Pastitsada With Rooster
Feb 25th, 2014 | By Peter Minakis | Category: Braising, Cheese, Corfu, Featured, Greek, Greek Wine, Onions, Pasta, Spices, Veal
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I’ve only been to Corfu once but I may be going again as I am one of the organizers of this Easter-time tour of Greece where we end up on the island of Corfu for Easter. The island is located in northwestern Greece, with Albania to the north and Italy across the Adriatic Sea.
Corfu is one of the “Epta-Nisia” (Seven Islands) and many of the dishes from this chain of islands have Italian-sounding names and the influence in the food is still evident. Pastitsada is a derivative of the Italian word pastizzada, a similar dish Venetian dish. I have also made this dish with stewing veal and it can also be made with chicken, octopus or seafood.
The tomato sauce here is aromatic, with the use of cloves, allspice and cinnamon figuring prominent. In Corfu, you can buy a pre-made blend of spices called Spetseriko and it was originally sold at pharmacies for medicinal uses. Today, many small grocers sell this blend which can contain up to nine spices (cloves, allspice, cinnamon, black pepper, paprika, bay, nutmeg, cumin).
I’ve adjusted the spice mix to my tastes and what you have here is a braised, fall off the bone meat. I’m using rooster and if you can’t find rooster, capon works or even chicken. 
Pastitsada With Rooster
1 whole rooster/capon (broken down into pieces) or 3 lbs. stewing veal or beef
4-6 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 large onions, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
5 allspice berries
3 whole cloves
3 bay leaves
3 heaping Tbsp. of tomato paste
1 cup of dry red wine
2-3 cups hot chicken stock
sea salt and fresh ground pepper
(optional) pinch of ground cinnamon
500 gr. of Misko #5 pasta (or bucantini), cooked
1 cup of grated Kefalotyri (or romano) cheese
- Season your rooster pieces with salt and pepper and heat the olive oil and butter over medium-high heat in a Dutch oven and light brown on both sides, reserve.
- Into the same pot, add your onions, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, allspice and sweat for 10 minutes. Add the tomato paste, stir in and cook for 2 minutes.
- Deglaze your pot with wine and scrape up with a wooden spoon to loosen all the brown bits. Add your rooster pieces back into the pot and enough stock to just come up the side of the meat. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper and cover. Simmer on medium-low on your stove-top or in a pre-heated 235F oven and braise for 90 minutes.
- Uncover and reduce for another 15 minutes to thicken the sauce. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Remove the bay leaves and set the sauce aside while you boil your pasta. Remove the meat and toss the sauce in the pasta until well coated. Divide and plate and serve with a piece of meat and grated Kefalotyri cheese.
- Lay your pasta out on a platter and lay the pieces of juicy, flaky meat on top and pour more sauce over. Finish the dish with more grated cheese and the bay leaves for garnish. Serve with a Kir Yanni Blue Fox red.
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© 2014, Peter Minakis. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://kalofagas.ca then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at truenorth67 AT gmail DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author.
If I close my eyes really tightly I can smell the wonderful aromas of this dish wafting its way to my home all the way here in British Columbia. Such a comforting dish on these cool autumn days.
What a great discovery! Sunday’s are the best for braising – and now that its cooling off here in Phoenix I’m going to make the most of it. This dish looks really good, it’s amazing how many different dishes you can make with such a simple method.
Val, you’re expected to drop by when in TO, ok?
Christine, I love turning cheap cuts of meat into gold!
I love meat cooked this way and yours looks particularly delicious!
Holy deliciousness. I think I might faint. Seriously, my mouth is watering at the prospect of this incredible dish. Excellent job, Peter! :)
Hi Peter,
I realy like your blog. Great recipes indeed.
Pastitsada is a wonderful dish indeed. In my homeland, Dalmatia, Pasticada is a must for every big occasion. Every town has its own recipe and “the civil war” for the best recipe never ends.
I wrote about Pasticada, its history and origins and recipes on my blog (which is unfortunately in Croatian). But if you’d like to have a look here it is http://dalmacijadownunder.blogspot.com/2008/06/pasticada.html
[...] names derived from Latin or Italian dishes. There’s Pastitsio, Bourdeto, Sofrito, Polpetes, Pastitsada and today’s dish, Bianko. Here I am in Corfu, [...]
This sound delicious. I want to try it with goat (female), short ribs or oxtails since the sauce would make these things sing.
Thank you for always giving us great vacations in our kitchens.