Spinach Pete (pronounced “pee-tay”)

Serves 6 to 8

Brighten up your holiday spirit with a yummy little snack for you and your family. This recipe is great to sneak in some iron and vitamins for kids. Sometimes children turn down vegetables. Pete is a name I came up with for this dish. I grew up in Morris Park, a neighborhood in the Bronx with a large Albanian community and in Albanian pete means “spun dough”. This recipe will keep your kids asking for more just in the matter of time. The cheese can also be substituted with tofu for vegans or those who are lactose intolerant. Sliced pete makes for a great hors devour guaranteed to be the hit of any party.

You will need:

• 1 large mixing bowl

• 1 hand or kitchen towel

• 1 pizza pan or cookie sheet

• 1 plastic container (large enough to hold 1 lb. of pizza dough)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. of frozen or refrigerated pizza dough

• 5-8 oz. of frozen or canned spinach

• 4 oz. of crumbled feta cheese

• 8 oz. of cream cheese

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 10 oz. of shredded mozzarella whole or skin milk

• 1 medium-sized onion

• 3 tablespoons of any oil (olive, corn, canola, vegetable, peanut, etc.)

• 22 oz. of tofu (if you are substituting cheese)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Start by defrosting the spinach and if necessary, the pizza dough. Once defrosted, place the pizza dough in a plastic container with the olive oil poured inside the container. Let the dough sit in the oil for about a half hour flipping it over to make sure both sides are coated with the oil. Take the spinach and wrap it in a kitchen or hand towel and squeeze all of the water out of the spinach. This technique works well because the towel gets almost all of the moisture out and soaks it up so you don’t get spinach water on your hands or clothes.

In a large mixing bowl combine the feta, mozzarella, and cream cheese. Reserve about 3 oz. of mozzarella cheese on the side for the top of your pete. Chop the onion and garlic finely and place it into the bowl. Add the drained spinach into the bowl and cover the bowl with clear wrap and leave it in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes or until chilled. By now your spinach/cheese compound should look like this.

Remove the now oil-soaked dough from the container and smooth it out over the cookie sheet, spreading it out into a flat circle as if you were making a pizza. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, so don't go nuts trying to get it right. Scoop out the cheese/spinach mixture from the bowl and place it in the center of the dough. Spread the mixture out so that it covers all of the dough except for the edges of the circle. Then roll the dough up as if you were rolling up a jelly roll or a burrito. It should look like this.

After rolling the pete up into a very long tube shape, tuck the ends together to make the pete form into a ring. It should look like a big doughnut or a bunt cake. Make sure the height is even all around to prevent one side of the pete from cooking faster than the other. Again, we're not aiming for complete perfection, so it just needs to be even enough. Glaze the top of the pete with oil and lightly sprinkle 1/4 cup of mozzarella on top of the pete as a garnish. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Pete is best served when warm and can be sliced up like a cake.

Serving suggestions: Don't let that hole in the middle of the pete go to waste! You can fill that empty space with baby tomatoes, like I did in the picture. Another cool idea could be placing some parsley for presentation, a small bowl of ranch dressing with a teaspoon to scoop it up and pour over individual pete pieces.

If you try this recipe, drop me a comment a let me know how it worked for you. Also, let me know how you served the pete. The limit is literally bound by your own imagination.