Our awesome friend Pam brought us a bunch of freshly picked Stinging Nettles so I decided to use them for dinner. Stinging Nettles are also very good for tea and can be cooked like spinach.

Here is a roughly improvised recipe for a delicious fresh Stinging Nettle and Spinach Spanakopita.

Ingredients

Its always nice to use as much as possible fresh from the farm so in this case the eggs, garlic, nettles and spinach

• 4 cups (bug bunch) fresh Stinging Nettles
• 2 bunches of fresh spinach
• 1 cup fresh finely chopped parsley
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 medium brown onion
• 500g Feta cheese finely crumbled
• 4 eggs
• box of Filo pastry
• Fresh ground pepper
• Dill fresh or dried

Cooking Method

Preheat oven to 325F. Finely chop the garlic and onions then sautee in a with butter in a frying pan. Add the chopped spinach and nettles and then cover and steam for about 8 minutes until they have reduced in size and most of the water is steamed out.

Prepare The Filling Combine in a bowl the eggs, crumbled feta cheese, dill, parsley fresh pepper and the spinach, garlic onion and spinach nettles mixture. stir well until evenly mixed.

Prepare the Pastry grease the bottom of a medium baking pan about 9″ x 11″ and lay 3 sheets in the bottom of the pan and brush with oil. Put half the filling in the pan then lay another 3 sheets of pastry and coat with oil. Add the remaining filling mixture and cover with 3 more sheets of pastry and brush with oil. Sprinkle more pepper, garnish with a little parsley and dill.

Cut halfway through the pastry into squares or triangles but do not cut all the way to the bottom. Bake in the oven for 1 hour at 325 F until pastry looks nice and golden brown. Allow to cool for 5minutes before serving and enjoy. Great with lamb or Greek salad, cucumber and tzatziki.