Pastitsio

So today's dinner is Pastitsio.  I've tried it before with moderate success, but decided to give it another go once I found that my local middle eastern grocery carries proper pastitsio noodles. The recipe I used came from Jeff Smith's awesome The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines: China, Greece, and Rome. I modified it a bit(1) but it's mostly his recipe:

Meat Sauce

1 medium onion

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp butter for sauteeing

1 1/4 lb ground beef or lamb

1 16oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 tbsp butter for sauce

salt and pepper

cinnamon

Sautee the onions and garlic until just starting to turn golden brown. Add the meat and brown. Add the tomatoes, additional butter, and spices and simmer for 15 minutes, allowing most of the liquid to reduce, leaving a hearty meat sauce.

Noodles

3/4 to 1 lb of pastitsio noodles. If you can't get them, ziti will do. (2)

3 eggs

1/2 cup grated parmesan

Cook the noodles for 5-7 minutes. Beat the eggs and cheese together, and toss the noodles in the mixture.

Bechamel

6 tbsp butter

6 tbsp flour

1 1/2 cups warm milk

3 eggs

pinch of salt

pinch of nutmeg

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. When the bubbling stops, add the flour and stir together to make a roux. Add in the milk a little at a time and let the sauce come together. Temper the sauce into the egg then stir the egg in and add the salt and nutmeg.

Put it all together

Put half the noodles into the bottom of a 9x12 inch baking dish. If you are using real pastitsio noodles, lay them out parallel (think of it like a lasagna -- the extra effort is worth it). Layer the meat sauce onto the noodles, then the rest of the noodles on top. Pour the bechamel over the whole thing. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes. When it comes out of the oven, give it 10-15 minutes to cool a bit and to let the bechamel set up. Slice and serve.

Jeff Smith says this serves 6-8. The bechamel makes it really rich; I cut it into 12 squares. Based on the ingredients, I estimate about 450 calories per square. Put that with a salad and you have a pretty decent meal. (3)

It turned out really well -- Dorothy even called it "awesome". Next time I'll probably scale up the meat sauce to match the noodles, or maybe do a smaller batch in a 9x9 inch pan for fewer leftovers. I'm freezing about 1/2 of the squares, so I'll report back on how well it revives as leftovers.

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Footnotes:
 (1) I  cut some butter out of the meat sauce (though there's still quite a bit), only used about half the egg wash for the noodles (I can't imagine how he made use of all of it), and used more noodles (because I hate having 1/4 of a package sitting around). Should have scaled up the meat sauce to match the noodles, though the bechamel was probably adequate.

(2) Try to avoid elbow macaroni if you can, but if you can't, just don't tell me.

(3) Of course, as it happens I didn't remember to make a salad, so I ended up having 2 squares. Fortunately, I had eaten light the rest of the day, so my diet isn't horribly blown.