You’d think I’ve been taking entrance exams for a job at Cook’s Illustrated. I imagine one of the more challenging tests they could give an aspiring test kitchen cook there would be: figure out how to make spinach fatayar that never open up when you bake them.
I thought it was going to be a breeze to make spinach fatayar with you. Then I realized that most of the fatayar (fah-TIE-ah, which in Arabic refers to any savory little bundle of dough—a pie—with a filling) I’ve made in the last year has been stuffed with meat. I needed some serious spinach ‘taya tutorials.
Here’s the thing: spinach is mostly water, and that water steams and juices out of the spinach when it’s cooked. Which forces open the tidy triangle you have pinched, ever so lovingly, together. Then the juice gets all over the pan and the bottom of your fatayar and burns. Then you start thinking about baking perfect chocolate chip cookies instead. You end up saying some harsh words meant only for the fatayar, and you remember it’s a beautiful spring day in March and the windows are wide open. Construction workers next door just look at you and then each other when you walk out the door. There goes crazy.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that you rolled your dough out nice and thin and pulled together a really pretty triangle that then, as if just to spite you, bakes up looking like the misshapen work of a five year old.
Now that I’ve been to cooking school, and the OCD-factor is in fine working order, it seems I can’t stand to have my fatayar looking too…rustic. Dan said they never all look the same; they’re like siblings, he said, different but the same, and they’re cute. But here’s a guy who has never seen the Sound of Music, so I’m not sure I can trust him. As he buttered up the fatayar with labne and ate them down like candy, I was forced to admit that yes, they do still taste incredibly delicious even in their artisan state.
Cindy happened to call when I was in the middle of my third round of testing. This time I had used cake flour for a softer dough, hoping that would contribute to the sticky factor and keep the pinched edges together. I got all excited by how beautifully that dough rolled out and was sitting in front of the oven watching them, just daring them to open up again. Cindy could hear the concentration in my voice. How about a staple gun!, she said, and you could just tell people how many staples are in each one so they’d know how many they need to spit out. Like an olive pit, I said.
The batch came out pretty, and without much fatayar-opening, but the cake flour dough just didn’t have the right chew, the right flavor, the right color. No go.
Cousin Teresa makes tons of fatayar, and she told me that her key is a dry dough, but then she folds her dough over into a turnover triangle rather than pinching it. I notice that’s what Aunt Louise does too, but I can’t seem to get past my desire to pinch them closed, the way my mom does it.
The chef at the club where Tom and Amara had their wedding reception last month made little tiny fatayar, the smallest I’ve ever seen, and he told me he rubbed egg white along the rim of the dough circles to help them stay closed. I tried it and it can be helpful, but not foolproof, and it’s another step I’d rather avoid if I could.
In the end there are two factors that I’ve found work well to keep pinched fatayar closed: a dry spinach filling and a sticky dough. The spinach is dried out by squeezing it practically to death before adding finely chopped onions, cinnamon or allspice, and then a little lemon juice right before filling the dough. Fresh chopped spinach gives up its water when it is salted and left to rest for a few minutes; then squeeze away. Chopped frozen spinach thaws out wet and can be squeezed out from there. You keep the dough sticky rather than dried out by not dilly-dallying when you are cutting, filling, and closing them. I don’t recommend stopping to take pictures along the way. Or staples.
Lebanese Spinach Pies, or Fatayar
This recipe makes about 30 spinach fatayar using a 4” round cutter. Fatayar make great picnic or road trip treats!
For the dough:
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 ¼ cups warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil, plus more to coat the pans
2-3 tablespoons olive oil, to coat the fatayar
Proof the yeast by dissolving it in ¼ cup warm water with the sugar and letting it activate for about 15 minutes.
Whisk together the flour and salt in a mixer bowl or medium bowl. Create a well in the center and add the oil and proofed yeast mixture. Using a stand mixer fitted with the hook attachment or by hand, slowly work the wet ingredients into the dry, adding the 1 cup of water slowly. Hold back 1/8 cup and add only as necessary to create a sticky dough.
Knead by hand or with the dough hook in the mixer until the dough is very soft, smooth, and tacky/sticky to the touch (but it should not leave dough on your fingers when touched). The kneading by hand can be awkward at first because it’s such a wet mess, but as you knead, the dough will firm up a bit and absorb all of the water.
In a clean bowl at least twice the size of the dough, lightly coat the dough and the sides of the bowl with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm spot until doubled, about 90 minutes.
For the spinach filling:
8 cups of fresh spinach, chopped or 2 lbs. frozen chopped spinach (thawed, drained, and squeezed dry)
1 ½ cups yellow onion, finely diced
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ teaspoon cinnamon or allspice
½ cup toasted pine nuts or chopped toasted walnuts
If using fresh spinach, sprinkle with the salt in a medium bowl. Set aside to macerate for 10 minutes, then squeeze the spinach of as much juice as possible. Discard juice. If using frozen spinach, squeeze as much juice as possible, and discard juice.
