Perfect party food? Look no further than this great spinach and feta puff pastry pinwheels recipe. Or ıspanaklı peynirli milföy böreği, to give them their Turkish name.
Warning, though – these little morsels are terribly moreish. So if you are making these spinach and feta pinwheels for a party or to be eaten later, your tricky task will be to leave them well alone until the time comes!
They make for a very easy snack. Some would argue, too easy!
If you know Turkish cuisine, you’ll know that pastries – börek – are very popular. And they come in various shapes and sizes.
Spinach and white cheese (beyaz peynir) as a filling is a very popular combination.
For good reason!
We always have a pack of milföy (puff pastry) in the freezer. So these pinwheels are often on the agenda and are really quick and easy to make.
How We Make Spinach & Feta Puff Pastry Pinwheels
Here are just a few pointers, because we’re in Fethiye, doing all of our cooking at home and buying Turkish produce, and we know some ingredients might differ slightly in your area.
The Spinach Mixture
We use fresh spinach bought from our local markets. It’s given a thorough wash. Then we reserve the stems for making delicious Turkish spinach stem salad.
Whilst we buy a kilogram of spinach, by the time we’ve removed the stems, we have roughly 300 grams of leaves.
The leaves then go into a salad spinner to get rid of excess water. And then we roughly chop them.
If you’re using frozen spinach, you can either defrost it beforehand and give it a good squeeze to get the excess moisture out. Or, if it’s in frozen cubes, you can drain and further evaporate the excess liquid later when you’re cooking the mixture.
The main thing is, you don’t want a runny, wet filling!
Also going into the frying pan is a small chopped onion and a grated garlic clove.
Again, these are bought from our local market and the garlic cloves are huge so we only use one. Use two if your cloves are small or you like a distinct garlicky flavour.
Cooking & Prepping Your Spinach & Cheese Mixture
Our onions and garlic go into the frying pan first with a glug of olive oil. Then we saute them over a medium low heat until the onions begin to soften.
Then in with the spinach and we go up to a medium heat.
Fresh spinach is likely to take up a lot of room in your pan so you might need to add it gradually. Don’t worry, it will soon wilt and you’ll be able to fit it all into a small skillet or frying pan.
Even when using fresh spinach, as it cooks, you’ll get some excess moisture. We don’t want this. So when you see it, turn the heat to high and let it cook away and evaporate.
Next we add our spinach mixture to a large shallow bowl so that it cools down quickly. Once it’s at room temperature, we crumble our cheese over the top. And then mix it all together.
Two pointers for you, here:
- We don’t like too much cheese so 70 grams is enough for us. Feel free to go to around 100 grams if you love a cheesy mix.
- As we’re in Turkey, we are using a relatively soft Turkish white cheese – beyaz peynir. If you can’t get this, feta cheese is very similar. If you’re using a salty feta, be careful how much salt you add to your spinach as it cooks.
Making Your Pinwheel Shapes
The frozen puff pastry we buy comes in individual rectangular strips. In total, our mixture uses 5 sheets which are defrosted before we use them.
If you are using one big puff pastry sheet, our individual sheets weigh 500 grams in total.
Leave a gap of around one centimetre at the top so you can roll your pinwheel shapes and stick the pastry at the end.
Now we use a good sharp knife to cut our pinwheel shapes, cutting across the rolls. We get four pinwheels from each roll, giving us 20 in total.
If you’re cutting up one long sheet of pastry dough, aim to do roughly 2 centimetre thick slices.
Baking Our Pinwheels
Line your baking tray with some greaseproof or parchment paper. Then place your spinach and feta puff pastry pinwheels onto the tray.
Make sure you leave a generous gap between them – your puff pastry will puff!
We use a pastry brush to roughly brush an egg wash around the edges and over the top of the pinwheels. No need to be too careful with this.
And, optional, but we also like a nice sprinkling of sesame seeds over the top. A bit of extra texture, flavour and nutrition.
If you think you can see toasted pine nuts in our photos, you can. This was an experiment and we felt they disappeared. They didn’t bring anything extra to the end result, so we’ve omitted them from the recipe.
