Now that the cold weather is coming- it’s been sunny and 70 here, which makes me walk around saying, “Global warming? What global warming? New England is supposed to be warm in November, right?”- it’s time to think about stick-to-your-ribs food, comfort food, heavy, make it on Sunday eat it until Wednesday food.
Or am I the only one that thinks this way?
For my first heavy food of the season, I attempted The Hippo’s Pastitsio. It was delicious just the right mix of cream and acid, savory and almost sweet. The spices made it more than just a regular old baked pasta dish and I used lamb which I don’t often eat. I felt very Mediterranean.
I won’t re-post the recipe here, for that you should click over to the Hippo’s site. I will talk about the steps and give you some photos. Otherwise, this would be a really short, boring post…
Make the tomato sauce. I must confess that it took me three days to make this recipe, not because it was hard but because I was busy. So the first day I browned the lamb and onions. The next day I added the tomatoes and spices (I was lacking tomato paste so I added a bit more tomato). I don’t think the sauce suffered any from the day’s rest it got because I didn’t put together the dish until the day after that.
I made the crema. It’s a little different from my usual white sauce because it includes eggs which made it more silky and smooth as well as slightly more rich. In short, yum!
Then I boiled the macaroni and started to put it together. First, the layer of bread crumbs, which went in onto a buttered pan.
Next, half the pasta, all the meat sauce and half the crema. 
Lots of cheese comes next. I used a mix of mozzarella and parmesan because that’s what I had.
Add the rest of the pasta and then the rest of the crema and top with the cheese.
Bake until it looks like this:
