If you’re making this at school the washing, chopping and weighing jobs can be shared. All the wet ingredients can be cooked together and everyone could have a turn at creating a spinach parcel. Alternatively, you can cook this as a pie in a baking dish with layers of filo pastry brushed with butter top and bottom.
To make 15 filo parcels
Ingredients:
10 large stems of Swiss chard or 700gms of other spinach leaves
2 spring onions
5 stalks of parsley
1 small onion
1 tablespoon of butter
olive oil
100gms of feta cheese
100gms of ricotta cheese
1 egg
1 pinch of grated nutmeg
ground black pepper
a pinch of salt
5 sheets of filo pastry
01Separate the leaves of the greens from any tough stems using a knife or just trim the stalks. Rinse and dry the leaves using a tea towel or salad spinner. Roll the leaves together and shred them and if you are using chard cut up the tender too.
02Trim tops and bottoms of the spring onions and slice thinly
03Wash and dry the herbs and chop finely
04Melt the butter in a saucepan and put to one side
05Chop the onion
06In a frying pan, gently cook the onion in oil for a couple of minutes. Add the chopped spinach and herbs and cook for 5 minutes. Then tip the mixture into a colander and press out the liquid with a spoon.
07In a large bowl, using your hands crumble the feta, then mix in the ricotta and the egg and stir well. Add the spinach mixture, salt, nutmeg and a couple of twists of black pepper.
08Now you need the filo pastry. Make sure you keep the pastry you are not yet using covered with a damp tea towel to prevent it drying out.
09Put a sheet of filo pastry on the worktop the shortest side facing you. Use a sharp knife to cut it into three long strips. Then put a blob of the spinach cheese mixture into the top right corner of the first strip and fold the pastry over to form a triangle shape. Then keep folding until your filling is enclosed in 3 or so layers of filo.
10Repeat the process with the remaining strips of pastry and brush each parcel with melted butter before baking at 180°c (350°f) for about 20 minutes.
