For the recipe, visit https://www.maryskouzina.com/pastitsio-greek-pasta-bake/ When you think of comfort food, it’s often the rich, hearty dishes that come to mind—the ones that remind you of home, family gatherings, and celebrations. And if you haven’t tried Pastitsio, prepare to enjoy your new favourite comfort dish. This classic Greek comfort food has three heavenly layers. First, there’s a pasta layer, then flavourful aromatic beef mince cooked in a rich tomato sauce, and finally, a creamy and cheesy béchamel sauce. It’s like a warm hug from Yiayia!
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The proof is in the pastichio. This is one of my all-time favorite dishes that my mom makes. It’s the kind of meal that instantly reminds me of home. It’s comforting, it’s hearty, and it’s full of love. To start our kima, we’ve got the Greek trifecta, which is olive oil with onion and garlic. I’ve got my olive oil in. Pan is heating up. I’m chopping up some onion. Straight in with our onion. Get that nice sizzle. Got my garlic here. I’ll just grate it right in. Smells so good already. You know, the base of every great Greek dish is always extra virgin olive oil, onion, and garlic. That smell is just the start of something amazing. Let’s give this a sauté for about 2 minutes. Grab my fresh mint, some beautiful kima from my butcher. I’m using beef mints. You can use a combination of beef and pork. In we go. Break up the kima with your kala. You’ll be here for about 10 minutes. Beautiful. We’ve cooked off our mints. Looking good. I’ve got about a kilo here, so it took us a little bit of a while. Going to go straight in with our beautiful flavors. Now, of course, I’m starting with a little red wine, and it’s going to give us a beautiful rich flavor. It’s going to work so well with that tomato that we’ll be adding shortly. Give that a little mix. I’ve got my tomato pata here. Straight in. So, I added about 700 g of tomato basa. I’m going to add about half that amount of water. And now, our beautiful aromats. My mom always uses bay leaf in her red sauces. So, I’m going in with about three or four. I absolutely love cinnamon in any sort of red sauce. If I’m cooking coin store, you can guarantee that there is some cinnamon in there. So, straight in with our cinnamon stick. And I’ve got some I’m running out, but I’ve got some beautiful allspice. Little balls of it just here. Straight in. Some oregano, fresh from Greece. Theirani, not too much. If you put too much in your sauce or your bka, for example, it can make them a little bit bitter. Sea salt and some pepper. Lovely. Ble. Our water is also coming to a boil, so we’re going to add our macarona very shortly. Give this a nice stir. ensure those spices and those bay leaves are all nestled into that sauce. So that’ll make it nice and aromatic. And now we’re going to let our kima simmer for about an hour or so. Going to stir it occasionally. We want it to become nice and rich and thick so we can place it on top of our macarona and cover it with that amazing bashameal sauce I’m going to make soon. Our mint is coming to a simmer. Time to cook our pasta. I’m using the original Stella brand. I’ve got my salted water there. adding it straight in. Let that cook until it’s just a tiny bit tender. We don’t want it too soft. Now, you can use the tubular pasta like I am using here. My mom also uses pennet pasta, which is kind of a little bit more convenient. Totally up to you what you’d like to use. Our kima’s still simmering away. It’s still got a little bit more time to go. I’ve drained the water out of our macarona. And now I’m going to place them into our bubsy. Now, you can go in and just throw the macaradona straight in. I like to just grab little handfuls of them and place them straight down like so. So that way we get a nice cross-section cut later on. We’re not laying them down one by one, that’s for sure. No one’s got time for that. Just grab a handful. Pop it straight down. Perfect. Our macarona is in the tray. And now we are going to make it rain with geodoga. I’ve got this beautiful slice straight from Greece. And I’m going to be very generous and grate it all over. I’ve just got my wooden spoon here and I’m just going to move it around a little bit just so we can get some of that cheese in between the strands of macarona. The kima is ready. You can see just how beautiful and rich it is. And I’m getting that gorgeous perfume from the cinnamon, which I’ve just found. So, we need to remember to fish that out. It is so aromatic and so beautiful. We’ve got the bay leaves, too. Don’t forget to remove your bay leaves. Okay. And now we just place it right on top of our like so. We want it nice and neat. That way we create a beautiful layer with our bashamel. next. And it’s going to be right to the brim. All right. Creating a beautiful even layer so we can make a nice bed for our bashamel. Now, do you call it pastichitio or pasticho? Let me know. I’m interested to know. It’s time for my favorite layer. We’re going to make the bashamel in the same pot we cooked the kimai in. Going in with some butter. Let that melt. Butter’s melted. Adding some plain flour and some corn flour and we want to cook these in the butter. We don’t want that really raw taste of flour in our bimmell. It can be quite unpleasant. So, this step is really important. Cook out your flour. We need to add our milk in gradually to the r, but we also need to be a little bit quick because it can thicken up really fast. Be quite vigorous with your whisk and it can break apart anything that’s lumpy and it will turn out really smooth. Just adding the milk real gradual in little additions and each time it thickens up you add a little bit more milk. This is perfect. This is the exact consistency we need. It’s really silky and you can see the whisk marks as I mix through it. I’m going to turn my heat off. Just keep working it a little bit. We don’t want anything to burn or stick to the bottom. And then we go in with our cheese. You can add as much or as little as you like. Personally, you know, I don’t hold back on any type of ingredient that I absolutely love. And Keefloa being my most favorite hard Greek cheese. We’re putting a lot. Let’s give that a whisk. Let it melt straight into the hot bashamel. Add a little bit of salt and pepper. Like so. All right, let’s give this a taste. More cheese. Now, if you can’t get cafaloga cheese where you’re living, you can definitely use a combination of mozzarella, grriier, a little bit of padano or pecarino, but they are quite salty, so go a little uh lighter with them. All right. And let’s mix that through again. Oh, so satisfying as it melts in. Let’s add a little bit of nutmeg. Because we’ve got so many beautiful spices in that mince. I think a little bit of nutmeg will really compliment it. We are ready to pour this on top now. Are you ready? Cuz I’m not. Okay, let’s go. Right on top. Oh my goodness. Look how smooth that besimmell is. It does not get any better than that. Wow. And we made the perfect amount for this tray. Look at that. I’m so excited. And to finish off, just a little layer a little, you know, very little. A little layer of cheese on top just so it can brown up real nice and get a nice golden crust. Lovely. We are ready to place this straight into the oven. I’ve got my oven preheated at 180° C, fanforced. We’re going to leave it in there for about 30 to 40 minutes. We really want to get a nice golden color on top. We’ll be back soon. Oh, the moment we’ve been waiting for. The pasticho is ready. I’ve let it sit for about half an hour to 40 minutes. We want it to set. If we take a piece out of the tray when it’s piping hot, we’re going to end up with a bit of a hot mess. So, it’s good to let it sit for a while. I just want you to hear what all that cheese has done. Are you ready? I know. Now, if you want to tell someone you love them, I highly recommend you make them a tray of pastitio. It’s like a hug on a plate, and it’s so delicious. Cali.
1 Comment
Yummy 😋 delicious! Thank you for the recipe ❤