Pastitsio, my Dad's amazing - Greek Lasagna | Christine Cushing

Hi, I'm Christine Cushing and welcome to another helping of my favorite foods today. I want to take you back to Greek cuisine and a family recipe that was my father's most requested and popular and a Greek gathering would not be complete without it. ready for pastizio also known as

greek

lasagna

pastizio has three components we have a meat sauce we have a bechamel and we have pasta step one the meat sauce a little olive oil in the pan the first ingredient to go there is the meat okay , I like to spread the meat well in the pan so that it browns evenly at this time my temperature is as high as possible and this process here to brown the meat is going to take a long time, how long do you think it is going to last? here, you will see that it takes longer than you think, in the meantime chop an onion or a shallot that I always call an onion, you can't have a Greek recipe without garlic, it's totally true, I'm going to make a couple of cloves, always removing them. germinal phase two let me show you what's going on.

I call this the squeaky part of browning the meat. You hear that squeak. Why do I put the meat first? I want to evaporate the moisture before it starts to caramelize because that's what happens next. I'm going to add the onions because you really just want to sweat the onions, it's the meat that will give you most of the flavor, not the onions. My dad Tony was famous for a few recipes, this was probably the most popular and the most requested, anywhere he went to visit friends, visit family, even you know, he went to visit people, not even in the country, when If he got there, they would ask him to make pastizio because it was so

amazing

, now the only small drawback of him making pastizio.

It was that the kitchen was a total disaster, I mean a disaster, but it didn't matter because it was so good that people were saying please come and make the pastice even though I know I'll have to hose the house down afterwards, okay? It's changing now, so you see what I'm talking about? That's what I call browned meat and what you hear with all your senses too, I always say you have to cook with all your senses, the meat sounds totally different, it's almost like appearing. the pan and what do I smell I smell like I'm roasting or grilling meat, that's my garden's reaction, so now I lower it to a little lower temperature, make a little hole in the center and hit it with The shallots now the I mix it all up because my onions have sweated my garlic has sweated too and now guess what we're going to put in with some red wine honey if you could smell this now seriously all it is is meat some onions and garlic. and red wine, does it smell good?

A little bit of tomato paste just to give it a little thickness, a little bit of body to the sauce that the tomatoes go into and now I'm going to add some aromatics. I'm going to add Greek bay leaves. tomato sauce meat sauce always has a bay leaf I'm going to throw in a couple and you must have

greek

oregano look at this, I brought it from the hills of Greece oh, does it smell so good? It's like a concentrated flavor that's going to add the meat sauce now too, this is where the spices really deviate, so the hallmark of a Greek meat sauce is these kind of oriental spices, so it has allspice , always cloves for me and always cinnamon.

Now sometimes I add allspice. sometimes I don't, but for me cloves and cinnamon are a must, so I'll use my own mortar and pestle and grind up some allspice and some cloves to make sure everyone behaves in there and I just want to cook this over low heat, not for long, about 40 to 45 minutes, until it gets nice and rich and the flavors start to meld and a little of that moisture evaporates with the lid on. The spices are crazy, so I'm going to cover it. which is ready to go, it will be on standby for phase 2, which is the béchamel or what the Greeks call bessamella because there is no sh in Greek, it just says béchamel.

You want to click on my separate video for bechamel to see all the steps. Step by step details to perfect your béchamel because you really need to do it, so as I always do in a béchamel with butter and flour, I'm adding my milk off the heat. Now let's talk about cheese, the iconic cheese in the fat of this dish is kefalotiri. let me show you that it is a beautiful salty cheese, usually from sheep's milk, but sometimes it can be goat's milk cheese, also similar to pecorino and Italian pecorino. They are similar but not the same as any cheese.

I love this cheese. It's definitely salty it has that hint and it will be layered throughout the pastiche it will be a little bit in the pasta it will be in the bechamel and it will be sprinkled on top I mean we are making pastiti okay the cheese is grated I want to keep an eye out to this baby because this béchamel is definitely thicker than, for example, my

lasagna

bolognese. You have to click on that recipe, by the way, it's interesting in theory, these two recipes look almost the same. There is some pasta. there's a little bit of béchamel and a little bit of meat sauce, but they're very different in terms of how everything is prepared, it has to have a little bit of nutmeg, so in Greece the pasta for pastichio is very specific, it's called basically, no There is a name, it is called pasta pastichio, it seems this is almost like bucatini it is a big spaghetti, let's say thick, with a hole it is fine at this point it is off the heat everything is fine, it is thick beautiful I have seasoned it I have tried it I am going to take this beautiful kefalotiri and put approximately a third in the bechamel.

This is a very specific thing in particular that my dad used to do. So I'm going to separate. I have four eggs. I'm going to separate four of them and we'll use four yolks. and two egg whites so that my béchamel is hot and now I need to add the egg yolks. There's a technique called tempering that I'm going to do because I basically don't want to cook them right away. I want you to lift it in the oven and give me a nice creamy custard, some of this hot béchamel and stir it into my egg yolks, okay, assembly time, the pasta just drained, cheesy béchamel, meat sauce ready, it's time to put together so here comes a beautiful pasta so this is al dente a little bit of olive oil in just a little bit a small amount of this wonderful meat sauce that I actually put directly on the pasta so this way , by putting a little bit of that meat sauce on the pasta, you get a little bit of the tomato and meat flavor right with the pasta instead of layering it all on top, I like to mix it up, that's what my dad did, others two things here, a little bit of that kefalotiri saved, so this is a beautiful salty cheese.

I'm also saving some for the top. Now it's time for these two egg whites that were reserved, so just beat them to break them up a little bit, so now, as another little precaution, a little more olive oil on the bottom. from the pan is fine, so the next thing is that the rest of the meat sauce will go right on top of the pasta and it will create a kind of little layer so that the bechamel doesn't sink, look at that meat sauce, oh mom, like this that here I am. I'm just flattening it so the bechamel is right on top.

The last thing to complete this beautiful dish is that the béchamel will come to greet the pasta and the meat, look at this, it barely reaches my baking. dish here I have my oven preheating to 375. I like it at a higher temperature, it will give me a darker, deeper crust and now the finish a little more than falotiri on top to give it that golden crust that this baby is going to have. in the oven for about 45 to 50 minutes and then we will have something

amazing

to try, oh my gosh, crazy, crazy, crazy, but now the bad news, I have to wait at least 45 minutes for it to cool a little, find its shape and then we eat a little bit and 45 minutes later what seemed like four hours but it's 45 minutes later we can finally cut look at this baby okay so I think I'm going to cut nine pieces and I want to serve one piece for us to taste, on purpose I leave the béchamel looser so that it does not cook completely and you cut it and it keeps its shape if you want a firmer béchamel you leave it cooking for longer until it is firmer or you can add the egg whites, but This makes a smooth, delicate and creamy béchamel, just like my dad Tony would have made, are you ready to try?

Oh my god, it's crazy, it's so good. All those flavors provide hundreds of hundreds of flavors, aromatic images and everything. the spices in that meat sauce are great and the pasta is a little al dente and all those little tricks in between Tony knew exactly what he was doing thank you so much for sharing with me this very special episode of my favorite foods, my dad is absolutely the most iconic famous recipe until next time, subscribe and let me know how I can help you until next time