LEWISTON — For Peter Robinson, the decision to use either flour or eggs in a traditional food — pastitsio — has led to a struggle between his Greek heritage and the way Lewiston’s own Greeks made the dish.

“If we really did it the way we wanted to, it would be very different,” said Robinson, who is Greek on his mother’s side. “It’s funny. That’s been the source of great debate in this community.”

The problem is that the dish — a carb-heavy staple with ground beef and macaroni — has traditionally been made one way by Lewiston’s Greek community and another by most other Greek communities.

And since the food is featured every September in the annual L/A Greek Festival, the issue of “What’s in the pastitsio?” has been debated and redebated.

The result is a kind of food detente and a compromise pastitsio.

“At every other Greek festival you’ll ever go to, they’ll do three things: They’ll put cinnamon in the ground beef,” Robinson said. “They’ll do it in layers: macaroni, ground beef, macaroni. And, third, they’ll put a bechamel sauce on top.

“The festival committee decided that we’re going to try to make it more like other communities, so the people coming here won’t say ‘What’s this?’” Robinson said.

That meant ignoring a little bit of tradition.

“My mother didn’t make it that way,” Robinson said. “My grandmother didn’t make it that way. No one else here does either.”

Local pastitsio has no cinnamon. The macaroni and the ground beef is all mixed together, not layered. And rather than the flour-based bechamel sauce, the locals use an egg-based sauce to thicken the food.

That’s where the compromise ended.

“We drew the line in the pastitsio. No bechamel,” Robinson said.

The compromise pastitsio is what will be on the menu when this year’s three-day festival kicks off on Sept. 9.

Volunteers from the local Greek community and Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church have already begun preparing and freezing the food in anticipation of big crowds.

Workers recently cracked 90 dozen eggs and mixed 200 pounds of ground beef for the locally made foods that will be presented at the festival.

“Nothing is processed,” said David Rivet, who is a co-chair of the festival with Robinson. “We make everything from scratch.”

Besides the pastitsio, the menu will feature lamb kabobs, a spinach pie called spanakopita and moussaka, a dish with eggplant and ground beef.

That final dish may be for the traditional Greek food purists. It, too, has a sauce on top.

“What we’re saying is, ‘If you want bechamel, order the moussaka,’” Robinson said.

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Traditional L-A Pastitsio

Offered by Peter Robinson

Ingredients:

1 pound elbow macaroni

1 1/3 pounds ground beef

1 medium onion

Salt

Pepper

1 1/4 cups grated parmesan cheese

6 eggs

1 quart milk

Olive oil

1 clove garlic (optional – festival version)

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (optional – festival version)

1/2 cup tomato sauce (optional — festival version)

Directions:

Dice the onion and saute in a little olive oil. Add the ground beef to the onion and cook until brown. Add salt and pepper to taste. Strain to remove excess fat and liquid.

Cook one pound of elbow macaroni (for something a little different, substitute ziti) in salted water until al dente (it will cook more when the pastitsio is baked). Strain the macaroni. Mix the macaroni and ground beef together, then mix in 3/4 cup parmesan cheese. Place the mixture in a greased 9-by-13-inch pan.

Beat 6 eggs in a large bowl and set aside. Heat one quart milk until very hot, but be careful not to scorch it. Add 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Then, slowly add the milk to the eggs while whisking the eggs. This heats the eggs to the temperature of the milk without curdling them. (Adding the eggs directly to the milk will give you scrambled eggs!) Add 1/2 cup parmesan cheese to the sauce. Pour the sauce into the macaroni/ground beef mixture. The sauce should just barely cover the top of the macaroni.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, until golden brown. When it is ready, the edges will bubble and a knife inserted into the center will come out clean. Let cool for at least 15 minutes, to give the pastitsio time to set.

If you prefer the way we make it at our festival, make the following adjustments:

Saute one clove minced garlic with the onion. Add 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/2 cup tomato sauce to the ground beef and continue to cook for 5 minutes before draining excess liquid. Then, rather than mixing the macaroni and ground beef together, you’re going to make a layer of ground beef between two layers of macaroni. To do that, first add 1/2 stick of margarine to the macaroni to keep it from sticking together, and add the 3/4 cup parmesan to the macaroni. Place half the macaroni in the pan, add some of the sauce, then the layer of ground beef and top with the remaining macaroni, then add the rest of the sauce. (Martin says that even when he’s not making the festival version, he still likes to add the 1/2 cup tomato sauce to the ground beef.)

Note on making the sauce: Once the egg is added to the sauce, some people will thicken the sauce by continuing to heat it, and then the sauce will sit on top of the pastitsio, becoming an additional custard-like layer. Some recipes also use flour or corn starch to thicken the sauce. That method is generally not used here, but can be found at a number of other festivals. (Traditionalists here use bechamel for their moussaka, but not for the pastitsio.)

Then, Peter Robinson says, “Kali orexi!” (That’s Greek for “bon appetit!”)

Illustration for the Greek dish pastisio.

Illustration for the Greek dish pastisio.