Pastitsio or Greek Lasagne

Looking back at the meals I made last week and the recipes I earmarked to make in the future, I can tell it was a stressful week. I had a couple of exams and presentations in school over the last two weeks, and I think I was craving comfort food. I also recently started a subscription to Saveur magazine, which I’m really excited about. I started receiving a weekly e-mail from them with recipes included, and this take on Pastitsio, or Greek lasagna, caught my eye. It isn’t the healthiest thing in the world, but it uses a hearty, creamy bechamel sauce instead of cheese layers, which helped turn this dish into a more elegant take on macaroni and cheese. 
I’m not really sure what makes this a “Greek lasagne” — one adaptation I made to the recipe was adding Greek seasoning to the beef while it’s cooking — but I don’t necessarily need it to be super-authentic because it was delicious as-is. It was a good thing this both David and I liked this dish because it made a lot. Like two full lasagna-sized dishes. Granted, neither one was in the standard baking dish, but still. The leftovers from this recipe served as lunch for both of us the last half of the week… and David polished off the last plate this afternoon.
The fact this makes so much definitely helps with some of the ingredients called for in the recipe. The original recipe called for 8 tablespoons of butter to make the bechamel, and I even brought it down to 6, but then you’re spreading those tablespoons of butter out over the course of many servings and many days. The experience of making bechamel is wonderful, too. It feels magical when the sauce comes together and thickens as you stir. Slowly but surely the spoon cuts through the milk less quickly but more silkily. Yum.

Greek Lasagne
Adapted from Saveur.com
For the meat sauce:
1⁄3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and minced
2 medium yellow onions, minced
1 lb. lean ground beef
28-oz canned crushed or diced tomatoes
1⁄3 cup red wine
1 Tablespoon Greek seasoning
2 fresh or dried bay leaves
1  2″ cinnamon stick
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the bechamel and pasta :
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup flour
4 cups 1% milk
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 eggs, separated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1lb. elbow macaroni
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Steps
1. Make the meat sauce: Heat oil in a 12″ skillet over medium-high heat. Add peppers and onions and cook, stirring often, until soft, 8–10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer onion mixture to a plate and set aside. Add ground meat and Greek seasoning to skillet and cook, breaking meat up into tiny pieces, until browned, 6–8 minutes. Add reserved onion mixture, along with tomatoes, wine, bay leaves, and cinnamon and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring often, until sauce thickens, about 15 minutes. Remove sauce from heat, discard bay leaves and cinnamon, and season with salt, pepper; let cool.
2. Make the béchamel: Heat butter in a 4-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat. Add flour and cook, whisking constantly, until smooth and slightly toasted, 1–2 minutes. Add milk; cook, whisking often, until sauce coats the back of a spoon, 8–10 minutes. Remove from heat, add 3⁄4 cup cheese and egg yolks; season with salt, pepper. Stir until smooth; set aside.
3. Heat oven to 350°. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil; add pasta and cook halfway through, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk egg whites in a large bowl until frothy. Stir in remaining cheese; drain pasta in a colander and then toss with egg white–cheese mixture to coat evenly. Set aside.

4. Grease a deep 9″ x 13″ baking dish with olive oil. Place half the pasta mixture on bottom of dish and cover evenly with meat sauce. Top with remaining pasta mixture. Pour béchamel over pasta, spreading it evenly with a rubber spatula. Bake until the top is golden brown, about 1 hour. Transfer to wire rack; cool 20 minutes before serving.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Pasta

Leave a Reply

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

Please log in to WordPress.com to post a comment to your blog.

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out )

Connecting to %s