Pastitso

Owning a variety of cookbooks and taking your Sunday mornings to look through them all in search of recipes, can be a dangerous thing. Sometimes Will and I scavenge the internet looking for new recipes to try. Sometimes we pick one cookbook to grab something from. But every once in awhile, we have a little extra time and we'll go through several of our cookbooks at once, inundating ourselves with recipe choices and worldly foods. I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that we have a lot of Middle Eastern cookbooks, which also tend to incorporate North African and Mediterranean cuisine. We have a couple Moroccan cookbooks, a Turkish cookbook and we recently added an Italian cookbook and a Spanish tapas cookbook. We have a Sriracha cookbook, a variety of Irish recipes and quite a few Mexican recipes that we've collected over the years (in addition to a very extensive Amazon wishlist full of cookbooks). So when we're feeling uninspired about what regional food we'd like to make, we pile all of these up and start going through them. This time, the Middle Eastern cookbook won with a Greek recipe. Yes, Greek! A rarity in our collection of Mediterranean foods. We don't often have the need to try Greek foods and have a tendency to favor their Turkish counterpart recipes, over the Greek. However, this recipe jumped out at Will and bubbled its way to the top of our "possibilities" list.

Having enjoyed going to Greek festivals in the past and knowing our successes with other Mediterranean foods, we went out of our normal realm and selected this meat pie. We don't often eat beef, so when we do, it becomes an all-or-nothing experience. A beef and cheese pie? Sure, just order me a heart attack right now. But despite the unhealthy ingredients (or perhaps in spite of), this recipe was a huge winner in our household. It fed us for days, was pretty amazing both hot and cold, and reminded us of a similar recipe that some Saudi friends of ours made (though not quite as good as their recipe!). Every once in awhile it's fun to spoil yourself to something totally out of your norm and this recipe was one of those occasions. While we would never recommend eating something like this on the reg, having it in your repertoire for a busy week where you need a comfort food around, makes it worthwhile. Indulge and enjoy! Oh and it's simple enough that I, Megan, was capable of making it :)

Cooking Notes: I made several adjustments to proportions of the ingredients, which are reflected below. Based on the amount of butter I had and the way I found it cut in the fridge, I tampered with the amounts in the original recipe (a little more here, a little less there). I also used a full cup of stock (instead of 1/2) and omitted the 1/2 cup wine, for the meat sauce. We didn't have any fresh parsley on hand at the time, so I skipped out on that.

Pastitso (adapted from The CompleteMiddle East Cookbook; serves 10-12)
Macaroni
1 lb. macaroni
4.5 tbsp butter
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp nutmeg
S&P
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Meat Sauce
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tbsp butter
1.5 lb. ground beef
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 cup stock
2 tbsp chopped parsley (optional)
1/2 tsp sugar
S&P
Cream Sauce
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
3 cups milk
1/4 tsp nutmeg
S&P
1 egg, lightly beaten

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water, according to package directions. Cook until just tender, drain and return to pot. Melt butter until golden brown and pour over macaroni. Add 1/2 cup of the cheese, nutmeg, S&P to taste and toss well. Leave until cool, add the eggs and toss again. Set aside.

To make the meat sauce, gently fry the onion and garlic in butter until soft, then increase heat and add ground beef. Stir well and cook until meat begins to brown. Add remaining meat sauce ingredients, cover and simmer over gentle heat for 20 minutes.

While meat is simmering, make the cream sauce. Being by melting butter in a saucepan, then stir in flour and cook gently for 2 minutes. Add the milk all at once and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil gently for 1 minute. Add the nutmeg, S&P to taste, and cool a little before stirring in the beaten egg. Add 1/2 cup of the cream sauce to the cooked meat sauce, once 20 minutes are up.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. To assemble the dish, grease a 9x13x3 dish. Spoon half of the prepared macaroni evenly into the bottom of the pan and top with the meat sauce. Cover with the remaining macaroni, leveling the top. Pour on the cream sauce and spread to completely cover macaroni. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top and cook for 50 minutes in the oven or until golden brown. Turn the broiler on high and broil for 1-2 minutes to crisp the top. Let it stand for 10 minutes before cutting into squares to serve.