A Taste of Greek

Budgeting time is not easy, especially when you have a lot to do and time is limited. If you're planning on going into a education program and you have a full-time job (which you intend to keep during the duration of your program), you may find yourself in some difficulty if you normally have problems with budgeting your time. You can still have problems even if you're good at budgeting your time.

I currently find myself in a Catch-22 that's rather unfortunate. Student loans are paying for my program, which is good because I can't afford it out-of-pocket on my own. However, in order to qualify for student loans, all students must be "half-time" students. For a graduate, that translates to taking no less than 4 units at a time. Sadly, all of my graduate course are 3 units each, meaning that I have no choice but to take two courses if I want financial aid. The problem? It's becoming increasingly more difficult to budget my time in a way that allows me to dedicate enough time to the full-time job I have, plus give enough attention to the two courses I'm taking. Work in both arenas seems to be building towards a future peak, and I'm left feeling like I'm barely able to stay afloat. I offer this story as a cautionary tale to those interested in pursuing degrees while staying in the workforce. Make sure you understand ALL costs that your program may have--it's important to identify any monetary costs of course, but also figure out possible time, stress, and work output costs. Ironically enough, these types of costs are all subjects I've been learning about and discussing in the management class I'm taking--I'll have to let my professor know that his teaching has already found some real-world application in my life.

What this also means is that I've had to sacrifice some things for the sake of work and school--one of which is this blog. I'm not getting rid of it, I simply mean that my ability to make regular posts has become severely limited--at least for the present. I do have a few recipes to share (one is below) that I've tried in the past couple of weeks. Since this week is lighter on school work, my goal is to post and share these recipes one by one before the weekend. Keep your fingers crossed.

My older brother also likes to cook (mostly French-style cuisine) and he has found a few cooking shows on the public broadcasting station on TV that are more "down to earth" and less gimmicky than those on the Food Network tend to be. One of them is "Cook's Country," a program put out by America's Test Kitchen. I find their recipes interesting and unique, and lucky for me they publish a bi-monthly magazine (which I now subscribe to) called Cook's Country, named after their television show. The best part about the magazine aside from the recipes? No advertisements. The magazine is literally all recipes, articles taking about the "science" of cooking and how the best version of a recipe is reached, reviews of equipment and ingredients, and tips and questions that people write in. It is the true cooking magazine--and their most recent issue contained today's recipe: pastitsio.

Before this recipe, I had never heard the term before so I'll briefly explain it. It is a Greek adaption of lasagna. There is a red sauce and a white sauce and pasta, but the flavor is different from an Italian lasagna. It is a bit labor-intensive, but the result is well worth it. So here we go.

What you'll need:
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped*
3 Tbs. tomato paste
9 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 lbs. ground lamb
1/2 c. red wine
1 can (15-oz.) tomato sauce
2 c. grated Romano cheese
8 oz. elbow macaroni
5 Tbs. unsalted butter
1/2 c. flour
5 c. whole milk
3 eggs
1/3 c. Greek yogurt
salt and pepper

What you'll need to do:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and cook about 5 minutes until they are softened.
2. Stir in the tomato paste, 6 cloves of the garlic, dried oregano, and cinnamon. Cook until the paste begins to darken--about 1-2 minutes--then add the lamb and salt to taste. Cook the mixture until the lamb is no longer pink, about 5-7 minutes.
3. Stir in the wine and cook to reduce the wine to about 1 Tbs. Add the tomato sauce. Bring to just bubbling and simmer until the mixture is a little thickened. Take the skillet off the heat and stir in 1/2 a cup of the Romano cheese. Season with salt and pepper (if desired) and set aside.
4. In a large saucepan, bring 4 cups of water to a boil (add about 1 Tbs. of salt to the water to make it boil faster). Add the macaroni and cook for 3 to 4 minutes until nearly al dente. It will not need to cook completely--it will finish cooking in the oven. Drain the macaroni into a colander and rinse it with cold water until it is cool to the touch. Drain any excess water and put macaroni into a bowl. Set aside.
5. Melt the butter in the macaroni saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and the remaining 3 cloves of garlic. Cook and stir constantly. (As an aside, this mixture of butter and flour is called a roux and is often used to make gravy.) Once it is golden--which takes about a minute--whisk in the milk and bring the mixture to a low boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until thickened, about 12-15 minutes.
6. Remove the saucepan from heat and whisk in 1 c. of the remaining Romano cheese. Add salt and pepper as desired.
7. Stir 2 c. of the white sauce into the cooked macaroni until thoroughly combined. Transfer the pasta to a 13x9-in baking dish.
8. Beat the eggs in the empty bowl used by the macaroni. Slowly beat 1 c. of the white sauce to the eggs. Don't add it all at once or the egg whites will cook and solidify. Slowly whisk the combined eggs and white sauce back into the remaining cup of white sauce. Add the yogurt and mix thoroughly.
9. Spread the meat sauce over the macaroni in the baking dish. Pour the white sauce mixture on top and sprinkle with the last of the grated Romano.
10. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 30-40 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the sides are bubbling.

*You can use a food processor to get the right consistency.

It is a complicated recipe, but the flavor is so unique and wonderful that the work going into this dish is well-rewarded. This goes really well with a Greek salad recipe I'll be posting tomorrow. This recipe has made me want to try cooking more Greek food. Discoveries like that are definitely fun for me!

Enjoy!