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

[Music] hi I'm Christine Cushing and welcome to another helping of my favorite foods today I want to take you back to the Greek kitchen and to a family recipe that was my dad's most requested and popular and that a Greek gathering would not be complete without get ready for pastitsio aka Greek lasagna vomit pastitsio has three components we got a meat sauce we got a bechamel and we got pasta step 1 the meat sauce a little bit of olive oil in the pan first ingredient to go in there is the meat okay I like to spread the meat out nicely in the pan so that it Browns evenly right now my temp is high as high as it'll go and this process here this browning the meat it's gonna take a pretty long time how long you think it's gonna take you'll see it takes longer than you think in the meantime chopping an onion or a shallot which I always call onion you can't have a Greek recipe without garlic absolutely true I'm gonna do a couple of cloves always removing the germ phase too let me show you what's happening I call this the squeaky part of browning the meat you hear that squeaking why do I put the meat in first I want to evaporate the moisture before it even starts to caramelize because that's what happens after that I'm gonna add the onions cuz really you just want to sweat the onions it's the meat that's gonna give you the majority of the flavor not the onions my dad Tony was famous for a few recipes this was probably his most popular and most requested so anywhere where he would go visiting friends visiting family even you know going to visit people not even in the country when he would get there they would ask him to make must beats here because it was just so incredible now the one slight downside of him making pastitsio was the kitchen was a total disaster I mean disaster but it didn't matter because it was so good that people said please come and make the pastitsio even though I know I'm gonna have to hose down the house afterwards okay you hear that it's changing now so do you see what I'm talking about that is what I call brown meat and what you hear also with all your senses I always say have to cook with all your senses the meat sounds totally different it's almost like popping in the pan and what do I smell I smell like as if I was roasting or grilling meat that's the my yard reaction so now I turn it right down to a bit of a lower temperature I make a little well in the center and I hit it with the shallots now I mix everybody together cuz my onions have sweated my garlic also has sweated and now does what we're going in with a little bit of red wine baby if you could smell this now seriously all it is is meat some onions and garlic and red wine woohoo does it smell good a little bit of tomato paste just to give it a bit of thickness a little body to the sauce tomatoes going in and now I'm gonna add some automatics I'm gonna go in with bay leaf Greek tomato sauce meat sauce always has a bay leaf I'm gonna throw in a couple and must you must have Greek oregano look at this I brought this from the hills of Greece oh does that smell so good it just like concentrated flavor that's gonna go in the meat sauce now to here's where it really does take a detour the spices so the hallmark of a Greek meat sauce is these kind of Eastern spices so you've got allspice always clove for me and always cinnamon now sometimes I put allspice in sometimes I don't but for me clove and cinnamon is a must-have so I'm gonna just use my own mortar and pestle and grind a little bit of allspice and a little clove make sure everybody's playing nicey-nice in there and I just want to simmer this not for too long about 40 to 45 minutes until it gets nice and rich and the flavors start melding and a little bit of that moisture evaporates with the lid on [Music] the spices are crazy so I'm gonna put a lid on that it's ready to go it's gonna be on standby for Phase two which is the bechamel or what the greeks call best sumela because there's no in greek it's just saying so bechamel you want to click on my separate video for bechamel for all the step-by-step details to perfect your bechamel because you really need to do that so like I always do in a bechamel butter and flour I'm adding my milk off the heat now let's talk cheese the cheese that's iconic in Greece for this dish is can't follow theory let me show you it's a beautiful salty usually sheep's milk but sometimes it can be goat's milk cheese as well similar to a pecorino an Italian pakodi no there they're similar but not quite the same just like any cheese's I love this cheese it's definitely salty it's got that bite and it's gonna be layered throughout the pasta - it's gonna be a little bit in the pasta it's gonna be in the bechamel and it's gonna be sprinkled on top I mean we're making pastitsio all right cheese is