Pastitsio. Need I Say More?

Tags

bechamel, bolognese, cheese, crockpot, Greek, meat sauce, minced meat, pasta bake, pastitsio, slow cooker, spaghetti

Hello! Well, yes, here I am! It’s been a while. Phew, a busy few weeks. I’ve just completed the last of a series of projects that popped up at the same time as my new Greek blog launch. One was a recipe contest for the restaurant chain TGI Friday’s, the other a guest post at a food related website (more on that in future) and the final one was another secret mission about which I can say that it involved making a Christmas recipe and photographing it. While it was 25C outside. Weirdest feeling!

All this at the time I was supposed to be building up the content of my own new blog. And practicing my new food styling and photography skills after a fabulous workshop in Holland at the end of September. Oh, and entertaining my gorgeous little nephews who came over for a week’s visit from the UK with my cousin and my uncle! Rather than try and do everything at once (I’m not good at that) I set myself a schedule (I’m better at that) and got all the projects done one after the other, while keeping a week in between completely free so I could enjoy the holiday with my family. It was my uncle’s first visit to Greece, after his sister (my mum) has lived here for 45 years! It was such a fab week!

Gazing at the sea on a one-day cruise
Swimming in a pool all to oneself
Being buried in the sand
Eating a huge ice-cream
Digging one’s way to China

Now I’m hoping to get into a rhythm with my posts, both for The Foodie Corner and OTO Spaghetti, and maybe show up here a little more often. That’s the plan anyway…

In order to celebrate all the above, and to make up for my disappearance, I am sharing a really good recipe. Not that all the rest aren’t really good… but this is a rather special dish. Pastitsio. Anyone who has been to Greece knows what it is. Its elements are I suppose –more or less- the same as those of lasagne, but somehow the taste is different. Equally yummy, but different. While lasagne is best made to be fairly sloppy, pastitsio should be able to proudly stand tall with each layer clearly visible on its mouthwateringly beautiful profile. Yes, I do love my pastitsio, is it that obvious?

Now, I know with lasagne lots of people go and add a cartful of veggies and make all sorts of adjustments. That would be fine here as well, but your end result would not be pastitsio. I’m sure it would be tasty, but I would have to object to the name being used in vain. The meat sauce has to be fairly simple, in fact even my recipe is quite a fancy version, and it has to be thick, not runny. It might be hard to find the proper pasta to use, it’s called bucatini (a thick spaghetti with a hole running through it), but it’s worth the search. If you really really really have to, use penne or rigatoni. I don’t think spaghetti is a good substitute. The béchamel, unlike lasagne, has egg in it which keeps it nice and thick (remember the standing tall thing).

Pastitsio is one of those with which you end up dirtying a hundred different pots and pans. That might have something to do with why I don’t make it that often… But it’s soo worth it. Here’s the recipe. It’s based on the one in the little Greek book “Recipes for children” by Mima Karvouni, a little gem of a book I use to find things to make for The Mister when I run out of ideas for food he might actually like rather than put up with (i.e. my usual blog experiment type cooking). For the meat sauce I use my slow cooker Bolognese recipe which is super tasty. Making it in the slow cooker is brilliant in this case, as you will see from all the steps below. You can make it the conventional way, there is a note in the same post for a stovetop method.

So, here goes… (ingredients are listed by order of appearance)

Pastitsio

Ingredients

500g bucatini pasta
2 Tbs margarine or butter or 1 Tbs oil (to keep the pasta from sticking)
1/2 c grated cheese (a hard yellow cheese would be best, like gruyere or parmesan or maybe manchego)
1 egg
salt & pepper
1 litre (approx. 4 cups) thick Bolognese sauce. Use this recipe BUT omit the stock to ensure a thicker consistency. It should be slightly thicker than what you would want from a sauce over a plate of pasta.

For the béchamel
100g margarine or butter
100g all purpose flour
1 litre milk
pinch of nutmeg
salt & white pepper (or black if not available)
1 egg

3/4 c grated cheese for topping
1/4 c breadcrumbs (not traditional, can be omitted)

Instructions

1. Boil pasta according to packet instructions, being careful not to overcook. Drain and add the 2 tablespoons of marge. Stir gently so that pasta is coated, then set aside to cool.
2. If you haven’t already made your meat sauce, do that now.
3. When the pasta has cooled a bit, add the egg and ½ cup of cheese, stirring gently till the pasta is coated with the mixture. Careful the egg doesn’t scramble.
4. Put half the pasta in a baking dish (mine is 30cm x 27cm – about 12”x10.5”), spread it around nicely and add the meat sauce in a layer on top. Then cover the meat sauce with the rest of the pasta, again spreading it out.
5. Make your béchamel. It’s important here that you have all the ingredients ready next to you. Melt the marge in a medium sized saucepan on medium to high heat, add the flour and mix well with a wooden spoon. You want the mixture to come together into a paste. Cook for a few minutes stirring constantly. Working quickly, switch the spoon for a whisk* (keep spoon next to you), lower heat to medium and add about half the milk while whisking quickly. Keep whisking till the mixture becomes smooth. It might thicken quickly, if it does then add the rest of the milk, without stopping the whisking. If it doesn’t, add the rest of the milk gradually (still whisking). When you are confident that the sauce is smooth, turn the heat up just a bit and switch back to your spoon. I find the spoon better at this stage as I can feel the bottom of the pan better and know if it’s catching. If it is, turn the heat back down to medium. Keep stirring, getting into the corners of the pan, till the sauce thickens a bit. It doesn’t need to be super thick as the egg will thicken it later. I stop when I can just see the bottom of the pan when the spoon swishes around during stirring.
6. Take the béchamel off the heat, add the nutmeg and some salt and pepper.
7. Preheat the oven to 200C (or 180C on fan).
8. When the béchamel has cooled just a bit, add the egg while stirring vigorously. Pour the sauce over the top layer of pasta in the dish.
9. Mix the ¾ cup cheese with the breadcrumbs and sprinkle over the top of the pastitsio.
10. Bake for about 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is nicely browned. Let the pastitsio rest before cutting and serving.

