming dish,
because as it cools, it becomes thicker--
- And you use more. - And you're actually
brushing on more. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - Exactly.
All right so, this is what I was gonna do.
Right, so we're doing it my way for the top,
which is leaving a lot of overlap
that's coming off the edge.
(gentle scratching)
And then at the very end, we're gonna fold it
under like a pie crust, which I think
gives you a really nice, neat look.
(quirky music)
- [Mom] Okay, so this is going well,
since I am thoughtful to do the edges.
- Is this done, or is there one more layer?
- I just keep doing.
(John chuckles)
- Just a couple more, you really want like a nice,
very flaky puffy experience on top.
Okay, so now for the folding process.
This is-- - Your cup of tea,
- my little piece here.
So, we can actually just rip off this corner here.
We don't need that much on the sides, in the very corners.
It's kind of like trimming the pie crust
when you're about to fold the edges over.
So then, see like, look how fast that was.
- It is pretty, now-- - And I think that looks nice.
Like I think that looks-- - Yes, it is.
much better.
This extra filo dough you can keep for later.
- Or we can use it in a little bit,
I'll make a little apple dessert.
- Ooh.
Okay, let's wrap that up, set it aside.
And now my mom's trick-- - To score it.
is to score this, because if you cut into it
after it's baked, very flaky, everything's gonna like
fly away and shatter, - Shatters.
- But if you score it beforehand,
it makes the whole, you know--
- Well, you have to because - serving process much easier.
- Exactly for serving, it's ready.
- All right, so, do you wanna eyeball it?
- We need one here, here--
- Are you gonna have to do--
And I would like squares.
- So, if you make the servings bigger,
because you have few people for dinner.
If you have a lot of people, you can make them smaller, so--
- So basically, this can be almost a main course--
- Do you have-- - dish.
Do you want three or four?
- Three.
- Okay, so you want bigger.
- Yeah.
(gentle tapping)
- [Mom] So when you do this, you do a see-saw motion,
and you go to the bottom.
- [John] Yeah and have a very sharp knife.
- [Mom] Very, and the thinner the knife,
the better, - Yeah, 'cause you don't wanna
tear the filo dough, you wanna cut into it.
You could also use a utility knife.
Okay, so this is done, and actually,
I'm gonna keep this one in the freezer.
- Yay!
- So I'm gonna have a special dinner
for the next time we have guests over.
If you to that-- - We need to cover it.
- Cover it super well, you don't want
to have any air getting in there,
'cause you'll get freezer burn.
And then, you wanna let it defrost--
- No, no, no, no. - Or do you--
- Pop it in the oven. - Pop it in the oven frozen.
- At 350, 375 for one hour. - For like 90 minutes?
- Yeah.
- About 90 minutes, okay. - About, yeah
60, check it after 60 minutes.
- Okay, so like this.
(ripping)
Do you press the plastic in so it's touching,
or do you-- - It doesn't matter,
it's gonna cover it.
- The first time on my channel
that we're wrapping something up--
- Yeah. - into the freezer,
but we can do a little swap-out, so,
we set that aside, and I'll be right back.
And look what we have here, oh my gosh,
this beautiful filo dough, spanakopita pie.
Okay, this got tucked under here,
and you can see mine was little bit more raggedy,
because I was having some dried filo dough issues,
but-- - I like the organic look.
- It looks organic, it's smells pretty good, right?
- Mhmm.
(both sniff)
- Oh my gosh.
- Oh!
- And then, you gonna serve this at room temperature,
you can serve it warm, you can even serve it cold.
Good for breakfast, lunch and dinner,
should we take a taste?
- Yes.
- Okay, let's piece this out.
(clunking)
So, maybe-- - Let's take a corner.
- Okay, I'll take a corner piece.
So now, because it's scored, look how easy it cuts.
Nice and fluffy layers. - Perfect.
- I'm hungry.
(John chuckles)
Cheers thanks, Mom.
(metal clinks)
- Thank you.
Mm, glass of white wine?
- Mm, did you bring any?
- Told you, I always have a stock.
- I have champagne, we can have champagne.
- Champagne is good.
- The lemon, the dill, the feta, oh!
Those are the flavors.
This is a really fun dish for when you're hosting
like a dinner party, and you wanna actually bake
and make something that's really easy, but fun.
People can help you butter, they can help you
like layer things, chop stuff,
and then you pop it in the oven,
and like after a glass of wine or two, it's ready.
Delicious. - It's quite large,
so you can make it smaller--
- And I-- - like with triangles.
I would have this with salad.
- Yeah, I always make a Mediterranean salad,
killer Mediterranean salad. - A nice salad.
- Yes, that's the next video.
- Some lemon chicken.
- Mmk.
- Thanks so much for watching. - Thank you.
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and don't forget to subscribe.