Hello! Yes I’m driving! We’re driving to the store to pick up some ingredients for today’s fancy recipe. It is a Greek Pie, recipe courtesy of Ina Garten, from the Barefoot Contessa TV show. And it’s in her cook book, too, I think, but I just saw it on TV the other day, so I thought that we would make it. ‘Cause today is a special day. It’s Pi Day! How exciting! Look the sun’s in my eyes! Ow. So, this is a little bouncy. Yay! We’re at Publix (FL grocery store). We’re gonna grab the ingredients and we’re gonna go home and make it. So stick with me. Talk to you soon. OK, so, I’m gonna run through the prep work, with you first here. Actually I think it’s really important for a recipe like this, to get on with your prep done first, put them all in little bowls so you can get the production going the right away. So, I chopped up a couple onions here first, and then I had to saute those, and I just got them, 10-15 min so they were translucent and I just set those off the stove to let them cool. Here I have some pine nuts and I’m toasting them, I’m not very good at that as you can see. Whoops. But you just wanna get those on a medium high heat, and you can see this sort of browning that goes on, it gives them a really nice flavor. Next, I just chopped up some feta cheese, this is like a one brick that just…I think it’s like three ounces you get it…I have Boar’s Head cheese here but I don’t think it really is too big of a deal which kind of a cheese you use. And I grated some Parmesan, it’s got a couple of different kinds of cheese in here which is really nice. But a word to the wise, what ended up happening was, I added extra Parmesan ’cause I love it, but it made it a little salty in the end, so maybe cut back on a salt later. As you can see I abandoned my little grater, and I used Tamas’ fancy gadget here. He has this awesome cheese grater that he bought a while back, and I had forgotten about it. So, I got that guy out, and here I am, using his fancy grater, ’cause he’s so much better then me. Next step is whole nutmeg and you just grind it yourself, which makes it really, really fresh smelling, delicious, wonderful thing. So this is what a whole nutmeg looks like and I’ve got my little grater here, I’m just gonna rub that against the grater, and just wanted to give you an idea here, what it looks like on the inside, always reminds me for some reason of grating a walnut or something like it’s kind of weird. But it smells so good and it’ll add some real depth to dishes so I love to use fresh nutmeg. So grate that, grate that, grate that, it’s a lot of elbow work but you just keep going and you’ll get a nice little pile here. Then I use this fancy little technique that I had just made up, I ground it over the paper towels so I could just sort of dump it into my little measuring, or my little bowl there, as you can see. That’s a really nice MacGyver way of doing things and I thought of that all by myself. So there’s the nutmeg. I wish we had a smell-o-vision, ’cause that smells incredible. Fresh ground nutmeg. Yummy. Throw some butter in a bowl and I just put that in the microwave for about of minute ’cause you want it to be fully melted, we’re gonna use that in a little bit. And the next thing, I’ve just took the salt and pepper and here is where you would cut down a little bit on the salt. Pour that into the onions and mix it up a little bit so it is ready for later. This is off the heat, and then you’re just holding this until you’re gonna mix it all together. Then I have my little spinach technique which is the way to drain it. So I had already microwaved it and got it all thawed out, you take the spinach and put it on a dish rag, but you aren’t too attached to, because you are probably gonna turn it all green. It needs to be sort of a thin one, ’cause see what you’re gonna do is then squeeze it and get all that water out. This is like really Hulk muscle kind of activity. You have to squeeze really hard, and my hands were being tired, and I’m like, Oh this sucks, but you have to just keep going and keep squeezing, and get as much water as you can out, and you’re left with a lump of spinach! Yay! Then you get to the time, where you get to throw everything together, so there was the nutmeg, I put the eggs in right with the spinach in my big bowl, the bread crumbs and then I put in the cheese, there is the feta, and then the parmesan. I’m gonna give all of this a mix…oh sorry, forgot the pine nuts, and the onions. Gonna put all that together and this is gonna be the mixture inside of the pie. So, just mix that all together nice, get it all evenly mixed, and then you are ready to assemble. OK, so, here we get to the slightly harder part of the recipe, I’m just gonna show you this, if you have never used phyllo dough before, it’s this flaky sort of pastry dough, and it comes in these really thin thin sheets. And I’ve been using it for a long time in my life, because we have this family recipe of baklava, that I’ve learned to make as a child, and then growing up we had it at family gatherings and things like that. So, I’m used to this stuff, but it is a little bit tricky to worth so I’ll walk you through how to do it. It comes like this and it’s frozen, like where the pies are and things like that. You got the dough and what I did. It’s best to let it thaw over night, that kind of a thing. But what I did, cause I was pressed for time, I did with the spinach, I