Vegan Spanakopita ~ Photo Fail, Recipe Success!

Since I was so busy last week I figured I would give you with an extra, albeit short, post.

Last week I made another attempt at spanakopita and this one was more of a success than my last, in terms of taste, seasoning and composition. It was however, a photo fail as you will see. Soon.

I didn’t used to be much of a spinach fan and today I’ll stay that I don’t love it but I don’t hate it either. I can tolerate it in a few instances, such as a variety of spinach & artichoke recipes:

Spinach & Artichoke Open-Faced Sandwiches
Squash & Spinach Vegan Queso Dip
Spinach & Bean Pinwheels
Vegan Sausage, Spinach & Mushroom Risotto 
Southern Style Vegan Black Eyed Pea & Spinach Stew

Which of course means I had to jump right to vegan spanakopita, right?

Right!

I hope you enjoy this Vegan Spanakopita Casserole Recipe.

You can make it however you choose, in a large baking dish to serve family style, individual casserole dishes or you can even do it fancy by rolling into little bite-sized triangles. The choice is yours.

Ingredients:

For the creaminess, I used a tofu that comes in brine because you can run it through a food processor with or without the liquid and get a very nice consistency. Also it gets crumbly and creamy when you spin it, so pulse it a few times on it’s own and then add the spinach.

I used frozen spinach, let it thaw naturally and then squeezed the excess water out which would be harder to do with fresh spinach.

Season with salt & pepper, dried or fresh herbs, and lemon juice.

I cooked the onions and garlic on the stove and folded them into the spinach-vegan ricotta mixture but you could add them all together if you wanted, but who doesn’t love the taste of sauteed onions & garlic?

NOW, the problem is, inspiration struck for this dish when I saw vegan puff pastry at Lidl. It wasn’t until many, many days later when I double-checked a recipe that I realized I needed phyllo dough. Duh!

Never one to back down from a challenge, I decided to make it work.

The good thing is that I didn’t need to use extra vegan butter for the puff pastry, the bad news is the bottom two layers weren’t as crispy as I would have liked. The Hubs liked it thought, so much he didn’t wait for it to cool down!

And it did, work, that is.

Mostly.

Let me know what you think!