Note: (*) I find the best whisk for sauces and custards is the one pictured below. It gets into the corners of the pan better than the others, which are more suitable for bowls.

And a small announcement: In between writing steps 9 and 10 I found out that two of my recipes have made it to the final of the TGI Friday’s recipe competition. I’m a happy bunny!

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Bolognese Sauce, In My Favourite Kitchen Gadget

Tags

bolognese, crockpot, ground beef, meat sauce, minced meat, slow cooker, spaghetti

And now for a slow cooker recipe!

The Christmas before last, my mum and I visited my brother and his wife who live in England. My brother is a talented cook, who mostly (unlike me) relies on his imagination to throw together yummy meals. At the time, he had recently discovered the magical world of slow cookers and raved about his new appliance. One evening during our stay we had a gorgeous beef stew which was miraculously waiting for us when we got home from a hard day’s money-spending. It was cool, and I had read about slow cookers a couple of years previously thinking “I should get one of those”, but actually I was not that bothered – I have no idea why. Luckily my mum knows me better than I know myself, and when she returned to Greece two days after me, she surprised me with a gorgeous little purple Crock Pot which she had lugged all the way back for me. Well, I can safely say this has now become my favourite kitchen gadget (um, after my iphone of course).

To be honest, this didn’t happen overnight. As I mentioned in my first post I like to follow recipes. So to start using my slow cooker I turned to –where else- the internet, to find some. I searched and searched, but wasn’t very happy with what I found. It seemed that most recipes were for a pot roast of some kind and always involved tins of cream of something soup, or dried soup, or jars of ready-made sauce. Don’t get me wrong, flipping back the ring of a can of Heinz Tomato Soup is one of my favourite ways to make dinner, but “recipes” featuring, for example, a can of cream of chicken AND a can of cheese soup (which I didn’t even know existed till then) did not sound very appealing. I was starting to feel quite disappointed when I stumbled on A Year of Slow Cooking. Now that was more like it! A blog with a healthy balance of mostly “from scratch” meals, but with a few quick and easy solutions for when you just can’t be bothered! Plus the added bonus of Stephanie’s great sense of humour. That’s when I got well and truly hooked on the slow cooker. A few months later I started using Twitter (an obsession I’ll talk about another time) which introduced me to a whole new world of food blogs, such as Kalyn’s Kitchen, The Perfect Pantry, Healthy Green Kitchen to name but a few. These all include some great slow cooker recipes, and Kalyn has now started a new site called Slow Cooker From Scratch, a great place to find exciting Crock Pot recipes – and not a tin of soup in sight…!

My Bolognese Sauce is based on a recipe by a well known Greek TV chef called Elias Mamalakis, who is also the publishing manager of the Greek version of the BBC’s Olive magazine. I have adapted the original stove top recipe for the slow cooker. What I usually do is make a batch and freeze half of it, either to use in a mini lasagne for two, or for a quick, easy meal after a long day at work. I hope you like it!

Slow Cooker Bolognese Sauce
Serves 4

You’ll need:
1 Tbs olive oil
500g minced (ground) beef
3 Tbs white wine vinegar
1 Tbs onion powder or 1 small onion, chopped finely
1 tin / 400g chopped tomatoes
1 cup / 250ml tomato passata (passata is a thick juice made from crushed and sieved tomatoes. Find more information here)
½ cup / 125ml vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp sugar

What you do:

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan, over medium heat. If you are using regular onion instead of dried, add it to the pan and cook it gently until translucent, about 5 minutes. If not, heat the oil over medium high heat and start at step 2.
2. Turn the heat up to medium high, and add the minced meat. With a wooden spoon break up the minced meat as much as possible and keep stirring until there are no more pink bits.
3. Add the vinegar to the pan, and keep stirring the meat until the vinegar evaporates and the juices start to reduce. A couple of minutes should be fine.
4. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the meat to the slow cooker. Add one tablespoon of pan juices. How much juice you get after frying will depend on how fatty your meat was. If it was lean you probably won’t have much, so just tip the contents of the pan into the slow cooker without worrying about slotted spoons and all that.
5. Add the rest of the ingredients to the slow cooker. Give it all a stir.
6. Turn slow cooker to low and cook for at least 8 hours. Mine usually stays on for about 9-9 ½. I’ve never cooked this on high, so I don’t know how long you should leave it, I assume about 5 or 6 hours?
7. Serve over spaghetti with a generous amount of grated cheese sprinkled on top.

