Spinach and Cheese Banitsa Recipe

When you can't go home, you gotta find ways to bring home to you.

Banitsa, or the closest English equivalent word for it being "pie", is one of my favourite comfort foods from home. Its distinguishing feature being the extremely thin pastry sheets which make up its outer layers, while the fillings can vary from cheese, to spinach and cheese, to sweet versions like apple and cinnamon or pumpkin. I even remember when I was younger my grandma, whom I was named after, used to put in the effort into rolling her own pastry sheets, to make the perfect homemade banitsa from scratch. She had mastered the entire thing so much that a lot of my friends remembered her for her delicious banitsa, among other things of course.

Although in its most classic form it is simply filled with egg and cheese, for whatever reason I've always favoured the spinach one, so when my dad brought me pastry sheets earlier this year I was saving them for when I had enough time to devote to making it, and thanks to COVID-19 the time is now (and tomorrow, and the day after... I wish I had more pastry sheets).

I have been wanting to devote an entire, longer post on comfort foods from home, but seeing as quite a few people asked for this recipe specifically, I thought I'd post it on its own, while taking the time to compile all the recipes for my longer post. I also understand that while living abroad it is quite hard to always find the right ingredients, seeing as some of these are so specific to Bulgaria, so I'll try my best to offer alternatives. However, if you are in London, there's always random little turkish corner stores which sell Bulgarian ingredients. Shoutout to the Cally road food and wine for always having lutenitsa and sirene (except when I set out to make banitsa).

I've only ever made banitsa under my dad's supervision, so as I was going through the process, I was both recalling ways in which he's taught me to do things, as well as ways in which I can alter it to make it more my own. I'll try to go through both processes, and why I decided to alter what I did.

Ingredients

• 400-500g Spinach

• 400g "sirene" cheese alternative: feta cheese. I used 200g normal, and 200g light, as feta cheese is more fatty than Bulgarian cheese. if you're using feta, you're going to have to add quite a lot of extra salt.

• 4 eggs

• 200g Bulgarian yogurt (kiselo mliako)

alternative: if you don't have Bulgarian yogurt, any plain yogurt will do, but I only put in around three tablespoons.

• 40g butter alternative: not that butter is particularly hard to get, but I believe the classic recipe includes sunflower oil instead of butter.

• 1 packet of 'banitsa' pastry sheets

alternative: filo pastry is the closest abroad equivalent you'll find, I believe.

Method

note: preheat your oven to 180°C.

1. Steam the spinach. I did this by putting the spinach in a deep pot and adding 3 tbsps of water. Turn the heat on medium-high until the spinach starts to steam, after which turn the heat to medium-low and let it sit until it wilts. After that drain it, and squeeze through it with your hands, making sure to get out as much water as you can.

notes: there are different ways to do this. What I've seen a lot is recipes telling you to boil about a litre of water, and after it boils setting it aside and soaking the spinach in it for around a minute, letting it wilt in the still water and draining it. The reason I don't really like this method is because you end up dealing with way more water. The spinach releases quite a lot of liquid on its own, so you want to make it easier on yourself. I also feel like by steaming it, you allow for it to wilt more evenly. Another method would be to simply put it in the roll raw, and allow for it to cook in the oven, but then you're dealing with the liquid being released while it's baking, also it's much harder to roll because of the tougher texture of raw spinach, as well as the space it occupies.

2. Beat three of the eggs in a bowl. Crumble the feta into the egg mixture, avoiding leaving any large clumps, then add 30g of the melted butter.

note: if you're using feta, as opposed to Bulgarian cheese, add salt. Like 5-10g of salt. Feta's nice but it's not as nice as Bulgarian cheese, and you can taste the lack of salt. I don't know if this is a general Bulgarian thing, or just my dad but he always adds curd/cottage cheese (izvara); I prefer just the taste of cheese so I opt out of this usually. Another note is that usually, you would mix the wilted spinach into the egg and cheese mixture, but I decided to keep it separate so you can still kind of tell the flavours apart.

3. Mix in your yogurt.

4. Pull out your pastry sheets, and around 2 inches from the bottom spread one stripe of wilted spinach, and a stripe of the egg and cheese mixture on either side of the spinach, all equal in width.

5. Then roll that, like you would a crepe, and make it into a snail-like shape.

6. Repeat this, wrapping the crepe-like things around each other (see gif above for reference).

notes: there's many ways to arrange or roll this, you can either lay the rolls out in columns, make individual smaller snails out of each sheet, keep rolling it around itself, or just lay out the sheets flat on your baking tray, and spread the ingredients on them, and keep layering like you would a lasagna. Personally, for spinach banitsa, I prefer the rolled snail shapes. My mum makes her cheese banitsa like a lasagna and I prefer that for that given variation.

7. Once you're done, brush the remaining melted butter along the surface.

note: this is the reason I prefer butter over sunflower oil, I feel like it bakes into the entire thing much better.

8. Beat the remaining 4th egg, and egg-wash the surface as well.

note: again, this is not necessary but I feel like it bakes into the entire dish really well and gives it a golden brown finish.

9. Bake for around 30 minutes (you can usually tell when it's done yourself).

Recommend: enjoy with some ayran.