microwaved it so I can get the thawed out quickly and that seems to work just fine. And with this dough here I microwaved that too. I left it in the plastic that it came in, and it came in this little roll like this. Put it in the microwave for 45 seconds it was, and it’s fine, it’s in perfect condition right now. So, I’ll show you how to work with it, it’s a little tricky but once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy. We actually aren’t gonna need all of this, we only need 6 sheets. And what I have here is what I’ve done when you work with phyllo or phyllo, however you pronounce it, we say phyllo in my family. Phyllo is probably right, anyway. So, you take, OK, so, when you see something made with phyllo it’s a lot of fat, and a lot of calories. So, this isn’t gonna be like the healthiest recipe and has a ton of spinach in it, so that’s great, but just know that we’re gonna be soaking this sucker in butter. So, what I did was that I melted a stick of butter here, and I have just a regular paint brush that I only reserve for cooking, but they have specific paint brushes for this sort of pastry as well that you can get in grocery store, but I have the regular one. As long as you, I use natural fibre bristle you’re fine. So, I’m gonna take the phyllo here, well, I’ll put it right here and try to work with it, as long as you work quickly, with this dough, you’re fine. What they usually tell you to do is to cover it with a damp cloth, but as long as you work quickly, you are fine. So, I’ve got it set out here, and just gonna separate, make sure I’ve just got one layer here, take that off now, it’s tricky to work with, it sticks together, if you thawed it out overnight it’s gonna be easier, so what you do generally when you work with phyllo, you lay down one layer. Here’s the fun part. This is great for kids too, so, lay down a layer and then just brush the outer edges, see mine is coming apart, that’s OK, just be careful. Brush the edges like this, get all of those edges so it’s kinda glued down, and just work your way around, and then get the whole piece of phyllo with butter. You can see now where the calories are coming from, and when you see a pastry like this and you are thinking, oh it’s probably not that bad for me, it is. And now you can see why. So, we’re gonna put the paint brush back in, grab another layer, generally when you work with phyllo you do five to six layers like this, so it’s layer of phyllo, layer of butter, layer of phyllo, layer of butter, etc until you have a nice thick layer, then, what we’re gonna do is, we’re only gonna use 6 layers for this guy, that’s gonna be the outside of the pie. We’re gonna throw the filling in, and wrap it up to make it a little rustic looking on, I saw this recipe on the Ina Garten show, and it looked so delicious, it’s a little messy and it’s nice to do, because you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be like a pastry chef to do it. Take a look, there is a hole here, who cares, doesn’t matter, it’s fine. Just lay that guy down. Once you get past the first layer, you’re good, you’re golden, so you can work a little bit quicker like this. Just get to slather that thing in a butter. That’s how it works. I’m just the messenger. I’m gonna do another layer here, let’s see, that was three right? Oh well, doesn’t matter. I’m gonna say this is four. Some more butter, that’s what I like. You don’t have to clarify the butter, anything like that, you can just microwave it and use it just like that. So, that’s four, I’ve got two more layers to go. And this is actually, it’s really fun to do, it’s kind of crafty, it feels like you are doing something really fancy, and you can see how kids would really like something like this, ’cause it’s painting really. We’re getting a little thicker here, which is great, and it’s exciting, it’s gonna be delicious. I feel like this recipe gives a little bit too much filling for this size phyllo and maybe I got the wrong size or something, I don’t know. But, we’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll just use less of the filling, this one is not very happy. It’s falling apart on me but it’s gonna be OK. See, it totally fell apart, but I’m just gonna put it back in place and he’ll be fine. Even when you make baklava and other dishes like that this doesn’t matter, this is not a big deal, because there are so many layers that, it’s not gonna matter. So, if you wanted more dough you could put more layers on, that would be fine, you just wanna not have too many, too much of a dry sort of pastry. Then, here’s the fun part. The recipe, you’re just gonna pick this all up, and now you can see it just comes up very easily, just hold it all together like that. And, I just flipped it over there to show you, it’s dry on this side, and you gonna do, is just butter the pan that you’re using, so it wont stick and you’re gonna be fine, because the other side is dry. You could just throw some more butter on there, if you wanted, and that would be fine too. So, you take the mess of butter and dough here, pick that up gently, put it in your pan and then all you gonna do is take a bunch of your mix here, you gonna throw that in, whoops. The little phyllo dough pie, and it seems, it definitely seems like I have way more filling here, then I do phyllo dough. So I’m gonna make a couple of these, actually. And then the couple of these, I’m gonna