I eat frozen spanakopita once a week. I love it. It’s one of my all time favourite foods, and while I love making the filling, tediously brushing layer upon layer of phyllo dough with olive oil is simply *not it* for me right now. It’s also been insanely expensive to buy at the store. This sent determination up my belly and into my brain to bake something with the essence of spanakopita without actually having to “make” spanakopita.
Start your oven, 400°C.
Wash, dry and rip the leaves off your kale stems.
(Keep the stems in a bag in the freezer for a future vegetable broth. I do this with most of my veggie scraps and stalks - I call it my stock stalks.)
Next, chop the kale leaves into smaller pieces. Make one big pile of kale leaves and chop at them like you would a herb. Ensure there are no big pieces left.
Toss your kale leaves in a bowl with 1 tsp of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Coat. Them. Up. Use your hands, squish the kale and the oil together, they need to be evenly coated for a good kale chip.
Lay them on a baking sheet, place in the oven (it’s okay if you put them in before your oven is done preheating). Set a timer and cook for 5 minutes, toss them around, and set for another 5 minutes before removing and letting them cool.
While they cook, crush and finely chop 2 cloves of garlic, 1 cup of dill, 1/4 cup of mint and 1/8 of a cup of oregano. I recommend fresh for this, but if you can’t get fresh oregano which is sometimes the case, sub for 1 tbsp of dried oregano.
In a bowl, combine 1 cup of flour, 1 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda.
Set oven to 350°C.
Make a well in the middle of your bowl, add 1 egg, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sour cream, 2/3 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of oil. Mix wet ingredients until combined, then use a spatula to incorporate the wet and dry ingredients to form your batter.
Stir in 4oz of crumbled feta, pepper, chili flake, all your chopped herbs, zest of 1 lemon, garlic and your cooked kale bits.
Line muffin tray with parchment paper cups. Scoop batter into tray using a potato scoop. Crumble more feta on top and place in the oven.
Bake at 350°C for approx. 19 minutes.
Enjoy!