Pastitsada

A long braise carrying far more clove and cinnamon than seems sensible, served over thick hollow pasta cooked separately.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, kefalotyri whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg beef shin or a jointed cockerel
• 4 onions, finely sliced
• 6 cloves garlic, sliced
• 400 g tinned tomatoes
• 3 tablespoons tomato purée
• 200 ml red wine
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 8 whole cloves
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 teaspoons sweet paprika
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 bay leaves
• 100 ml olive oil
• 500 g thick hollow pasta
• 100 g kefalotyri, grated
• salt and pepper

Method

1. THE SPICING IS THE DISH AND IT LOOKS LIKE TOO MUCH WRITTEN DOWN. Eight whole cloves and two cinnamon sticks in a beef braise reads like a mistake and is not: this is a sweet, heavily spiced sauce and anyone reducing them to a respectable pinch has made an ordinary beef ragu. That is also what separates it from the other two braises on this site -- one is sharp with vinegar and whole onions, the other is baked with orzo and almost unspiced.
2. THE PASTA IS COOKED SEPARATELY AND NOT IN THE SAUCE, which is the opposite of the orzo bake here. The sauce is thick, dark and heavily reduced; pasta cooked in it would soak it up and leave the meat dry.
3. THE ONIONS ARE SLICED, NOT CHOPPED, and there are four. They melt into the sauce over two hours and are most of its body -- there is no flour and nothing else thickening it.
4. Meat patted dry and seasoned. Half the oil in a heavy casserole over a high heat, browned in batches, lifted out.
5. Rest of the oil, heat to low, onions in with a pinch of salt and cooked 20 minutes until completely soft. Garlic for the last minute.
6. Paprika and allspice stirred in OFF THE HEAT for 30 seconds, so they do not scorch.
7. Back on, vinegar in and bubbled hard 1 minute. Then the wine, 2 minutes.
8. Tomatoes, purée, cloves, cinnamon sticks and bay. Meat back with just enough water to cover.
9. Lid on, barest simmer, 2 hours 30 minutes, until the meat pulls apart with a spoon. Checked twice; topped up only if it threatens to catch.
10. Lid off for the last 30 minutes so the sauce reduces to something that coats rather than pours.
11. Cloves and cinnamon sticks fished out, or left in and pushed aside.
12. Pasta boiled in well-salted water, drained, and served with the sauce spooned over and the cheese on top. Not stirred together.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes