feta | Cecile's Cuisine

I have always loved spanakopitas. They are so yummy. Yet I will tell you that I never tried to make them because they look so difficult to make. Well, over the holidays I bought a large bag of fresh spinach for my morning smoothies, not really thinking that the bag I purchased would be so much. And since we were going away for a week I decided I would make some for appetizers for the holidays. I used the recipe from a Costco Cookbook that I adapted to use what i had on hand.

It was really good, and guess what??? It was really not that hard to make. Just needed to be patient.

Ohh and you can fix them in advance and freeze them for later use.

Ingredients for about 30:

15 oz of frozen spinach thawed out, or fresh one that will weigh to 15 oz cooked.
2 eggs
3 cups of feta cheese or 2 cups of feta and 1 cup of ricotta ( will make the spanakopita more
4 scallions chopped very thinly
2 tbsp of the dill/ lemon demarle herb blend
1 clove of garlic pressed
1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg
1/2 salt
1/4 tsp of pepper
1 pack of phillo pastry

Mix all the ingredients together and set them aside.
Open the filo dough and cut the filo dough into 3 strips. Take one strip out, and roll the other ones back into the plastic so they will stay moist.
Pull apart 2 layers from the stack, keep the other one under a moist paper towel. Either brush some melted butter, or olive oil, or if you have spray some Pam.
Spoon 1 tbsp of the spinach mixture and place it in the corner of the large triangle. Fold the corner where you placed the spinach onto itself so that it will form a triangle. Continue folding until the filo has been used and the end result looks like a triangle.
repeat all those steps until you have used all the spinach mixture.
Spray the spanakopitas with some butter and cook them into a warm oven for 8-12 minutes at 400. Eat warm.

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

It is not too often that I make pasta salad at our house because my husband is not a fan and I don’t eat lots of pasta, or gluten. But since I was asked to make one for an event this week-end, I chose to make this recipe. It is fresh, light, tastes like summer and it is really easy to make.

I really was not anticipating my children to eat it because they are so picky with their food and they hate tomatoes, but both Lisa and Theo took large helpings of it for lunch, and even took second.

I was surprised because it had tomatoes in it and none of them eat tomatoes. So I asked why Lisa liked it so much and she said: “mom!!! there is pasta, cheese and Salami… why not?!?!” Now that is too too funny!!!

This recipe is very simple. It was adapted and totally changed from a recipe I had seen on Allrecipes. com called AntiPasto Pasta Salad.

Ingredients for 6-8:

1 box of macaroni pasta
12 oz of baby tomatoes sliced in half
1 cucumber sliced very very thinly and cut in 4 ( each slice will be cut again in quarter).
1 cup of feta cheese
1 lb of hard salami cut thinly as well
1 cup of italian dressing

Cook the pasta according the package directions, (or if you are lazy place the content of pasta in the round mold, cover the pasta with 2 cup of water, 1/4 tsp of salt, place the octogonal silpat on top of the round mold and microwave for 13 minutes. Stop at half time to see if you need to add more water. ) Cook the pasta al dente.
Rinse the pasta under running cold water to stop the cooking process and wash up some of the gluten.
Place the pasta into a very large bowl. Add the sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumber, feta cheese, salami and dressing.
Mix well and let the pasta rest for a minimum of 2 hours before eating.
Et voila!!!Easy and Yummy;-)