Pastitsio Saves the Day

Despite being allergic to over half of the recipes in my Greek cookbooks, I happen to adore Greek food.  That conflict has led to a range of culinary substitutions of mammoth proportions.  One of the few recipes where I don't have to change ingredients because of allergy issues is Pastitsio.  But I still needed to make it vegetarian.  Thanks to the variety of soy based meat substitutes available, this was incredibly easy.

Pastitsio is basically a casserole with pasta, meat sauce, cream sauce and a cheese topping.  The original recipe that I adapted contains eggs in the cream sauce.  I, however, am a horribly suspicious person when it comes to eggs.  When cooking the original recipe I was always worried that the eggs hadn't cooked enough, so to save my peace of mind I just completely left them out of my vegetarian redaction.  My favorite part of this dish is the crispy topping of Parmesan cheese.

This is the first time I've gotten to use the beautiful casserole dish that my husband gave me for Christmas.  Isn't it lovely?  I fell in love with it the moment that I saw it in the antique store.  Can you believe it - this fabulous dish is from the 70s, according to the store tag.   There is not even a scratch on it.  I nearly gibbered in delight and begged him to get it for me.  I was so happy when I opened it up on Christmas morning!

Vegetarian Pastitsio Recipe:  Adapted from the Pastitso Recipe in The Complete Middle East Cookbook by Tess Mallos

Base Ingredients:

4 oz. Macaroni noodles

2 TB Butter

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

1 tsp ground nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

Fake Meatsauce:

1 TB Olive oil

1 TB butter
2 TB minced garlic

1 large Onion, chopped

1 pkg. Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles

1 tsp soy sauce

1/4 cup chopped tomatoes

1/2 cup red wine

1/2 cup vegetable stock

3 TB dried or fresh parsley

1 tsp ground cardamom

2 tsp ground cumin

1 TB garlic powder

1 tsp nutmeg

Cream Sauce:

3 TB butter

1/2 to 3/4 cup milk

4 TB all purpose flour

1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated

1 tsp nutmeg

Part 1: The Base

1. Boil the noodles, drain and place in casserole dish.

2. Add the butter in slices to the hot noodles and stir until melted.
3. Mix in parmesan, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Part 2: Fake Meatsauce

1. Heat olive oil and butter in skillet, saute the minced garlic for 2 mins.

2. Add onions to the pan with the garlic and saute until clear then remove from pan.

3. Saute frozen Morningstar Farms crumbles with leftover olive oil in the pan and the soy sauce.

4. Add the vegetable stock, wine, herbs and spices, tomatoes, onions and garlic.  Stir well.

5. Cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes or until liquid is reduced away.

6. Mix the fake meatsauce into the noodles in the casserole dish, stirring until well distributed.

Part 3: Cream Sauce

1. Melt the butter in the same pan that held the meatsauce.

2. Add milk slowly, stirring constantly.

3. Add flour a little bit at a time, again keep stirring!

4. Slowly mix in the parmesan cheese and nutmeg.  Cook for just a few minutes until the cheese is all melted
    and the sauce is thickened.

5. Mix the cream sauce into the noodles and fake meat sauce.

6. Bake uncovered at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

7. Cover with 1/2 to 1 cup of grated parmesan, cook for another 5 minutes.

8. Broil just enough to make parmesan topping golden brown

Make Spaghetti - Vegetarian Style

When I was a teenager this dish was the epitome of home cooking.  There was nothing on this planet better than Nanny's spaghetti.  I requested it every time we visited my grandparents.  It was a reward for the long drive, the twisting roads and the *shudder* 65 degree incline of the driveway to reach their mountain top hideaway.  That driveway still scares me into having nightmares before every trip, so having a warm, garlic infused delight for my taste buds was a darned good thing.

After a few years I had the idea that maybe I should learn to cook Nanny's spaghetti for myself.  Ahhhh, brilliant!  Just one problem - Nanny has never made spaghetti from a recipe so her instructions, "just add garlic until it looks right" and "cook it on the stove and you can smell when it's done" were frustrating.  I finally learned her 'recipe' by sitting on a stool in the kitchen and watching every movement with a hawk-like gaze, scribbling frantically in my notebook.

Then came the fateful day when I turned vegetarian.  But I couldn't give up Nanny's spaghetti and ended up altering the recipe.  It's still fantastic.  I still love it.  It's not exactly healthy, though, even if it is vegetarian!

