Pastitsio
Ingredients
Pasta
- 250 g Macaroni (ideally macaroni that is long like spaghetti)
- 1 Egg white
Red Meat Sauce
- 400 g Minced beef can be substituted with ½ beef & ½ pork
- 400 g Canned tomatoes
- 1 Red onion
- 1 clove Garlic
- Cinnamon
- Black pepper
- Basil chopped
Béchamel sauce (White Sauce)
- 40 g Butter
- 40 g Plain flour
- 300 mL Milk
- Nutmeg
- Grated cheese
Instructions
Cook pasta
- Cook the pasta according to instructions on the package. You could cook the pasta for 1 min less than the suggestion.
- Drain the water and leave it aside.
Red meat sauce
- Cut the onion and garlic into small cubes.
- Heat up a pan with a teaspoon of olive oil at medium-high heat. Stir-fry the onion and garlic until softened.
- Add the minced meat and keep mixing until it's cooked.
- Add the tomato sauce and water. Stir and mix briefly.
- Add black pepper, 2 bay leaves, and a bit of cinnamon, also add beef stock.
- Keep it boiling until the sauce is no longer runny. If your pasta is a bit undercooked, keep the sauce runnier, if the pasta is already well cooked, then make the sauce thicker.
Bechamel sauce
- Melt the butter and add the flour. Stir with a whisk.
- Add milk bit by bit, keep stirring. This is to make sure a smooth bechamel sauce and there are no big crumbs inside. We added around 300mL of milk, when lifting the sauce up with the whisk, it will drop like a ribbon - that's you know when the sauce is ready.
- Add some nutmeg and grated hard cheese inside. Stir occasionally until you are ready to assemble.
- Split the egg white and yolk. Pour the yolk inside the sauce, and leave the egg white aside.
Assemble
- Preheat the oven at 180°C.
- Add the egg white to the pasta, mix well.
- Add the meat sauce on top, spread evenly.
- Add the bechamel sauce on top of the meat sauce, spread evenly.
- Add extra hard cheese on top.
- Bake in the oven for 25-30 mins or until it's golden.
- Cool it down for 10-15mins before cutting it to serve.