Is it Passover yet?

If you're ever out in Canoga Park, you should stop by Follow Your Heart on Sherman Way. It's this incredible vegetarian mini-market and restaurant; it's where I first was introduced to scrambled tofu at the tender age of 11. I don't think that's on the menu anymore, but their spanakopita is amazing. An order comes with two pieces--they're the same shape and size as samosas (instead of like a sheet cake slice), which I prefer since it holds in the heat better and ensures that you're biting into crisp phyllo on the outside and warm-textured-but-creamy-spinachy-goodness on the inside. And to top it off, they make them with whole wheat phyllo dough, which gives every bite so much more depth.

In any case, I'm pretty scared to work with phyllo dough, so you can imagine my excitement when I found a recipe for matzo spanakopita in Healthy Jewish Cooking by Steven Raichlen, a book I routinely check out from the library (Studio City branch in case you're wondering). Obviously it's geared towards someone craving spanakopita during Passover, but no matter. I made the recipe last summer with regular matzo, but this time I thought trying to recreate the whole wheat spanakopita from Follow Your Heart might be fun.
So, on Thursday Anna came over and we set to work. I was an idiot, and didn't think it was a problem that I didn't have dill. Herbs always enhance flavors though, and dill is always supposed to go in spanakopita. So if you make this, be sure to mix in about a 1/4 cup chopped dill into the filling. Fun fact: I read in my Trader Joe's cookbook that you can buy frozen herbs at Trader Joe's, which would be so much more convenient than having to worry about buying fresh herbs and having most of it go bad and so on.
Anyway getting to the recipe, we adapted this from Healthy Jewish Cooking's Passover Spanekopita and here we go:

16 ounce package of frozen chopped spinach
1/2 c. torn chard pieces (leftover from chard chips, though these aren't chips yet, still raw! oh yeah, and you can just replace this with more spinach too btw)
1/4 c. chopped scallions
1/2 c. matzo meal
1 c. fat-free egg substitute, or 1 egg and 6 egg-whites
1/3 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 c. fat-free ricotta (which is ridiculously difficult to find but yay for Whole Foods, the original recipe called for feta or Parmesan cheese)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Kosher salt to taste
Olive Oil for brushing
4 sheets of whole wheat matzo

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.
2. Cook the frozen spinach according to the directions on the bag. Probably that means heating up 1/4 c. water to boil in a big pot. Then putting the frozen spinach in and simmering it for about 10 minutes, but you should check. Drain the spinach, then once it's cooled a tad, grab handfuls of it and squeeze the extra water out. It will be really squishy and gross. Put squeezed spinach in a medium sized bowl for mixing the rest of the filling.
3. Stir in the chard, chopped scallions, (please use dill and mix it in too!), matzo meal, eggs, lemon juice, cheese, pepper, and salt. You want to season this a lot, make friendly with the salt and pepper!
3. Take a 9 by 13 glass baking pan and spray/butter it. Put two sheets of matzo side-by-side on it and brush with the olive oil. We didn't have a kitchen brush so Anna decided to use the scallion tails for brushing. This is why Anna's amazing.


Spread the spinach filling evenly on top. Brush the other two sheets of matzo with olive oil and place on top. Sprinkle the tops with salt (not too much now!) and bake for 30 minutes until the top crust is golden brown (this is a little bit more difficult to tell with the whole wheat) and the filling seems set. Let cool enough so you don't burn your mouth and enjoy!





And like Anna said in her post before, we made chard chips again only seasoned thanks to Anna's suggestion. She though it would be good to do half a baking sheet with onion powder and cumin and the other half with Garam Masala and sesame seeds. My favorite was the onion powder and cumin--amazing!