Vegan Pastitsio (Greek Lasagna)

This recipe is divided into 3 parts; the pasta, meat sauce, and bechamel sauce!

if you are making dinner for two then you will only need:

250g pastitio pasta

1/3 cup olive oil

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1/2 large onion

3 cloves minced garlic

1 tbsp cinnamon

1 tbsp chopped thyme

11/2 packs of beyond meat minced meat

11/2 cups tomato sauce

1/2 cup broth

2 heaping tbsp butter

1 cup butter

1 cup flour

31/2  cups milk

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

The first thing we are going to do is make the pasta! If you are making this dish for two people then you will only need 250g of pasta, however; if you are making it for more than two people I suggest you make all 500g of pasta. Simply place pasta into a large pot of boiling water with some salt and cook for 10-12 minutes. The ration of water to pasta should be 1 ltr to 100g of pasta. Once cooked discard the water, place into a glass bowl and add in the cinnamon, salt and olive oil, and mix! Set aside.

For the meat sauce add a bit of olive oil to a nonstick frying pan. Add in the chopped onion and let that cook for 5 minutes. Add in the vegan meat,  the tomato sauce, garlic, cinnamon, salt, broth and butter. Let cook uncovered on medium heat for 10 minutes until the water evaporates. Turn off the heat and set aside. Now lets make the bechamel sauce!

For the sauce mix the flour and butter in a saucepan continuously with a whisk for a couple of minutes until well combined, then slowly add the milk 1 cup at a time but don’t stop whisking! Add cinnamon and salt and turn off the heat. Now it’s time to assemble our pastitsio.

Get your deep dish baking tray out and add a spoon full of tomato sauce and olive oil to the bottom of the baking dish. Start with adding one layer of the noodles. Then the meat sauce, then the noodles again and then top off the noodles with the bechamel sauce. You can sprinkle the sauce with some vegan cheese and bake for 30 minutes at 360F.

Remove and let cool for 20 minutes!! Now you’re ready to dig in!