Gideon and I went to Greece last year. Therefore, we ate a ton of spinach pie, eggplant salad, omelettes and club sandwiches. Seriously – every menu has club sandwiches. And toast! Lots of toast. And orange fanta!! So good.

Ever since the trip, we’ve been yearning for spinach pie as good as the good stuff. Trying various frozen spanakopita. The trader joes one is ok. The costco hors d’oeuvres are awesome. Then I had this really stupid idea I’d try it myself. STUPID I tell you.

I read this easy recipe for spinach pie and thought I’d be able to do it because the recipe was so short! You know when you see a short recipe with a short list of ingredients and you’re like oh hell yeah but then you realize how mad you should be at the recipe author and the world because you have less help than if you’d just used a long detailed recipe to begin with.

To sum it up, I attempted to make a spinach pie, but ended up using the filling in puff pastry shells instead. Because I wanted to eat the filling and not have a panic attack. (I can get a little worked up!) I don’t have photos of my meltdown, but in the end, these turned out pretty good. They’re too hearty for an appetizer, so I’d just recommend serving them as an entree with a little arugula salad or something. How cute!

Spanakopita Puffs
(filling adapted from Recipes from an Italian Summer)

2 bags of spinach
2 tablespoons butter
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
store bought puff pastry shells (or whatever you want)

Wash the spinach, put into a pan over low heat. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain the spinach well, pressing out as much liquid as possible. Melt the butter in a skillet. Add the garlic clove and cook, stirring frequently, for a few minutes until golden brown. Remove and discard the garlic. Add the spinach to the skillet, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

Preheat the oven and cook the puff pastry according to box directions. Chop the spinach mixture finely. Halfway through the cooking time, take them out and fill with the filling, cook for the remaining time. Serve cool or warm.

I got nostalgic writing this post so I decided to post some photos of our trip. I miss it!!! And I’m sorry if you don’t care!

the best spanakopita we had, and we ordered it everywhere. this was a place in plaka in athens.

hydra, the island where the wedding we attended was, was our favorite island.

santorini was a little touristy, but the views were actually break taking. like no, they really took my breath. no really.

tell me that doesn’t look like chris pine.