RECIPE: Pastitsio

A family tradition for more than four decades

This recipe originally appeared in the February 7th, 2020 edition of The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the notion of “home”. I’ve moved around a lot over the years, through multiple states and too many addresses to count. Now that I’ve got a family of my own, my notion of home has shifted — is it the place where I grew up, or the place where my children are growing up? Or is home a more malleable concept, less rooted in place than in emotion? I delved into this a few months ago as it relates to sports and tradition, but there’s another way it manifests strongly, and that’s food.

Food is a deeply personal thing — what we eat helps define who we are and how we connect to others. At best, it can be a powerful encapsulation of sense, memory, and place. A familiar recipe can deliver us back home.

Perhaps you have a recipe like this — something that’s carried down from your parents, grandparents, old friends or distant places, something that immediately takes you to another place and time. If you’re lucky, it can conjure up feelings of comfort and stability, of a time when you didn’t have to have all the answers because someone else had them.

It doesn’t have to be anyone else’s definitive notion of a dish. Speaking about pizza, the food writer and editor Sam Sifton once described his personal theory of cognition:

“The first slice of pizza a child sees and tastes (and somehow appreciates on something more than a childlike, mmm-goood, thanks-mom level), becomes, for him, pizza… He will defend this interpretation to the end of his life.”

My beloved family dish, the food that delivers me home every time I have it, is my mother’s pastitsio — a lasagna-like Greek casserole featuring tubular pasta and spiced ground beef baked with cheese and a rich, nutmeg-scented bechamel. We have no Greek heritage whatsoever — Mom picked it up from a cookbook decades ago and it’s been grafted onto our family heritage simply by merit of being delicious.

I’ve ordered it from Greek restaurants in my adult life, and it’s never been what I wanted it to be. Something’s different.

I’ve established quite a habit around here of messing with food concepts — combining Nashville Hot Chicken flavors with Indiana-style pork tenderloin, or rolling halal cart-style chicken and rice into arancini-like balls. It’s fun to experiment, and I’m never going to stop getting silly with things in the kitchen. When it comes to a family recipe, though? There’s love and care and tradition rooted in making it exactly the same way as it’s always been made, recreating that experience of home, sharing it with my children in the same way I hope to share my values.

I wouldn’t think of changing a thing.

To that end, here’s the recipe, completely unedited.

I found this in a 12-year-old email, which likely marks the first time after college that I requested it because I missed home and wanted to make it myself.

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 1/2 lbs. ground beef

• 2 dashes cinnamon

• 1 eight-ounce can tomato sauce

• Margarine

• 1/4 cup flour

• 2 cups skim milk

• dash pepper

• nutmeg

• 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

• 8 ounces ( or more) small elbow macaroni

• 2 eggs

• 8 ounces coarsely shredded cheddar cheese
  
  Saute onion and garlic until soft.
  Crumble in beef and cook until brown.
  Pour off fat, stir in cinnamon and tomato sauce, and set aside
  
  Melt 3 tablespoons margarine in saucepan and stir in flour.
  Add milk and cook, stirring until thick.
  Add pepper and a pinch of nutmeg and the parmesan cheese.
  
  Cook macaroni in boiling water until tender.
  Drain well and put back in pot.
  Break in eggs and add 2 tablespoons margarine.
  Beat briskly with wooden spoon until well mixed.
  
  Butter a shallow 2 1/2 quart baking dish and layer ingredients as follows:
  Put half the macaroni in dish, all the meat, half the cheddar cheese,
  remaining macaroni, then the white sauce.  Sprinkle on remaining cheddar
  cheese, dot with margarine and sprinkle with nutmeg. 
  
  Bake in preheated 375-degree oven for one hour.

My brother would be upset that I shared this, as he considers it a family secret. He does not subscribe to this newsletter.

This dish might be even better the next day, as everything’s set up and it slices more cleanly. Perfect for grabbing a midnight snack when back home or just pretending to be.

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)