Cusina Greek Cuisine

Pastitsio is my favorite greek dish in the world! Pastitsio is a baked layered dish of imported greek pasta, ground beef or lamb, and a Béchamel sauce. I have had pastitsio in around 60 tavernas in the USA and Greece. My mother made one of the best pastitsios in the world. She was head cook for the greek food festival in Pittsburgh. My family also owned a greek restaurant in Pittsburgh for decades. Both my parents past away after 2001 and we sold the business. In that restaurant my mother gave me the recipe and I learned to cook it from there. I made several minor changes to her original recipe. Pastitsio is a labor intensive dish and takes practice to perfect.

Here are some of the different styles of Pastitsio:

Here is the most common style. I see nothing wrong with it except the Béchamel sauce on top is too thin. No point to making like this. You have to have a 1/2 to 3/4 inch layer on top…..

This is wrong, because they did not put the pastitsio in the oven to bake it. They cooked the meat, cooked the pasta, made the creme sauce, but did not bake it.

Below is the absolute wrong way to make Pastitsio. He used Ziti pasta… Totally wrong! This dish is too hardcore Greek to be made by a trendy chef. It’s almost sacreligious! You need the long noodles of the long imported greek pasta to hold the dish together. I don’t claim to be a professional chef, but I’m getting so mad looking up pastitsio on google to write this article. So many people have no idea how to make this. Hopefully next week I will cook pastitsio in my house and post the pics and recipe.

Here is the correct pasta to use! Correct Greek Imported Pasta for cooking Pastitsio this or the “Stella” brand.

On the Island of Santorini I had pastitsio and they added a red wine cinnomin sauce to the top over the thick creme sauce.
Then they added Kefalotyri cheese on top of it all! Yumm!

Next post I will show you how to make a proper Pastitsio.

Here is a funny Greek Handyman Video:

Im going to start off this blog with one of the most Americanized greek foods. However, I will show you how they make it in greece too. The GYRO!

The gyro has become very popular in the USA, and is even served in school cafeterias. The name comes from greek γύρος ‘turning’, a calque of the Turkish name döner kebab ‘turning roast’; the dish was formerly known as ντονέρ [don'er] in greece.
gyro is pronounced ‘YEE-roh’. The gyro is usually Pork, but is sometimes chicken or lamb. In the USA it is usually processed, this meat tastes nothing like the an authentic greek gyro. However, some gyro shops are so good with making sauce and the rest of the sandwich they have created a whole new taste for gyros. The gyro in greece is made smaller and rolled tighter. It is usually the size of a taco. In greece they use Tzatziki sauce (yogurt cucumber sauce) or a type of greek ketchup and mustard.
I prefer the ketchup style sauce and mustard. In greece they wil ask you if you would like your gyro with or wihtout fries. The gyro in the USA never has fries. Usually the USA gyro is processed gyro meat, lettuce, onion, tzatziki or sour cream, and tomatoes. The greek gyro is customized more often and consists mainly of real marinated pork, onions, fries, and sauce.
Here are some instructions on how to make a authentic gyro.

Hopefully we will start to see more homemade gyros in the USA. I think whats stops people is the cost factor. If done right it would make more money than the USA gyro because it would get way more return customers. It is quite delicious!