Girls Cooking Night 3: Greek

The latest girls night theme was Greek. Above are the makings of our Greek salad which were devoured before Marian could actually make them into a salad. We liked to think of it as a "deconstructed" Greek salad.

My contribution was the spanakopita -- which I had never made before, but was surprisingly easy. Just mixed chopped spinach with feta, ricotta, scallions, with salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste. I cut the salt from the recipe way down since feta's already pretty salty. Then it's just the layering of the phyllo, each layer brushed with melted butter. It took a whole stick of butter, but then again that was for the whole pan, so when you break it up into 12 slices, doesn't seem that bad. I lost count, but I did roughly 7 layers below, then filling, then seven layers above.

Brownie contributed the lamb kofta, which I thought was cooked perfectly - just a little pink inside, nice and juicy. It went really well with Marian's homemade tsaziki which sounded complex -- who knew spanakopita was easy and tsaziki was hard! Debbie made the shrimp scampi over couscous, which was delicious. And finally for dessert was Kim's baklava with almonds which was totally decadent.
Because phyllo rolls came in 2, and because when I brought back the leftover spanakopita redneckhunter devoured it (this from a guy who thinks green things are evil), I actually made it again Sunday night. I'm splitting a farm share this summer and I've been told to expect lots and lots of kale. I'm foreseeing experimenting with other phyllo "green thing" pies. If the only way to get redneckhunter to eat them is to mix them with cheese and encase them with pastry and butter, well then I guess I just gotta do it...