Pastitsio Recipe

This is an authentic and wonderful recipe, and I have been making it for years. It is out of Tess Mallos’s The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook. A really wonderful Middle Eastern Cookbook. At the end of this recipe in the last part of the instructions she has, “Sprinkle remaining cheese on top” but she left the amount out. It is 1/2 cup.

I use Ragu spaghetti sauce rather than using tomato paste, wine, and broth. This speeds up the recipe.

I really liked this recipe and made only a few changes to work with what I had on hand and to use complete packages/containers. I sauteed the onion and garlic in olive oil v. butter starting the onion first. I cooked the tomato paste for a minute before adding the crushed tomatoes and broth and added the beef letting the sauce cook for an hour. I only had 2lbs of ground beef and that turned out to be enough. I used a pound of penne cooked 10min. I also used half & half v. milk for the bechemel. Baking at 350F for 50min it came out with the golden highlights.

Served it for New Years Eve dinner and all loved it. Yes, it is a project, however, I broke it up. DAY 1: make the sauce. I found after sitting that it needed a little more salt. I put the clove plus a bay leaf in a spice bag so I did not have to hunt for them. I did use the ground cinnamon. DAY 2: made the Bechamel using freshly grated Paremsean. DAY 3: Made the pasta, assembled, put in fridge, baked and served. In my oven it took about an hour. I browned it a little more under broiler carefully watched.

It's very hard for me to stand stirring at the stove for any length of time, so I'm wondering if I could make the bechamel sauce in the microwave? I make white sauce that way, stirring every 30 seconds or so, but I can sit inbetween times. Everything else is doable I think. Sounds wonderful, I'm anxious to try it.

We used 1 pound of meat, penne noodles and whole wheat flour, extra garlic (as in all of my dishes) and omitted the veggie broth/wine in lieu of 1 cup of beef broth. These changes were made based on what was on hand. We also added cinnamon to the meat. Following another reviewer, we layered noodles, meat, cheese times 2. To say this was good doesn't begin to describe the dish. Truly fantastic, my husband ate so much he got a migraine (won't use the parm. Cheese next time). 9 year old had seconds. 12 month old ate it. I enjoyed leftovers for lunches. Will make again and again. Also, not as much work as some post as long as your organized going into it (have your items in dishes sectioned out)! Yum!

This was a bit time consuming for a weekday meal (I didn't notice the time indicated before starting, and by then it was too late - my bad!) but still tasty and had simple instructions. Not sure where I went wrong as I baked it for the time and temp indicated, but the bottom got quite crispy and nearly burnt, resulting in crunchy noodles at the bottom. The bake overall was quite dry, but tasty. Next time I may try a lower temp and baking for longer, or perhaps increasing liquids a bit. The cream sauce is excellent -so good that I may start topping all of my baked pastas with this; I increased the nutmeg by a pinch or so and it was delicious.

I really enjoyed the recipe and would have given 5 stars if I didn't have to make it once first to find out all the adjustments to make it a five star recipe. I found one pound of pasta for 2 layers of in a 13x9 lasagna pan was not enough. I found the traditional pasta in a Greek grocery store, which looks like long zitI about 10 inches long. One pound of that only made 2 layers of pasta for my base, so I had to cook another pound. Since I knew I was using a 13x9 pan, I started out with a pound and a half of meat because I wanted to have a real 'layer' of meat. I started out with the recommended quantities of nutmeg, cinnamon, but kept tasting it and ended up doubling and even tripling so it would taste Greek and not like Italian sauce. Used lots of garlic too, and used Veal for my meat. I made the recommended quantity of bechamel, but the next time will make 1 1/2 the amount because it barely covered the top. Used double the parmesan. (parmigiano Reggiano) These quantity changes will fill your 13x9 lasagna pan to the top. I made my sauce the day before and the rest the second day. This actually is more time consuming than regular lasagna because of the additional bechamel sauce, but it is a welcome change and tastes sooooo good, hence worth the all the bowls, pots and pans, especially when you have enough to share and freeze! Mine took an hour in the oven to cook to a light golden brown on top, and made it a day before serving to allow flavors to marry.

Very tasty, and something we will make again. Halved recipe since there are only 2 of us. I added a pinch of mace, (no nutmeg on hand), in place of nutmeg, and used a bit of this and cinnamon to the meat filling. Only used 8 ounces of the pasta-I used mini penne for the ziti, but used full 1 1/2 pounds of lean mean. Upped the sauce to 2 Cups for 4 servings and glad we did. Sprinkled 1 cup of finely shredded Montery Jack cheese on top layer of pasta before adding cream topping. My husband, a former cook, loved it as well, but suggested I combine the pasta and meat layers as a time saver, adding 1/2 Cup of the cream sauce there, then the remaining 1 1/2 Cups as the topping. Also used 1/4 teaspoon of Penvey's Pasta Sprinkle to the cooked pasta, (wanted some oregano flavor) in lieu of salt.

Very good! I mixed the meat and noodles together rather than layering them and added some cinnamon and nutmeg to the meat mixture. I also substituted olive oil for the first two sets of ingredients instead of butter to make it a bit healthier.

I really liked this recipe. My family is Greek and having just come back from Greece where they ate it up, I decided I had to give it a try. Big hit! The few small changes I made to the recipe are the following : I did add a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg to the meat sauce. I followed another reviewers advice to add about 1/2 a cup of the white sauce to the meat sauce, which I think worked well. This left me a tiny bit short of white sauce on the top so I made half the recipe again so I wasn't skimping on the top. Other key change I might make is to buy the Greek pasta brand Misko's Macaroni no.2 which is a long cylindrical pasta which the Greeks use to make this dish.

Tasted even better than I hoped.

I’d love if someone has a trick on how to arrange the bucatini besides one noodle at a time. This part took me forever. The end result was beautiful and delicious.

I made this pretty much as written. It is delicious and did take about 2 hours to make I’m glad I prepped the ingredients first which I don’t always do.

Comfort food at its best.

I used rigatoni. Ran out of energy (a lot is needed to cook three things at once) then bring them together. Slightly burned the bechamel sauce while dealing with pasta…don’t double task yourself! But it tasted fine.

A new twist on lasagna. Boy, is it good.

Great taste, definitely making this again ! Didn’t straighten out the noodles! And was scared to do the bechemal sauce ! But we made it!

It was great. Everyone loved it. I will be making it again. Thank you all recipes.

It was very good but way more time consuming then a prep time of 20 minutes. It was definitely worth it. My hubby really enjoyed it as did I. I found the amount of sauce to be adequate w/o making extra as some reviewers said. I think this is the first time I ever made a bechamel sauce and it turned out really good. Next time I woujld allow myself more time to put it together.