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 TB Minced garlic
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 pkg. Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles
1 TB Soy sauce
2 8 oz. cans Tomato Sauce
1/4 cup Chianti
2 TB Garlic powder
2 TB Basil
1 TB Oregano
3 TB Parsley
1/2 tsp Paprika
salt and pepper (to taste)
2 large tomatoes, chopped

1. Heat 1 1/2 TB Olive oil in a large stainless steel pan. Sautee minced garlic for 2 minutes.
2. Add chopped onions and green peppers to the pan, sautee on medium heat for 4 - 5 minutes.
3. Take the onions and peppers out of the pan and set aside.
4. Pour frozen Morningstar crumbles into the pan.  Add the soy sauce and another TB of olive oil.

5. Sautee the Morningstar Crumbles until thawed.
6. Put the onion and green peppers back into the pan with the crumbles along with 1 can of tomato sauce.
7. Mix together all of the spices and herbs in a bowl.  Add half of this mixture to the pan, stirring into the
    sauce.
8. Add the wine.
9. Simmer for 10 minutes on low heat, stirring frequently.

10. Add in the chopped tomatoes, 2nd can of tomato sauce and the rest of the herb mixture.

11. Simmer, again on low heat, for another 10 - 12 minutes.

Notes:

When cooking 'fake meat' remember not to overcook!  Most times it just needs to be heated through or thawed.

It's important to add oil to make up for the fat that is not present in soy meat products.  Nanny's original spaghetti sauce had a sheen to it from the fat in the ground beef.  If the sauce doesn't have that distinctive sheen to it I often add another 1-2 TB of Olive oil at the end.  Hence the maybe not so healthy part, lol.

Nanny used Worcestershire sauce but since it is not vegetarian, I use soy sauce instead.  When I have it available I use Ottogi steak sauce.

My style of cooking is to use whatever I have on hand.  If I have only dried herbs, that's what I use.  If I have fresh herbs already, I will use them.  Sometimes I use a mixture of the two - it just depends on what I have on hand.  In this particular version I used fresh Oregano but everything else was dried.

We prefer Dubliner cheese to go with our Spaghetti.  It has a similar texture and taste to Parmesan with a little more tang to it. Dubliner is what you see topping the dish above.

Nanny used to say that her Spaghetti sauce bore no resemblance to anything found in real Italian cooking.  Not knowing much about Italian cooking, I can't say.  But it is delightful, warming and comforting!

Make Snowmen Cookies!

One of my absolute favorite things about the holidays is making cookies with my daughter.  These are obviously from a while back.  I'm only just now getting the time and energy to post about them.  Ah well, better late than never!  It's very difficult for me to let go of my natural inclination towards wanting everything to be perfect.  So letting A-chan help with cookies is so hard.  And yet I love to spend time with her and teach her new things.  I need to relax and learn that the sky will not fall if the kitchen gets a little messy!

We started out with a basic sugar cookie base.  My favorite technique tip for rolling out the dough is to freeze the portion I'm going to be working for a couple of minutes.  That helps it keep from getting too soft and gooey.  If it still gets too soft after it's rolled out, I use my ultra secret technique.  I slide the parchment paper with the rolled out dough onto a small cookie sheet and pop it in the freezer again.  Only for a few minutes though - I just want it to chill slightly so I can cut and separate the cookies from the rolled dough.  I rolled and cut the circles.  A-chan rolled up small balls of the leftover dough and smooshed them into place on the circles.

After the cookies cooled we placed them on another sheet of parchment paper and commenced with the fun part - Sugar galore!  We smoothed on the white icing then quickly sprinkled the colored sugar and placed the miniature chocolate chip eyes before the icing hardened.  After that layer was completely set and hardened I used henna cones filled with icing to finish the decoration.  White icing was layed down in a squiggly pattern for the hat brim and then taken up to finish off the poofball with a swirl.  Chocolate infused icing made the dots for the mouths and orange icing became tiny noses.  We used a little less icing for the cookies that she was taking to school because I was honestly afraid of running out after making 64 cookies!

The cookies above are all packed up and ready to travel to the school party.  The ones down below were the ones that A-chan decorated completely on her own, including doing her own piping!  She added in some extra icing here and there because just like her mama, she is an icing girl.