put a bunch of this in here, then all you’re gonna do, this is the easy part, you’re just gonna fold it up like this, so it’s kind of this crazy looking, rustic kind of thing, blob, and that’s it. This was what you’re gonna bake, so, what you wanna do then, more butter, just paint the top of this, so that the outside gets coated, ’cause you didn’t put butter on the other side, so, this way is gonna coat all of those little pieces and make a nice golden brown. So, I am going to go ahead and make another one, cause that just wasn’t, there was really too much filling for this. OK, so, actually, I ended up making three of these with the amount of ingredients that I had left over. It might be a personal preference, I mean when I folded this one up, I wanted to have some of the crust on top, instead of being over flowing with the inside spinach mix. And that could be just personal preference on the amount of spinach mix I put in there, but I’m gonna go with saying that this really makes about the three of them, the butter just ran out, I have just enough filling for one more, and I don’t know, I’m just getting the feeling that this is a three spinach pie mix. So, I’m gonna put the mixture in for this last guy here, just to put, oh, it’s smells so good, like onions, pine nuts, wow. I’m just gonna say, there is a little bit of healthy stuff in here, cause all of that spinach, so, just pretend that that’s the whole reason you’re making it. Not because of the flaky, delicious dough. Remember when I was a kid, we use to make baklava, I used to eat this dough, raw. I’m a raw dough eater, it’s really weird. I don’t know, I have a strong stomach, I guess it’s made out of steel, and I don’t really, usually get sick from this kind of stuff, so, I just love dough, raw dough is my thing. So, I’m gonna put all 3 of these in here, just bake them, just like this, I hope this goes OK. But, it’s strange to me that the recipe says 6 sheets of phyllo dough, one pie, to me it doesn’t fit. So, I’m just gonna leave it like this, I think it would be fine like this. And then you’ll have extra, you could probably even freeze one of these, once you made it, and just pop it in the oven later. That’s probably a really good idea, and that’s probably something I should be doing. Which actually I think I’m going to. So, we’re gonna throw these in oven here, let me look at the temperature, it’s 375 for one hour, until the top is golden brown and the filling is set, so that’s kind of the time you wanna look for here. And, yeah, so let’s get these guys in the oven. OK, so what I have done here is, that I have wrapped these in some plastic wrap here, a couple of them, I’m gonna then wrap those in foil and I’m gonna put them in freezer, and they’d probably keep for a good couple of months. So, you could just throw these to the oven, you’d wanna thaw them first and throw them in the oven, and I hope that works, cause I’m wondering…no, it should be fine, just thaw these out, like you know in the fridge the night before, throw them in oven the next day for an hour, and you have dinner already ready. That’s what I’m gonna do with these guys. This one I’m ready to put in an oven, let me get this spinach out so it doesn’t burn, it’s gonna be 375 for about an hour, and you just wanna check it, and make sure, cause everyone’s oven cooking times are different. Throw that in there, and we’ll see you in an hour. OK, so it’s been about 50 minutes here, and I’m just gonna take a look, OMG. Look at that! Ohhh, smells like pastry, flaky pastry, pastry, yummy. This is a success. Kay, I’m just gonna leave it in for few more minutes, cause that’s what it says to do, and we’ll be good. So, it’s done, we’re ready to take it out, and I’m gonna give it a try. Ohhh, ho ho, yeeeeah, this looks so beautifullllll, oh my gosh, OK, this recipe is fool-proof. OK, I really think that. Let’s dig in to this sucker. Oh, it’s so flaky, can you hear that. yumm. Oh, butter, mmm, you’re gonna make somebody happy with this recipe, and I’m just gonna take a little piece here. OK, here we go. So, let me give you a look at this, a really good look. Move this out of the way here. Here’s our pie. It smells amazing, let’s dig in, you can see pine nuts, cheese in there, the flaky crust, I gotta get some more of that on here. Make sure I don’t burn the heck out of my mouth. Ooh I gotta get pine nuts too. OK, first impression. Delicious. Second impression – a little bit salty. If you wanted to cut down a salt a little bit, cause the butter is salted, I put a bunch of salt in there, and there’s cheese too that’s salty. The pepper amount is perfect, it gives this nice little spice. And it doesn’t even taste like a super healthy, OK it’s not like a super healthy, but it doesn’t taste like a big bunch of spinach, you know what I mean? Mmmm, OK, sorry, I get excited about the food, you just have to deal with that. The other really exciting part here is that we have 2 more in the freezer that we can make any time that we want to. So, I suggest if you wanna cut down on the recipe by thirds or a half or something, so you didn’t have a bunch of stuff left over, that is totally doable too, or you can just make it like this, and put a bunch of it in freezer for later. So, exciting, exciting, exciting. Good luck making this at home and it’s the easiest thing ever, and I hope you come back soon to see some more recipes. Thanks for stopping bye. Bye!