We recently came across this recipe for spinach and feta tarts in Bon Appetit magazine. It is essentially a fancy-yet-simple version of spanikopita. The trick is that they used puff pastry instead of phyllo dough, so it only takes 15 minutes to put together and 30 minutes in the oven. It sounded so easy that we had to give it a try!
There are 2 things that should be done the night before: put 1 box of frozen spinach and 1 package of puff pastry in the fridge so that they’ll be defrosted by the time you’re ready to go.
The filling is relatively simple: 1 box spinach (defrosted and squeezed of all its excess water), crumbled feta, diced red onion, minced garlic, and dill (it called for fresh dill, but we didn’t have any, so we went with dry). Also mix in a tablespoon of olive oil, plus some salt and pepper.
Also stir in one egg and mix it all together.
The puff pastry was maybe the hardest part of this recipe (and it wasn’t that hard). You actually only end up using 2/3 of one sheet of pastry. You roll it out to an 8” X 12” rectangle and cut it into 6 squares (each is 4” x 4”).
Place each square into a 6-muffin tin leaving the corners out. I didn’t do a very pretty job here, but that’s ok.
Add the filling
Now fold up the corners to the center and pinch them together so that they don’t come apart. Don’t they look so cute, all snuggled up in their pastry blankets?
Then brush the tops with egg-wash so that they will get brown and crispy.
And here they are out of the oven.
The verdict? It was a nice and easy way to have a spanikopita-like experience. However, it was a little too much filling compared to the amount of pastry. And it needed more feta. I think next time I will for sure add more feta and then maybe stretch the recipe to 8 or 9 muffins instead of 6. I could also do mini-muffins instead of big muffins, although that will be a bit more labor-intensive. I would say that overall this could be a crowd-pleaser with just a few modifications!
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