We bought a box of filo dough last week and made baklava, and it was delicious- but it only took up one roll of dough out of the two that came in the box. we knew we wanted to make something else, but what to make?

We settled on spanakopita, the flakily deliciously amazing spinach pastries from Greece. Mm. Then, while looking at recipes, we realized we only had one out of three types of cheeses required to make real spanakopita. Fail.

Lindi had already started chopping the veggies up, and when we realized our lack of various cheeses, she said, "Maybe... I can just make it up?"

Why, yes. Yes you can.



So, this is an amazingly yummy pastry thing that tastes a lot like spanakopita, but is not.

Makes 8 pastries

Ingredients
4 oz. feta cheese
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups fresh baby spinach
5 scallions
1 can chicken breast (like tuna in a can, but chicken. NOT a whole chicken in a can.)
Pepper to taste
1/2 t basil
1/2 t thyme
16 sheets filo dough
Melted butter mixed wth a little olive oil, or cooking spray

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Chop the scallions and baby spinach leaves into smaller pieces, roughly 1/4-inch.
3. Drain the canned chicken breast as you would drain tuna and stir together the vegetables, feta, chicken, egg and spices until well mixed.
4. On a clean, dry surface, lay out a sheet of filo dough and spray with cooking spray OR brush with melted butter.
5. Repeat for a stack of four layers of dough.
6. Cut the dough in half lengthwise. Put a heaping spoonful of dough on one end of the pastry, then fold the dough over toward you to cover the filling and make a triangle shape. Fold away from you to cover the triangle again, then toward you, etc. (The same way you make a paper football!) You can find picture instructions here if my wordy instructions are confusing.
7. When you have a little flap at the end of the dough strip and the rest is folded up into the triangle, brush with a little butter/spray and stick it down to the rest of the pastry. Brush/spray the top of the pastry lightly and place on a cookie sheet. Repeat steps 4-7 until you run out of filling and dough.
8. Bake until the tops of the pastry are lightly browned.
9. Enjoy how your life is changed forever by the flaky amazingness.


You'll probably have extra dough sheets, so you can either double the filling recipe and make lots of savory pastries, or you can do what we did and prepare the dough the same way, but fill with sweet stuff. Lindi made chocolate peanut butter pastries with semi-sweet chocolate chips and a dollop of peanut butter, plain chocolate pastries (with just chocolate chips) and chocolate-coconut flake-dried cranberry pastries. Yum!! I can think of lots of different fillings you could add: berries, peaches, cooked apples, white chocolate, caramel... mm. Just be careful not to use anything too soupy, or the dough will get soggy.



Also, I would suggest eating these fresh out of the oven. They're best that way. If you DO have leftovers, try to avoid heating them up in the microwave if you have access to a toaster oven or regular oven. I heated a few up for lunch today in the microwave, and they got kind of squishy. (They were still pretty freakin' delicious, though...)