My Big Fat Greek Dinner

I'm not Greek, but sometimes I think I was meant to be. I love Greek food. Growing up there was a fantastic Greek diner in my town - and I mean old school diner. Steam table buffet at lunch, table service after 5pm only, and every crazy Parthenon inspired cheesy faux temple architectural detail you can imagine. Even big, fake, back lit, plastic "stained glass" windows with Greek dancers in fez's on them. Every cliche in the Greek banquet hall from My Big Fat Greek Wedding? This place had it all. And as a kid, man did I love very inch of it. I wanted our whole HOUSE to be as cool as this place. And to top it off they set plates of cheese on FIRE. Opa! indeed.

My dad used to order their salad with extra feta to start his dinner. This was basically a saucer with a few pieces of iceberg lettuce topped with about 6 kinds of olives, a huge slab of feta, topped with an amazing home made Greek dressing and a pile of pita along side. The idea makes me drool to this day. Plates of dolmathes, spanakopita, the big rotisserie of lamb for gyros (and if you say "JI-row" just leave now), tzatziki sauce, souvlaki, fresh homemade pita.... how can you not love this stuff? And pastitsio was always my favorite. Noodles, meat, and that creamy, dreamy bechamel....

It had been a LONG time since I'd had decent Greek food before I found this recipe. Most of the Greek diners I found served mostly pizza with the odd gyros or Greek salad thrown in. I'd occasionally find pastitsio or mousaka, but it was never what I remembered. This stuff is the real deal, I'm telling you. And it should be. It comes from a real Greek Yiayia. Elly's Greek Yiayia to be exact and this is a lady who knows what she's doing. I love Elly's blog and you've seen plenty of ideas from her here before, but if I learned nothing else from her but this recipe, she'd still be one of my favorites. It's outstanding.

I'll just direct you to her recipe since I follow it pretty exactly. But here are a few tips I've picked up after making it several times now.

1 - The meat sauce is very thick - the can of tomato paste called for is the small 8oz can. It seems like a small amount for all that meat, but it's all you need. You also may just want to sit in the middle of your kitchen floor and eat this with a spoon and never get around to making the pastitsio.

2 - I don't add the parsley or diced tomatoes, and I use ground cloves and allspice - about 1/2 tsp each.

3 - I have a hard time finding the Greek cheeses and usually just sub with all romano or pecorino romano. Still tastes great.

4 - When you're ready to do the noodle and bechemel layers, get everything prepped and measured out before you start. Things start to go fast when you're at that point and it will really help you out.

5 - I always just do one layer of noodles, then all the beef, then the bechemel. This is how I remember it growing up, and even tho Elly's Yiayia does 2 layers of noodles, I figure a single layer is fine. And it does make the layering easier.

If you've never had pastitsio, please try this today. I've always thought that this is the type of dish that if you took it to a school potluck anywhere, everyone would devour it and ask you for the recipe. Whereas if you said "We're having Pastitsio" you'd get a look of doubt and resignation like the one that crossed my husband's face the first time I told him we were having this. Don't let the name scare you. It's just freaking good no matter what language. And my Italian husband did give me a huge compliment after he tried it. He told me "This is the best Italian food you've ever made."