Albanian Spinach Pie

Pies are part of Albanian Traditional Culinaria, and in my family, we cook a different pies recipe every week. Furthermore, Albanian Spinach Pie is one of the most used Albanian burek recipes. The spinach filling combines much well with different dairies, like white cheese, cottage cheese, ore ricotta. And, we can make a delicious and healthy pie recipe with these ingredients.

To summarise, spinach is a healthy green leafy vegetable made 91% of water, 4% carbohydrates, 3% proteins, and it is a rich source of our daily values of vitamin A, C, K, magnesium, etc.

Moreover, we cook spinach in salads, soups, souffle, etc. fresh, and boiled recipes, but also, in Albania, we make a delicious spinach pie. 

Ingredients – 6 Servings

• 500 g fresh ready-made phyllo dough.-Here the recipe.
• 1-bunch of spinach/ about 500 g raw spinach
• 100 g ricotta or cottage cheese
• 50 g feta cheese
• 2-eggs
• 150 ml olive oil, or any other vegetal oil
• 100 ml of milk
• salt, black pepper, dill

Tools and ingredients to roll the filo dough

• 100 g cornstarch
• one rolling pie
• one baking pan

Directions

Spinach Filling

1. First, start with the pie’s filling preparation. So, clean and rinse the spinach’s leaves and cut into small pieces. For a better clean and fast way, leave to rest the spinach leaves for 5-10 minutes in water and bicarbonate, and after that rinse very well.
2. There are three ways that I use to prepare the spinach for the filling pie.
   1. The first way- Cut the spinach in small pieces and add to a pan with one tbsp olive oil, and let cook for 3-4 minutes until tender.
   2. The second way- In a casserole, add water until boil, add salt once the water boiled, and add the cut spinach just for one or two minutes, not more to lose the nutritional value.
   3. The third way- Cut spinach finely, add 1/2 tsp salt, and press the spinach with your hand until tender. I suggest this way when we use organic spinach and without pesticides.

To cook the filling and burek:

1. Add the cut spinach in a bowl, one egg, the white of one egg (the yolk keep apart for later), ricotta, 1/2 quantity of milk, 2-3 olive oil, salt, pepper, dill finely chopped, and mix all the ingredients to create a creamy filling.
2. Roll the dough as we explain in our Phyllo Dough Recipe.
3. Grease the baking pan with oil or butter, and start to lay the spread phyllo sheets in the baking pan, sprinkling with oil, one by one.
4. You can lay the filling in one spread or two, as you prefer. Go on until lay all the phyllo dough sheets.
5. Then, in a bowl mix, mix the yolk of the egg with the rest of the milk.
6. Next, cut the spinach pie in pieces and sprinkle with the yolk and milk mixture. In this way, the spinach pie will be soft after baking.
7. Finally, bake the spinach pie in the preheated oven at 180°C/350°F for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Once it is ready, let it cool and cut into pieces, following the cutting made firstly.

In the end, transfer it to a serving dish. You can consume warm.

Bon Appetit!

Conservation

This dish can conserve for one day or two in a refrigerator.

Tips

Following the same process, you can prepare other filling ideas to prepare Albanian pie recipes. The spinach can combine with fetta cheese, spring onions, other green leaves vegetables, etc.

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