Combine the spinach and onion. Just before filling the pastry, add cinnamon or allspice, pepper, and lemon juice. If using frozen spinach, add salt (fresh has already been salted to remove the juice). Taste and adjust seasoning.
To fill and bake the fatayar:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Brush two heavy baking sheets with canola oil.
Roll half of the dough out on a dry work surface to 1/8-inch thickness. Gently lift the dough from the edges to allow for contraction. Cut dough into 4-inch rounds. Cover with plastic wrap. Knead together the scraps, cover with plastic, and set aside.
Fill the rounds of dough by placing a heaping tablespoon of filling in the center of each round. Be careful not to let the filling touch the edges of the dough where it will be gathered together and closed. A good way to keep the filling in the center is to lower the spoon with the filling over the center of the dough (parallel to it) and use your fingers to slide the filling off the spoon and into the center of the dough circle. Place three nuts on top of the filling; this method works better than adding the nuts to the filling because it’s easier to be sure each fatayar has enough nuts.
Bring three sides of the dough together in the center over the filling and pinch into a triangle. Close the dough firmly.
Place the fatayar on the baking sheets and generously brush or spray the dough with olive oil. Bake in the middle of the oven for 18-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Set the oven on convection bake for the last 5 minutes of baking to encourage browning.
Repeat the process with the other half of the dough, then with the scraps that have been kneaded together and left to rest for a few minutes before rolling out.
Fatayar freezes well in a ziplock freezer bag and can be reheated from frozen, or simply thaw to room temperature and eat.
Serve fatayar warm or room temperature as an appetizer, or for a meal with a salad.
Find a PDF of this recipe here.
Secured by 
Oh Maureen, your fatayar look so beautiful! We like both the meat and the spinach here. Perhaps next week when my daughter is off for spring break, we will make some!
Thank you Marci! They ARE delicious with meat, super delicious. Let me know if you make some!!
Great article, will forward to wife’s laptop who makes and loves spinach pies.
Years ago we met with a cousin, husband and two young girls. We made spinach pies and used the dough also for other bread. We jokingly had races to see who could finish them up the fastest. I stole one from the oldest girl and pretended I had done it. She quickly caught me and took it back. If there was a way to attach a photo I could amaze you with a shot of her smiling face and the “big kahouna”, which was a rather large pie that we took a picture of. Every pie was different, I think they all opened up in the center. Thanks for the hints and details.
A big kahouna fatayar!!! Perfect!
Who is this Maureen Abood, the fataya guru? Is she a welcome relative of mine? and how we became so lucky.
And who is this Myron Abood?! Cousin?! The Abood clan is everywhere!!
These are lovely – I love spinach everything.
Then these are right up your alley, Lynda. Such good spinach flavor, combined with the delicate golden exterior.
Love spinach fatayers so much and have been getting some serious practice with them here in Beirut. Yours look picture-perfect!
How wonderful that you are spending all of this time in Lebanon, Joumana!
These were, by far, Mom’s specialty. We’ve all spent hours with Mom trying to master her dough and recreate the mountains of spinach (and meat) pies that she could produce, BY HERSELF, in one afternoon. It was like a fatayar production line at the kitchen table. Mom never served spinach pies that popped open — because someone always ate them, hot from the oven, to destroy any evidence that they ever existed! It’s Lent, so I’ll make some spinach pies in Mom’s honor. Thanks for the reminder, Maureen!
What a woman!! Thank you Rosemary, and let me know how your fatayar come out.
Dear Maureen,
You ALWAYS push the right buttons, and as always, I was smiling AND laughing all the way through your article because I was NEVER able to get my spinach fatayar to stay closed — never have made it on my own since leaving my mother’s kitchen as I always felt like an abject failure. Her spinach and meat pies were always beautiful and perfect, as are yours. And yes, you are so right, our mothers were fstayar making machines–working hard all morning and afternoon for love of family, so we could eagerly gobble them up as they came out of the oven–very difficult to wait for them to cool to eating temp!
I can just SEE the whole scene, Diane! Beautiful!
Ah the plague of too-wet spinach. I have started to dry out my frozen, thawed spinach by heating it in a saute pan over medium heat until the liquid has stopped bubbling out – I have found that this makes it dryer than I can ever can by just squeezing – maybe that would help with the filling?
Clever, Beth!! I will give this a try!
This is what my mother would do. She squeezed out the spinach and heated it in a saute pan to finish taking the rest of the moisture out. Then she added the lemon while it was hot and it absorbed the lemon….they were delicious. And, I might add, they looked just like yours Maureen….yours are beautiful.
