It's Pieday!

Ages ago, when I first thought about writing a blog, I also resolved to spend at least one day a week cooking with Eleanor.
 After a while it sank in that this really wasn't going to happen: she was too little for me to impose a hard and fast rule like that, some weeks she just wouldn't want to be in the kitchen.
 Now that she's a bigger girl however, she's more interested in doing regular activities, so I'm going to give it another shot: I hereby dub this day Pieday!
 Every Friday we will be making a pie, I will post the recipe and photos so that anyone who wants to can try cooking along with us, it will probably be an unholy mess but at least it'll be a good learning experience.
 I should probably give you fair warning that my definition of Pie is going to be a bit on the wobbly side: tarts, quiche, pasties, that tomatoey galette thing I make when I think Richard deserves a treat, they're all likely to be included, in short if it has some kind of pastry element and contains some sort of filling, I'm going to call it pie.

 We're kicking off this first Pieday with the pie we -and by we I mean Ellie- made way back when I first had the idea.
 Because I'm lazy.
And I already had the photographs.
And it's ridiculous how easy this recipe is: seriously, all I did was prepare the ingredients and stick it in the oven, tiny Ellie did everything else.

So behold: Spanokopitta

Ingredients:

Filo pastry: in a box, I love proper home made pastry but please, don't torment yourself.
Spinach: a big bunch or a bag of baby leaf, washed and shaken so it isn't too damp
Feta Cheese: a packet. Or two. Cheese is nice.
Ground nutmeg.
Olive oil
Spring onions: a bunch
Ground pepper (and salt if you must)

First turn on the oven to 200 or whatever setting you usually use for pies, pizza or pretty much anything that comes in a box

Take about half the sheets of pastry and brush them with olive oil.
Or one person can hold up a sheet while the other sprays them with oil from one of those squirty low fat oil spray things, like a culinary shooting gallery, squirt squirt squirt!*

Then layer the sheets in the bottom of an oven dish so that the edges come up over the sides.
"Like a little bed" according to Ellie.

Now put the spinach leaves into the dish and season with nutmeg and pepper.

Crumble in the feta cheese.

Snip up the spring onions (scissors are easier than knives and safer for children), and sprinkle them on top

Now oil the other half of the pastry and cover the cheese and vegetables tucking them in nicely round the sides and brush the top with more oil.

Pierce the top with a fork and stick it in the oven for twenty minutes.

Finally remove, bask in your crispy, golden-topped success and devour.

If there's any left it's equally good cold.

*We didn't do this.
 Honestly.
Well, not more than once.