Spanakopita Creamed Spinach

I write a lot of recipes that never see the light of day.

If you could see the drafts section of my blog, you’d be a little bit impressed and a little bit terrified. Last time I checked and there were hundreds of nearly finished recipes without photos or stories to go with them yet. And many hundreds of recipe ideas in a notebook elsewhere.

It’s all part of my creative process, I guess. I write first (usually), cook using my own hypothetical recipe and then make instinctual adjustments as I go. And then photography and all the rest—if it’s good.

This Spanakopita Creamed Spinach is good. It finally made it off the blog bench.

Like Casper the Friendly Ghost, I decided to finish some of my unfinished business this year, so here we are in 2020 with a SUPER delicious recipe I wrote in October of 2016. It’s so delicious, in fact, that I might make it for a Thanksgiving side dish next year.

Yep. This Thanksgiving-level recipe was just chilling in my recipe drafts for 3.5 years. WTF.

This Greek spanakopita-inspired holiday (or regular day) side dish is here, finally—and I know you didn’t know you were even waiting for it, but I hope it’s worth that 3.5-year wait you didn’t know about.

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Spanakopita Creamed Spinach

gluten-free | serves 8

Ingredients

• 30-32 oz frozen chopped spinach (about 3 blocks or 2 bags)

• ~1/4 cup olive oil or butter

• 1 yellow onion, minced

• 1/2 cup green onion, finely chopped

• 1/2 cup fresh dill (leaves and stems), finely chopped

• 3/4 cup fresh parsley (leaves and stems), finely chopped

• 4 oz cream cheese

• 1/2 cup ricotta

• 1 cup feta, crumbled (reserve a bit for garnish)

• 1 cup milk or cream, give or take

• salt, pepper and crushed red pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Prep the spinach by microwaving per instructions and draining/squeezing the excess water out of it. Set aside.

2. In a large Dutch oven or pot, saute the onion in olive oil or butter on medium heat until the onion is translucent. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Stir in the green onion, fresh dill and parsley and cook for a few minutes.

4. Mix in the cream cheese first and then stir in the ricotta and feta. Add a little more salt and pepper to taste. Note that the cream cheese will get melty and smooth—the ricotta and feta will not. It’s science.

5. Fold in the spinach until fully reheated. Again, salt and pepper.

6. Add cream or milk until you get to your desired consistency. (I stopped a little under 1 cup but depends on how you like your creamed spinach.)

7. Taste and add more salt and pepper as needed. I also like a little kick of crushed red pepper.

8. Serve hot with the remaining feta crumbled on top. This will also work nicely if you transfer it to a slow cooker to stay warm.

Notes

• This creamed spinach would go really well with the Shawarma-Spiced Chicken or Greek Lamb Meatballs.

• I didn’t include garlic in this recipe because it’s not traditionally in spanakopita, but obviously this is non-traditional in general so I’m sure it would be delicious if you put a couple cloves of minced garlic in this.

• There’s a lot of cheese in this b*tch. You could also bring in some mozzarella to this mix of cheeses if you wanted to go even more nuts. Mozzarella will definitely get you even more melty creaminess. You could pare it down as well and do just cream cheese and feta or just ricotta and feta (though you may need to add more cream or milk).

• This is the kind of recipe that doesn’t need exact measurements (most don’t), so it’s okay to just trust your instincts, eyeball it and taste often.

• I thought this wouldn’t need much salt because it has so much feta, but it actually did need a reasonable amount of salt at the end. I’d suggest going easier on the salt until you get to the feta step just in case your cheese is a little saltier than mine was.

• The leftovers work really well mixed into scrambled eggs, so I’m assuming this would be great baked into a big breakfast casserole or spinach pie.

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