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: