Spanakopita

My husband has been asking me to make spanakopita recently so Wednesday evening I did - not that it took much convincing. I love the stuff! After dinner the rest of it went into the freezer for "emergency" meals for when the baby comes, much to his disappointment! He wanted to eat more the next day :) Now I am no expert in Greek food and have no idea how close this recipe comes to traditional spanakopita, but I do know it is delicious! Click on the picture to go to the recipe I used. 

The recipe calls for cottage or ricotta cheese, along with feta of course. I used cottage cheese (we both prefer cottage over ricotta, even in lasagna) and it worked wonderfully. Now if you know me, I tend to cook by the seat of my pants so to speak, generally don't measure things and have a hard time staying true to a recipe without changing something. At this point I must confess that I did add a few mushrooms that needed to be used up... I actually don't usually use recipes but cook by instinct instead. It has rarely let me down. 

However, I am SO glad I looked up the recipe for this spanakopita and took the time to compare it to several others, because there were two things that I would never have added had I not read through several recipes. Can you guess what they are? If you are familiar with cooking Greek food then I'm sure you  know, but they surprised me. Nutmeg and dill. A lot of dill. And boy did following the recipe pay off. It was absolutely delicious!!! This will definitely be added to our list of favorite meals :)

This recipe makes TWO 9x13 pans, so I cut it in half. When you buy phyllo dough the box comes with two packages. By cutting the recipe in half I used only one package, so I am currently debating on whether or not to make a second pan next week or to make some baklava. Mmm, both such delicious choices! Hope you enjoy this spanakopita as much as we do if you try it out! 

Happy cooking :)