Thanks for sharing …
I wish I had asked more questions when my Grandmother and Mother (who learned from my grandmother) were alive. They made these regularly. Don’t remember any complaints about them being hard to make or they wouldn’t have made them. My aunts don’t refuse to give recipes and advice, they just don’t get around to answering emails. (Maybe I should try calling.) My Grandmother had 9 children and 20 some grandchildren and on the holidays we never ran out of anything. And she used a wood stove because she just couldn’t bake correctly with an electric.
Anyway, I haven’t thought about making them in a long time. Your blog brings back so many things that my mind had put in storage.
Thanks.
They just had what it takes, didn’t they?! The wood stove–wow. It would be great to see a photo of her baking at her wood stove.
O.K. No staples. A quick whipstich with dissolvable thread? Chris or Dick could help sew them up.
Brilliant!!!
LOL!!!
Maureen,
My daughter is coming home next week. We’ve never made fatayar without my Mom (who now lives in assisted living) but we’re going to give it a try thanks to your great suggestions! I hope we can make Mom proud!
Jody, this is great!! Your fatayar will be wonderful and will make a Mama proud! Can’t wait to hear all about it.
Lovely photos! A Lebanese-Australian chef told me she uses citric acid rather than lemon juice in her fatayer to get the requisite tang without the extra liquid.
I’ve seen citric acid used in some cookbooks but haven’t worked with it myself. Very interesting and worth a try!
I use it Maureen….it works wonderful. I also use it in salads when the tomatoes are so very ripe that you otherwise would have a half filled bowl of juice. Which by the way I love and dunk my bread in. But, the Citric Acid is an amazing fresh lemon taste. Hope you try it sometime. If you do, let me know how you like it.
Pingback: Pie fillings : Lebanese Spinach Pie Filling
Thank you for this recipe! So easy to make but I agree, trying to keep the triangles closed is a challenge, but fortunately they all taste the same! I will be making these for our Eid party this weekend. Thanks again!
I love your recipe! I’ve tried making my dough with whole wheat flour, but it becomes dry and a little hard. Have you tried it with whole wheat dough? Is there a secret?
I used 1/3 whole wheat flour in mine with great success.
Hi Maureen,
I am of Lebanese descent. You can take the boy out of Lebanon but you can’t take the Lebanese out of the boy. My mother, God bless her, went to Him too soon. When I married, my wife who is not Lebanese, did not have the benefit of mums cooking prowess to guide her. Over the years I have relied on relatives to get that magical taste of home made Lebanese cooking and of course our own versions of certain dishes. I recently retired and although I keep busy it occurred to me that I had time to research and try some of my mums dishes. Fatayer was my favourite as a child. I tried your recipe and was pleased at my first attempt. Although some opened they tasted just as good as the others. I did not use pine nuts because mum didn’t. But there was one one ingredient that I remember mum added which was a small amount of chopped fennel leaves. I will definitely try that extra ingredient next time. Some of the other dishes we have made include merhshe kooseh, kibbe mekleea, kibbe naya, loubyeh, hummus and felafel. We have even tried our hand at pickling olives. One dish that I would like a recipe for is Fasoulyeh. I remember a rich stew of kidney beans and lamb on the bone served with rice and egg noodles. I would be forever grateful if you have a recipe for that stew. Keep up the good work….
Regards
Peter Hassarani
What a wonderful comment Peter, thank you. I’m delighted to hear about your cooking adventure. I will find out about fasoulyeh and will let you know!
These look awesome and your hints and tips will enable me to make a huge improvement on the recipe I’ve been using! Just wondering about pre-baking and freezing for the holidays. How is the taste and texture when frozen and reheated? Close enough to fresh? What’s the maximum on freezing- like could I prepare on Sunday to freeze then reheat on Thursday? I would like to bring some to a friend on Thanksgiving but can’t see myself doing all the work the morning of. Thanks!
Hi Marisa, and thanks for your great questions. I freeze baked fatayar all the time and they are great for at least a month out of the freezer. They reheat and taste/texture are excellent. You can and should prepare them Sunday for Thanksgiving and freeze!
I love Spinach Pies, My Mom made them for us when we lived at home many years ago and since she is gone we do not get the special taste of the Middle Eastern foods such as she made……she also put raisins in her spinach pies, this really sets them off and a wonderful taste….try it sometimes…..
Keep up the good cooking…………Ronnie……..
