This spial phyllo pie with spinach, dill, green onions and feta cheese is just one variation of Albanian Byrek me Spinaq. This Albanian traditional dish is made with homemade phyllo layers and can be presented in spiral form, triangular shape or even a regula rectangle pie that you slice in square pieces.
I love the spiral shape one because it’s fun to make and my kids love it.
The baking dish I use it’s this one from Amazon (affiliate link – https://amzn.to/47H0uBI )
Full recipe can be found in my blog – https://mediterraneanlatinloveaffair.com/phyllo-spinach-and-feta-pie-byrek-me-spinaq/
Please don’t hesitate to let me know any questions in comments! Thank you so much for watching. Shume faleminderit!!
Love,
Sonila
Thank you for subscribing to my channel:). Feel free to check out some of of my other social media pages:
Instagram – https://instagram.com/mediterranean_latin_love
Facebook – https://facebook.com/mediterraneanlatinloveaffair
Twitter – https://twitter.com/mediterrlatin
TikTok – @mediterraneanlatin
P.S. I am an Albanian food blogger based in Miami, FL. My husband is Bolivian and we have 2 kids. In my blog and my Youtube channel you’ll find lots of home cooked dishes, some Albanian dishes, some Bolivian dishes and some everyday foods with both Mediterranea and Latin inspirations. Thank you for following along:).
Hi friends this is oila from Mediterranean Latin lovea affair.com today I want to show you how I make Albanian b m spinach I make the spiral version with homemade fough so um let’s start by preparing the dough first I start by adding four cups of allpurpose
Flour on a mixing bowl and then I mix about 2 cups of water look warm water it’s very important for the water to be warm then I add salt and about 2 tablespoon of olive oil in the water mix it up I create a well in the flour and
Then start adding the water in and create the dough um it can take few minutes to create the dough I just don’t want to bore you with the process because it looks the same but you’re supposed to get a very consistent dough and then KN it for about 5 to 6 minutes
The dough is supposed to become elastic it’s supposed to become stretchy kneading the dough is very important because it will activate gluten and this will help us stretch the layers of fillow once we make them um Once the dough is ready I usually add it
In a clean mixing bowl and I cover it with a kitchen towel and I let the dough rest in um in my kitchen in a warm spot the Second Step um is to prepare the filling for um this spinach pie so I start by um cleaning up the spinach um
Usually I try to wash it the night before or I buy Triple washed spinach I prefer using baby spinach is easier to work with and then I just remove the stems and cut it in half and add the spinach to a bowl you can use anywhere
From 300 to 500 G of spinach depending how big your um fow pie is going to be then I get a whole bunch of Dill I remove the stems and I chop it really fine and add the dill over the spinach and I finally add some salt to uh the
Spinach it can be anywhere from half a tablespoon to a whole tablespoon of salt salt and that will depend on how salt your fataa cheese is but more about that later then I get a whole bunch of green onions I remove uh this the top part of
The onion I peel them and then I wash them thoroughly once the onions are washed then I chop them roughly chop them they don’t need to be uh very fine just roughly chop them and add the onions over the spinach and D at this point I mix using my hands
Um I mix the spinach Dill onions and salt this process will uh lower the volume of this filling and it will make sure that all the flavors are Incorporated with each other then I add um about 10 to 12 oz of feta cheese I try to use block feta and
Then um I Crum uh I crumble it myself I add two to three tablespoons of um Greek yogurt as as well as two whisk eggs using an wooden spoon I mix all these ingredients for the filling very well together and I set the bowl aside at this point we have the fill
Dough and we have the filling for the pie however with the fillow dough we need to separate it in layers and stretch each layer separately um this process is not necessary if you’re using Frozen phow layers that will make your uh dish a lot easier I’m just trying to
Demonstrate a traditional dish and how I grew up making this uh phow pie and for us it was very important to make homemade fillow layers we call it um um the habush pet um in my Albanian in my native uh language and um it was typical
Of how we made philli pies back at my native country um when I was growing up we didn’t even have the Frozen phillow layers available so I didn’t know for the longest time how to make the phillow pie using Frozen layers so um if you take the phillow dough that you made
Earlier and you separate it in about 12 to 13 pieces um then you need each of those smaller pieces we call them kulach if you need each of those separately and then uh you place them on a clean uh platter and cover them with a kitchen towel so we’ll start stretching each and
Single one of those layers one by one the way to do it is you get um a clean surface and you get some corn starch usually I get a bowl of corn starch as well as a rolling pin the rolling pin I’m using that you see here on the video
Is an Albanian rolling pin called OK uh maybe some people might call it pets so there are different ways of calling this but it’s a thinner rolling pin than the ones we use here in United States the reason for this is that you want to stretch the filler layers as big as you
Can um obviously there are um a lot of Albanian moms who make these fillow layers in an amazing shape perfect round um I definitely cannot make them that perfect but I try to make them as thin as possible and that works to make the
Pie um then I fold the corner of one of the stretched layers I add the filling um in a line across it and then I roll it over once you have one of this fill layers rolled over then you can put it kind of like in a dentist shape um in a
Baking tray um that is oiled with olive oil it prevents the fow pie from sticking or bck so then you continue stretching each fillow layer one by one using corn starch and the rolling pen um it takes some practice in the beginning to get this right but once you get used
To it uh the work flows you can get the whole thing done in about 45 minutes um once you gain some practice but in the beginning it can get tricky because the the the filler layers will sometimes stick and you can use a little bit more corn starch to prevent it from sticking
And maybe you won’t be able to stretch it perfectly but keep trying you’ll make it um it just takes some practice once you roll each fellow layer you fill it with the spinach filling and feta uh that you prepared earlier and you just keep rolling on the baking tray
One by one until you have filled the whole baking tray uh you can use different shapes of baking trays I find um this specific one to be very similar to what we used to use back home I’ll put a link to it in in the description
Um it’s it’s a deep dish uh Pizza baking tray but it works perfectly for bur as Well once you have finished preparing the baking tray um and you have all the layers stretched and filled with a spinach filling then you have to start um brushing olive oil over everything and you need to be very generous with olive oil because on the spiral fillow
We didn’t put any olive oil in between the layers if you are making a flat um spinach fillow pie like a spanakopita you’re brushing each layer as you are layering the fillow pie but in the spiral case one um we didn’t add any olive oil until the end so be very
Generous with it we bake it at 350° fah for about 50 minutes the first 30 minutes I I just check it often but I make sure it doesn’t get burned that it gets to the golden brown color and then I add um aluminum foil over the tray and
Continue baking it through the end you want to get to this crunchy filling um it’s it’s just amazing to die For crunchy delicious amazing I love it it’s one of my favorite foods thank you so much for watching my video let me know in comments if you have any questions in English and alanian anything and thank you again