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Spinach and Feta Topped Tomatoes

Greek food is one of my favorite cuisines and my first real dinner parties were often with Greek recipes.  It seemed a lot more exotic 20 years ago before Greek yogurt was in every grocery store and Greek restaurants were easy to find.  In Washington, D.C. where I lived at the time, there was only one good Greek restaurant and it wasn’t hard to get into—Northern Italian was the “in” thing back then.   My Greek dinner party menu back then was taramasalata with crisp bread to start, Greek salad, moussaka for the main course and baklava for dessert.  It all took hours to make, but it made for a great party.

My Greek menu these days is lighter and much easier.  I still make the Greek salad, but the main dish is often marinated chicken kabobs, accompanied by lemon and oregano roasted potatoes and tomato slices topped with a delicious spinach and feta cheese mixture.

This recipe is one of my very favorite vegetable dishes of all time. I adapted it from the Periyali Cookbook, which was published in the early 90s and featured recipes from the Greek restaurant that is still a great place to go in New York.   You can make this topping ahead of time, which makes really short work of making a platter of these tomatoes for any size gathering.  The topping is also wonderful stuffed into mushrooms or into zucchini—and there are probably other uses for it that I still haven’t found—let me know if you think of anything wonderful.

Spinach and Feta Topped Tomatoes
4 servings

4 thick tomato slices

For 4 cups of filling (which can top a lot of tomatoes or other vegetables):

1/3-cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 leek, white part only, halved, rinsed, drained and chopped
2  10-ounce packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained by squeezing with your hands to get as much liquid out as possible
2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 eggs
¾ cup Feta cheese, crumbled
1 cup regular small-curd cottage cheese
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon dry breadcrumbs

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and the leek and cook, stirring frequently until they are lightly browned.  Add the spinach and the 1/3 cup of olive oil.  Stir and cook until the oil is completely absorbed, about 2 or 3 minutes.  Stir in the dill, salt and pepper and remove from the heat.  Transfer the mixture into a large bowl and refrigerate until cooled.  Once cooled, stir in the eggs, Feta, cottage and Parmesan cheeses and the breadcrumbs.  Refrigerate again until ready to use.

To assemble the dish, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Spread about 3 tablespoons of the spinach feta filling on each slice and place them on a baking sheet.  Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the tomato slices are warm and the filling is hot and lightly browned.  Serve immediately.