Spinach, Mushroom & Feta Parcels
It seems like forever since we last spoke! It’s been a busy ol’ couple of weeks! Last friday I completed an intensive 2 week Level 1 British Sign Language Course which was great! I was amazed at how quickly I picked up (some) of the signs and learnt an awful lot about the deaf community. Very insightful. In between the sign language course I picniced, I swam in Hampstead Heath lido, I went to Liverpool for me pal’s birthday, I went to Essex for me other pal’s birthday and got very little sleep! You will be hearing a lot more from me now though, you might even get more than 1 post a week. That’s right. That means even more bad jokes and, most importantly, pictures of food!
So these triangle “parcel” things I have made, what are they all about? Well, sandwiches are an obvious savoury option for a picnic, or if its an impromptu picnic then bread and (all the) cheeeese is standard. But what if you don’t want to eat bread, what happens then?! Apart from all hell breaking loose, you have to then find something that is easy to eat with your hands and doesn’t require cutlery. This is again assuming cutlery and plates are not picnic essentials for you! Anyways, these filo parcels tick all the boxes when it comes to the perfect savoury vegetarian picnic food (according to me anyways). There’s cheese, there’s some non offensive, easy to prepare veg and it’s all delicately wrapped up in a bitta filo pastry. They really aren’t that hard to make either. You just need to be light with your fingers when it comes to the folding as filo pastry is rather delicate, but other than that it’s fiiine!
Recipe
Chopping board
Knife
Large frying pan
Pastry brush
2 x baking trays (lined with baking parchment)
2 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves (crushed)
400g mushrooms (chopped relatively small)
750g fresh spinach (roughly chopped)
400g feta cheese (cut into small cubes)
salt & pepper
270g packet of filo pastry (6 sheets)
2 tbsp butter (melted)
Method
- Prepare spinach, garlic and mushrooms.
- Heat olive oil in frying pan over medium heat. Add garlic and mushrooms and sauté for 15mins until mushrooms have reduced in size. (Lower heat if mushrooms start to brown)
- Pre-heat oven to 200c/180c fan/Gas 6
- Add spinach to frying pan (this may have to be done in a few batches) and sauté until all the excess water has evaporated. Should take 25-30mins. Remove from heat.
- Stir in feta cheese and season well.
- Lay out filo pastry sheets on a clean surface, one on top of the other.
- Cut into thirds horizontally, and half vertically, giving you 6 rectangles for each sheet of filo pastry.
- Using a pastry brush, brush melted butter on to one rectangle.
- Spoon a couple of teaspoons of filling in the bottom left hand corner of the rectangle leaving a couple millimetres border. Try spooning into a triangular shape to help with the rolling process. (See pictures above).
- Taking the bottom left corner fold diagonally across so filling is covered an triangle is formed.
- Next take bottom right corner and fold diagonally across to the left . Repeat until you reach the end of the strip of pastry.
- Brush parcel with melted butter and place on prepared baking tray.
- Repeat until all the filling has been used up!
- Bake for 10-12mins until parcels are golden brown and crispy looking!
- Leave parcels to cool before packing for picnic (or eat warm right then and there!)
