Instructions

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Put the spinach and quarter of the butter into a large pan and ‘wilt’ over very gentle heat. This should only take 2 - 3 minutes and the spinach will shrink and get watery. Tip the wilted spinach onto a thick layer of kitchen paper, roll it up and squeeze out all the water.

Heat half the olive oil in a pan and add the onions and garlic. Cook gently for long enough for the onions to begin to caramelize (15 minutes).

Mix the spinach with the onions. Add pine nuts, salt, sugar, fennel powder and mint. Sauté for no more than 2 minutes, stirring well.

Grate half of the feta and crumble the rest. Mix with the beaten eggs (leaving about a quarter of the eggs for brushing) and the remaining olive oil.

Melt the remaining butter.

Take a sheet of filo, place on a clean work surface and brush with melted butter. Lay another on top. Then, on one side of the pastry, brush a little more melted butter and lay a fresh sheet of filo on top, so that it overlaps slightly with the two sheets already there (the idea is to make one long strip of filo). In the end you will have six pieces of double layered filo, overlapping in a line.

On the bottom edge of the filo, begin to lay out your filling in a long snake, continuing right to the other end of the pastry

Then, carefully roll the pastry up and around the filling until you have one long snake of filled pastry. The snake can then be curled around and placed in a baking tray or in a skillet.

Brush the spanakopita with the reserved egg and cook for about 45 minutes or until golden brown


NOTE: Always defrost frozen filo (also known as phyllo pastry) pastry completely before use, and once it is thawed, make sure that it is covered with damp cloth. Filo pastry dries out very quickly. Just take one sheet at a time and keep the rest under the damp cloth.