graded I want to keep my eye on this baby here because this bechamel is definitely thicker than for example my Bolognese lasagna which you got to click on that recipe by the way it's interesting on paper in theory these two recipes look almost the same there's some pasta there's some vegimals and there's some meat sauce but they're so different in terms of how everything's put together gotta have some nutmeg so in Greece the pasta for pastitsio is a very specific one it's called basically there's no name it's called pastitsio pasta it looks like this so it's almost like bucatini it's a big let's say thick spaghetti with a hole in it alright at this point it's off the heat everything's good it's thickened beautiful I've seasoned it I've tasted it I'm gonna take this beautiful k phyllo deity and put in about a third of it into the bechamel this is something really specific in particular that my dad used to do so I'm gonna separate I have 4 eggs I'm gonna separate four of them and we're gonna use four yolks and two whites so my bechamel is hot and now I need to add the egg yolks to it there's a technique that's called tempering which I'm gonna do because I don't want to basically cook these right off the bat I want them to rise in the oven and give me a nice creamy custard a little bit of this hot bechamel and stir it into my egg yolks okay assembly time pasta just been drained bechamel with cheese done meat sauce done it's time to assemble so here comes that beautiful pasta so this is al dente a little bit of olive oil going in just a little bit a small amount of this gorgeous meat sauce I actually put right into the pasta so this way by putting a little bit of that meat sauce into the pasta you get a bit of the flavor of the tomato and the meat right in with the pasta as opposed to saving it all in layers on top I like to mix it in that's what my dad did to other things going in here a little bit of that saved gif I love deity so this is salty and beautiful cheese I'm saving some for the top too now it's time for these two egg whites that were reserved so just beating them to break them up a bit so now just as another little precaution a bit more olive oil in the bottom of the pan okay so the next thing is the remainder of that meat sauce is gonna go right on top of the pasta and create sort of a little layer so that the bechamel doesn't sink in look at that meat sauce oh mama so here I'm just flattening it out so that the bechamel will sit right on top the last thing to complete this beautiful dish is the bechamel is gonna come to greet the pasta and the meat look at this so it's just barely making it in to my baking dish here I've got my oven preheating at 375 I like it at a higher temperature it's gonna give me a much deeper darker crust and now the finale a little bit more if I load it on top to give it that golden crustiness this baby's going into the oven for about 45 to 50 minutes then we are going to have something amazing to taste [Music] [Music] goodness crazy crazy crazy but now the bad news I have to wait at least 45 minutes for it to just cool down a little bit find its shape and then we get to have some and 45 minutes later what seemed like four hours but it's 45 minutes later finally we get to cut look at this baby alright so 9 pieces I think I'm gonna cut and I want to serve a piece for us to taste [Music] I purposely leave the bechamel looser so that it doesn't cook all the way through and you kind of cut through it and it keeps its shape if you want a firmer bechamel you keep it cooking longer until it's firmer or you can add the egg whites to it but this makes a soft delicate creamy bechamel just like my dad Tony would have made are you ready to taste oh my goodness it's just insane how good this is all of those flavors deliver one hundred hundred hundred flavor aroma visuals and all of the spices in that meat sauce it's great and the pasta being a little bit authentic and all those little tricks in between Tony knew exactly what he was doing thank you so much for sharing this very special episode of my favorite foods with me my dad's absolutely most iconic famous recipe see you next time please subscribe let me know what I can help you with until next time

Channel: MyFavouriteFoods ChristineCushing

Views: 863,924

Rating: 4.9006772 out of 5

Keywords: Pastitsio, my Dad's special - Greek Lasagna | Christine Cushing, Christine Cushing, best Greek recipes, Greek Pastitsio, Greek Lasagna, Best Pasta Recipes, Bechamel, Food Network Pastitsio, Pastitsio recipe, Baked Pasta Recipes, ccfearless, myfavouritefoods, Greek classic recipes, Meat sauce, Spaghetti with meat sauce, Greece, ground beef, Greek Food, chef Christine Cushing, lasagna, comfort food, Hellas, Ellada, Greekfood, greekrecipes, bakedpasta, meatsauce

Id: 1wVShYHc2ys

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019