Pastitsio from Vegetarian Epicure

[Sparkly]

First, does anybody else remember the two Vegetarian Epicure cookbooks?

Oh! I just used "The Google" and see they're still around: http://www.vegetarianepicure.com/

Well, I used them a looong time ago (we shan't discuss how long a time ago) to the amazement of my NYCity roommates ("How did you get all that on the walls??"), and I got an urge to make the Pastitsio again. (That came about while thumbing for the Zabaglione recipe, which I made for Christmas Eve.)

It's got a sauce of (essentially) tomatoes, eggplant and onions, with a little bit of cinnamon, which is layered with noodles and parmesan. Then it's all covered with a custard (basic white sauce beaten into eggs) and another dash of parmesan, and baked. Fantastic!

The Google tells me it's a Greek dish that usually has meat in it, but this is the first one I ever knew. (And loved -- I can tell which recipes I loved by the mess I made on the pages! I was a young Sparkly Fairy Princess then...)

My labors were interrupted by Stinky coming in reminding me we were supposed to be at a New Year's Day party at a neighbor's house! So off we went, leaving the finished, golden, beautiful dish to languish on the counter. Today his rich, amazing onion soup upstaged my lowly "leftover" Pastitsio, for which I've given him plenty of grief.

Anyway, I got pictures and details if anybody's interested! :)

[Gormy Cuss]

1. I remember the first cookbook.

It wasn't my favorite but there were some good recipes.

[hippywife]

2. I could have sworn that I had a copy

but I'll be darned if I can find it. And I would love pictures and details. Post away!

I bet you upstaged him dancing the other night, tho. ;)

[Sparkly]

3. I promise to post 'em soon, hippywife

Meanwhile, Stinky was quite the star the other night... It was a last-minute challenge to come up with 30 minutes of material, and I created a character wearing an apron, a few random curlers, and authentic cat-eye glasses (without lenses), wielding a feather duster, a rag, and a 1940s magazine. I was a deluded post-war housewife, romanticizing domestic bliss... (The music was the Andrews Sisters: "You're just a flower from an old bouquet..." Very shmaltzy.)

Husb walks in partway through, and I dance-fawn over him while he basically reacts as if I were nuts. (Yeah, as IF!!) The biggest laugh: when I take off his hat and feather-dust his bald head.

Yup, that and really awful Queso's -- and fireworks in the car -- were New Year's Eve for the Sparkly Family. (More memorable than the usual ones, though!)

:hi:

[hippywife]

4. I will look forward to them. n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Sparkly asked me to post her temporary regrets

She had something come up where she has to prepare to do some substitute teaching (dance) and has NO IDEA what she's going to do ... so she's been preparing all evening. The pictures are on Photobucket, so all she has to do is write up her recipe.

In the meantime, in the same group of recipes, was this one of Little ......



And this one of Big ......

[hippywife]

8. Pretty puppies!

Little almost resembles Sparkly. I can be patient while she works through her immediate demands. :)

[Sparkly]

9. Finally!!

Whew! First, here's the recipe as written. I'll post my adjustments, culinary commentary, and pictures in a separate post.

Pastitsio Sauce

3/4 cup dried lentils
1 large eggplant (the size of a cantaloupe)
3 Tb. olive oil
3 Tb. butter
2 onions, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp oregano
salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
8 medium tomatoes, peeled (or 2 lb. canned tomatoes)
8 oz. tomato paste
1/2 to 1 cup Parmesan
1 lb. noodles

Custard Sauce
3 Tb. butter
3 cups milk
3 eggs
3 Tb. flour

Wash the lentils, cover them with 3 cups boiling water, and let them soak a few hours. Pour them into a pot, together with the water; add a little salt and olive oil, and cook them until the water is almost gone -- about 1/2 hour or 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil and butter in a large skiller, and add to it the chopped onions. Wash the eggplant and, without peeling it, chop it into small pieces and add it to the onions, along with the garlic and other seasonings. Cover the pan and let it saute, stirring now and then. After about 10 minutes, chop the tomatoes and add them and, when the lentils are ready, add them also with the little liquid that is left. Again, let it cook awhile, and stir occasionally until it is very thick. Then stir in the tomato paste, heat it through, correct the seasoning, and the sauce is ready to use.

Boil the noodles in salted water until they are just barely al dente -- still stiff -- about 10 to 12 minutes. Butter a large casserole or oblong baking dish and put half the noodles in an even layer across the bottom. Sprinkle parmesan over them, then carefully cover them with half the sauce. Now make a layer of the rest of the noodles, again sprinkle with parmesan, and cover with the rest of the sauce. This much can be done ahead of time, if you like, and refrigerated.

Now make a custard sauce. Heat the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and let the roux cook a few minutes. Then pour in the heated milk, stirring with a whisk. Beat the eggs in a bowl and pour the white sauce over them slowly as you continue beating with the whisk.