And now into the centre of a 220 degrees Celsius (400 Fahrenheit) oven for 20-25 minutes until your pinwheels are golden brown and you have a lovely flaky pastry.
Allow them to cool…
…now you have yourself a delicious snack, some great picnic food or a really easy batch of finger food to add to your Turkish Christmas or New Party food table. Or any other get together, too, for that matter.
And if you’re like us and you love the spinach and pastry combination, try our spinach and potato puff pastry rolls.
Or if you prefer yufka (phyllo dough) we like to use seasonal saffron milk cap mushrooms to make spinach and mushroom börek. Chestnut mushrooms – or a mix – would work equally well.
Tip: If you want to make your spinach and feta puff pastry pinwheels ahead of time, you can cook them, allow to cool and then store in the fridge in an airtight container for up to four days. Reheat them to crisp them up again when you are ready to serve them.
Alternatively, after baking and cooling, you can also freeze them. Reheat in the oven from frozen when you are ready to serve them.
Spinach & Feta Puff Pastry Pinwheels Recipe
Let’s make our spinach and feta puff pinwheels – ıspanaklı peynirli milföy böreği. One of life’s delicious Turkish recipes that will also tempt those of you looking for Turkish vegetarian recipes.
Spinach & Feta Puff Pastry Pinwheels
Equipment
- 1 sharp knife
- 1 salad spinner (if using fresh spinach leaves)
- 1 baking sheet or oven tray
- 1 pastry brush
- 1 frying pan
- 1 wooden spoon
- 1 chopping board
Ingredients
- 500 grams puff pastry (5 rectangular sheets thawed)
- 300 grams spinach leaves (thoroughly washed & roughly chopped)
- 70 grams feta cheese (or Turkish white cheese)
- 1 small onion (peeled & finely chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (peeled & finely chopped or grated)
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (or to season)
- ½ teaspoon salt (or to season, if needed)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 5 teaspoons sesame seeds
- 1 egg yolk
Instructions
- First of all, on a medium low heat, heat your olive oil in your frying pan and add the onion and garlic.
- Stir around for a few minutes until the onion starts to sweat and becomes translucent.
- Now add your spinach leaves to the pan and increase the heat to medium. If you are using fresh spinach leaves, you might need to do this gradually, depending on the size of your pan. The leaves will soon wilt.
- Mix around until all the spinach leaves have wilted and then add your salt and pepper.
- Stir your salt and pepper into the spinach mixture and then turn the heat to medium high until any excess moisture evaporates.
- Remove from the heat, add to a shallow bowl and allow to cool.
- Now crumble your feta cheese into the spinach and gently mix it.
- At this stage, start to preheat your oven to
220 °C. - Take your rectangular sheets of pastry one at a time and spread a thin layer for the spinach and feta cheese mixture over the top, leaving around 1 centimetre free at the top end.
- Now, carefully roll the sheets of puff pastry. Start at the bottom end and gently roll until you get to the top.
- Using your sharp knife, cut each roll into four equal pieces.
- Lay some greaseproof or parchment paper onto your baking tray or baking sheet.
- Now take your pinwheels and place them, cut side down onto the tray, leaving a generous gap between each to make room for the pastry to puff.
- Brush around and over your pinwheels with your egg wash and sprinkle the sesame seeds over the top.
- Place into the centre of your preheated oven for 20 minutes and cook until your puff pastry is golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Notes
- As with all of our recipes, the nutritional values are provided by a third party API and are meant as a rough guide. If you have special dietary requirements, please do your own due diligence.
- We use frozen puff pastry – milföy – that is sold in 1 kilogram packs. The packs contain 10 rectangular strips weighing 100 grams each. Each strip gives us four pinwheels so our recipe makes 20 pinwheels.
- We have a small oven so we bake our pinwheels in batches.
- We don’t like too much cheese so we only use 70 grams. Feel free to add more if you like.
- We use Turkish beyaz peynir (white cheese) but if you can’t get this, feta cheese will do the same job. Do a taste test to check how salty it is and add salt (or not) to your spinach mixture accordingly.