Pastitsio

I had a friend who said this was one of his favorite dishes so I decided to give it a go. For a first time try I thought I did a pretty damn good job :) Pastitsio is a Greek dish consisting of macaroni, meat sauce, and a cream sauce on top. All added together = stoner heaven, or heaven for anyone actually. I got this recipe from allrecipes.com with a little changes depending on my own tastes.

This fed 5 people at dinner and had leftovers for many days to come. I would say this could probably make 20+ servings?

Ingredients:

Meat sauce

-1 1/2 lb ground beef

-1 can of tomato paste

-1 large onion

-1/2 cup dry red wine

-1 tsp garlic (add more if you like garlic)

-1/2 cup of chicken stock

-Salt and pepper

Pasta

-1 pound macaroni

-2 tbsp of olive oil

-3 eggs lightly scrambled

-4 tbsp butter

-1/4 cup parmesan cheese (could use more)

-1 dash of nutmeg

-Salt and pepper

Cream sauce

-1/2 cup flour

-3 cups milk

-1/2 cup of butter

-1 tsp nutmeg

-1 egg

-Salt and pepper

1/2 - 1 cup of parmesan cheese for the top

Procedure:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

2) To make meat sauce, add olive oil to the pan and brown the garlic and onions. Increase the heat and add the ground beef.

3) After the meat is lightly browned, add the tomato paste, wine, chicken stock, salt, and pepper. Heat over low heat for approx. 20 minutes until the sauce is reduced.

4) Heat a pot of water and add the macaroni. Drain when pasta is al dente. Melt butter and add to drained pasta along with the parmesan cheese, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. After pasta is cooler add in the eggs and toss.

5) To make the cream sauce, Melt the butter and whisk in the flour. Make sure to keep whisking to ensure that there are no clumps left. Add in all the milk and continue stirring. Add in nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Stir for a little and then whisk in the egg. Transfer half of this cream sauce to the meat sauce.

6) To put it all together :) Grease a lasagna pan and put a layer of the macaroni on the bottom of a large lasagna pan, then layer over the macaroni all the meat sauce.

7) Put another layer of macaroni on top of the meat sauce and pour the cream sauce on top.

8) Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and bake for 50 minutes or until golden brown

8) Eat

Kind of forgot to take more photos of the final product because I was so ready to devour this. Really time consuming but well worth the effort. Especially enjoyable if you drink the leftover red wine that you didn't use for the meat sauce :) but don't get too tipsy and burn your arm on the oven like I did...

xx