Pour this sauce over the entire casserole. It should drain through to the bottom and bind the whole thing together. If it just sits obstinately on top, slide a knife in and out of the four layers in a few places. Sprinkle a little more parmesan on top and cover. Bake for 1 hour at 400 degrees, and serve very hot.

This recipe feeds 8.

[hippywife]

10. Wonderful!

Thank you so much! I think my other half would like this very much!

Oh, and I wasn't trying to say you look like a dog. I think it's Little that has that Sparkly look about her. :hi:

[Stinky The Clown]

12. "This recipe feeds 8"

Actually, the recipe's writer thought it yielded 8 portions. The number it feeds varies by the nature of the feedees.

[Sparkly]

13. One man's "portion" is another person's "meal for family of six."

I mean, I'm just sayin'...

[Sparkly]

11. Pics and commentary

The pics came out kinda big, but here goes...

First, lots of the measurements in the original recipe don't work anymore in terms of product sizing. My noodles were 12 oz., not a pound; the San Marzano tomatoes are 1 lb. 12 oz., not 2 lbs.; and tomato paste comes in 6 oz. cans for as long as I can remember. And there's a LOT of fat in this recipe that isn't really needed. (Note that when she says "a little salt and olive oil" she means "a little olive oil," not the 3 Tb. called for which comes later.)

So here's the sauce:



For noodles, I found "fluffy extra wide" which don't take half the time the recipe suggests! I think they took five minutes to be slightly undercooked.



Here's the dish being assembled with one layer of noodles (barely covering the bottom of the pan), sauce, and cheese:



Second layer filled up the big-sized Pyrex dish:



For the sauce, I didn't heat the milk -- I just drizzled the sauce into the eggs to warm them slowly.



Here's the custard sauce poured over, and more cheese on top. At this point it looks odd, and may cause certain individuals to remark that it's too large an amount for the chosen Pyrex dish, which is to be ignored.



It gets covered with foil and goes into the oven, then after about 15 minutes or so, one realizes that the (appropriate) amount of food, when placed in the (appropriate) Pyrex dish, causes the foil to stick to the custard. Scrape the stuck custard off the foil, blame insufficient "tenting" of foil, and suggest new foil buttered or sprayed with cooking spray. If you have a fastidious assistant, watch said assistant create an architectural tent from foil, more complicated than most origamis, while sighing loudly:



Helpful assistant rushes in yelling, "We're supposed to be at the neighbor's party!!" causing much ruckus and changing of clothes, and no pictures of the final product.

But it was gooooooood!!!! It comes out golden, cuts like a cake and is quite yummy. :) We froze much of it, so I could get a picture of leftovers sometime.

[Stinky The Clown]

14. You gotta problem with sighing?

:SIGH:

[Sparkly]

16. Oh, I am SO ignoring you.

:P

[hippywife]

17. You two really crack me up. LOL

Thanx again for all the info and the pics. I was telling Stinky earlier today that pics help so much in knowing what results to expect.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

5. They are still great cookbooks -

and, no, I don't want to remember how many years ago I got mine.

Oy.

But, the second one has the best gazpacho recipe I've ever found. It has eggs in it, it's cooked, and it's the one summer dish I fix all year 'round because good canned tomatoes work perfectly.

[Warpy]

6. "The Cholesterol Cookbook!"

My own is covered in stains. I have the second one, but found she got just a little too precious when she traveled, ended up with restaurantitis in a lot of recipes.

I loved everything I did out of the first one, though.

[Sparkly]

15. Hah! Mine's covered in stains, too.

I got a bit of grief for that, but blamed it on having been very young. (Of course that was only a few years ago... Ahem.)

Cholesterol -- yup! I remember making some feta crepes that, after being assembled into sinful-enough little triangles, get sauteed in butter, whoa! I've often told people that these particular vegetarian cookbooks are not about "health food." Some of those recipes are rich as can be.

Do you know the Moosewood cookbooks? I went to grad school in Ithaca and enjoyed the restaurant as well as the cookbooks. The recipes are a bit more sane, although I've found them more useful as idea-sources than actual recipes.

[Warpy]

18. "Moosewood" suffered from restaurantitis

with too many ingredients to fussy up the food. Every day food should not be restaurant food. I often found I could pare their recipes down very far without losing much in the way of flavor. It also reduced my shopping list and the cost of the dinner.

My favorite good, plain vegetarian cookbook for many years was "Ten Talents," a very preachy, bible thumping but solid everyday cookbook. I still use it frequently when I'm stumped and Bittman isn't helping.

It's vegan and a Seventh Day Adventist staple, so it's still in print. I strongly suggest it as an everyday cookbook along with Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian."

Still, you can't beat the cholesterol cookbook for party food.

[livetohike]

19. Too many years ago....one of my first vegetarian cookbooks

I still remember the first recipe I made was the cheese enchiladas. It's become one of my favorite recipes :-).