For those unlucky people who don’t have a slow cooker, try this:
Use 3 Tbs olive oil and only 1 cup of chopped tomatoes. Omit the stock.

• Follow steps 1 -3 above, but in a saucepan rather than a frying pan.
• Add chopped tomatoes and passata, bring to a boil.
• When it starts bubbling add the spices, salt, pepper and sugar (and onion if using dried).
• Stir and turn the heat down to medium low or low (depending on how hot your stove gets). You want a slow simmer. Cover the pan leaving a small gap and let the sauce simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour for best results.

Update on 30th Septmeber 2012:
Kalyn has kindly featured my recipe on Slow Cooker from Scratch! Yay! Check out the post for more fab slow cooker pasta sauce recipes, or the recipe index for loads more ideas.

On Top of Spaghetti

Tags

almond, baked, meatballs, recipe, spaghetti, tomato

Finally, I found a name for my blog. I’ve been thinking about starting this for months and months, but I hit a mental block when it came to choosing a name. I wanted something catchy, then I wanted something that would reflect my bilingual/bicultural background (Greek-English in case you’re wondering), then I wanted something catchy, then I wanted a food-pairing name like “sugar & spice” or “honey & thyme”… then I wanted something catchy. Then I gave up. I thought it would come to me. It didn’t. Today, I thought right, be proactive. So I turned to my buddy Mr. Google and just typed stuff in the magic box. Somehow this brought me to a nursery rhyme site and I got the bright idea to check food nursery rhymes. I was just about ready to name my blog Little Miss Muffet, when my eyes fell on the dreaded words… “On Top of Spaghetti”! The trembling started and I quickly grabbed the mouse to get away as fast as possible from the nightmare. Ok, I’m probably not making any sense right now; bear with me. When I was little, one of my aunties in England use to sing this to me. I hated it. It scared and depressed me, and made me cry. This, however, seemed to amuse certain members of my family! After all, it’s a song about meatballs, they were just teasing me (right?). Anyway for years since, whenever I’d hear the first few words I’d clasp my hands over my ears so hard I’d nearly squash my head flat. But today I thought this was a sign, an omen of some kind. Today I am meant to forgive the idiot who sneezed, and stop mourning over the loss of the poor defenseless meatball, whose life was so cruelly cut short. So I am facing my fear and in tribute, I am naming my blog after this tragic story.

And now, before you start recommending places with comfy couches (if you’ve even read this far), I’ll move swiftly on… This blog will be filled with recipes. Most of them will be other people’s, since I’m better at following instructions that creating things with my own imagination! The more I cook though, the more I’m getting a feel for doing my own thing, so occasionally there will be a triumphant creation or successful adaptation. There may be some flops too! I live in Greece but love all sorts of cuisines, so apart from say a spanakopita (spinach pie), I might also try a steak & ale pie. I hope you enjoy the recipes and tolerate the rambling.

My first recipe couldn’t be anything other than… “On Top of Spaghetti” (meatballs in tomato sauce). I found this on a great blog called Stonesoup, on a post with a collection of meals for a new mum (the author Jules’s sister). The idea was to make various meals ahead of Baby’s arrival, freeze, and enjoy at a time when cooking wouldn’t be an option. I found that to be one of the cleverest and most organized plans ever. There are quite a few evenings here when cooking is not an option so I made a big batch and froze half of it for a fuss-free after-work dinner another day. They froze fantastically. They are very easy to make and create a minimum of washing up. Win win!

Baked Meatballs in Tomato Sauce (very slightly adapted from this recipe on Stonesoup)
Serves 3-4
Cooking time about 1 hour

1 onion, finely chopped
1-2 Tbs olive oil
2 tins chopped tomatoes (you want about 800g)
1 tsp oregano or thyme or basil or mixture
1 tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp sugar
Salt & pepper
500g minced (ground) beef, or beef & pork mix
75g almond meal (I used no-skin almonds which I whizzed in the food processor as finely as possible)
2 tablespoons butter

1. Heat olive oil in a frying pan over medium/low heat, and when it’s warm add the chopped onion. Cook gently, until it softens and becomes translucent
2. Put half the cooked onion in a big bowl
3. Add the tomatoes to the pan with the rest of the onion and turn up the heat. When it starts boiling add herbs, paprika and sugar, and season with salt & pepper. Turn heat down and simmer for about 10-15 minutes
4. While sauce is simmering preheat the oven to 200C (400F)
5. Place meat and almond meal in the bowl with the onion, and use your hands to mix. Form little meatballs no larger than a golf ball and put them on a plate
6. Place tomato sauce in an oven proof dish or baking tin. Place meatballs on top and scatter pieces of butter over them
7. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until browned on top and cooked through

Enjoy over spaghetti (of course!) or rice. Or mashed potatoes. Or even quinoa. They go with pretty much everything!

Sheesh, writing this blog is going to make me hungry all the time…