Just made these. Yum! I added feta, hope you don’t mind. My 3 year old gobbled it right up. Great way to get him to eat his green veggies. Thanks for this!
ilove making both spinach pies and occasionally themeat variation.. my family were from aleppo and also turkey so i grew up withthem..in the summer i havemade them with chard and even dandelion greens.. i like using a bread flour for the dough.. i never really had a problem with them opening up but even if they do imsure hey would taste just fine
i forgot to mention i also use ground sumac in the spinach pies and a handful of raisins like my grandmmother from aleppo did
I just stumbled on your blog. I am a (relatively) new Lebanese expat to California. I made Fatayer for rhe first time in my life last Easter at my in-laws (yeah I can be confident like that lol). They were a hit! I love Fatayer, they are a little shy of magical!
I found that a salad spinner can do magic to dry the spinach. It is like the tool especially made for this! Another thing that I found to work is to drain the filling some before putting it on the dough.
Glad I found your blog.
Great ideas, thank you Viviane!
Hey Cousin Maureen,
My mom told me to go to you as far as making the spinach fataya. Your fataya definitely looks a lot different than my moms, but I want to try because alot of people that I live with are vegetarians. A few questions though: How do you slice the dough so perfectly, what is a 4” round cutter and where can I find one? Also, could I use this same dough for some meat fataya?
My house at school is doing a Middle Eastern Night, so I figured I had to try and represent
Ali, how great that you’re going to make the fatayar! Your mom is a pro. The dough will roll out nice and thin for you because there is no second rise as is typical for breads. The round cutter is a cookie cutter that is round, 4 inches wide. I use the round top of a canister that is 3 or 4 inches, depending on how small I need the fatayar to be. The top of a cup will work too, it just may take a little more doing to cut the dough if it isn’t very sharp. And yes, this dough works great for meat fatayar too. Let me know how it goes!
Maureen, where can I find the “meat pie” version of this recipe?
Hi Emm, use the same dough and for the filling: saute 2 cups chopped yellow onion, 1 lb. ground round. Season with salt, pepper, cinnamon, lemon juice. Add toasted pine nuts, and go!
i am not an experienced baker but i do cook a great deal of mideastern foods.. my family is from turkey as well as yemen.. however i do love making spinach pies and i am surprised i never had a problem with the pies opening during baking.. i use part bread flour and keep it on the sticky side i find they seal better that way.. ive tried variations on the filling i always use some sumac and sometimes i add raisins other times i use some pomengranate molasses.. they are always delicios and truly my favorite.
i also had a question…. i am a vegetarian and grow a garden in the summer.. i have used chard and purslane instead of spinach from my summer garden.. has anybody ever used other vegetables for a filling such as koosa.. i never tried it yet…
Thanks Ira–Coosa would no doubt taste good, just would need to be careful of all of the liquid from the squash!
Hello Maureen I have been looking for a recipe for a long time that took me back to my childhood. I grew up in Brooklyn New York my grandmother on my mother side was Lebanese and her last name was Abood also. She would make them for the holidays and she would always put some on the side for just me to take home. I can’t wait to try your recipe I will be making them for Easter and surprise the family. Thanks for the memories!
Maureen, You have awakened the sleeping Lebanese in me. Moving away from my MI home at an early age I also moved away from the chance to learn to make some of the great foods my mom made so deliciously well. All of your instructions and helpful hints will help me through my usual mistakes. Your special way of writing, beautiful pictures and recipes have certainly inspired me to increase my cooking (as well as my waistline). I’m hoping you start a revival in the younger generations to keep these wonderful recipes alive.
Thank you so much for the recipe Maureen. Although i’m half Palestinian, half asian, this recipe still reminded me of grandma’s cooking and living back home. I doubled the whole nuts and used cinnamon as my spice of choice. It was amazing
Thank you
Cousin Maureen,
It’s encouraging to know that a great cook like yourself has struggled making spinach fatayer too. The ingredients are basic but it can be tricky to get it just right. Luckily, the “mistakes” taste good. For the flour, I have had good luck using King Arthur’s unbleached bread flour. For those, like me, who need to know exactly how warm the water needs to be to get the yeast to activate, I found the right water temperature is 115 F. Thank you for the tips about getting the water out of the spinach and putting the pine nuts on top! Why didn’t I think of that?
Thank you cousin for sharing your details! Let’s make fatayar together someday soon!
Maureen, thank you for the wonderful recipe. I made these with my 3.5 year old daughter and she had a great time both making and eating them. While mine were not all uniform in size and shape, not one opened up. Thanks for all the good advice.
How great to hear that Beth! Children and fatayar go together! My nephew asks me to make some special for him without onion…
I use very little lemon juice but make up for it using a spice called sumac. It is much tastier than lemon juice or even any alternative like citric acid. It has a flavor that I really do like. We use it on chicken and onions when we make Imsakhan over here in Palestine. I just made some actually! I never could get the dough right but it worked just fine today
Nadooa, love sumac, and what a great idea to use it in the fatayar with the spinach. I will try it!