Hilopites with Kokkinisto Rooster
The Greeks differ greatly from their Italian neighbors in cooking pasta dishes and instead of cooking sauce separately to put on top of boiled pasta, the pasta is cooked in the sauce itself, thus absorbing all the flavors of the dish . The pasta is usually either “hilopites” –village made egg noodles– or orzo, called “kritharaki” or “manestra” and traditionally, used in tomato braised meat dishes that are cooked in covered clay dishes (gastra) in the oven and called “yiouvetsi”–when the meat is almost done, boiling water is added to the sauce and the uncooked pasta added to the clay pot and left to boil in the sauce, thus absorbing the delicious flavors from the meat, tomato and aromatic spices. This method can be expanded to vegetarian dishes, usually eggplant and/or zucchini braised with onion and garlic in tomato and herbs or any dish with plenty of flavorful sauce. This does not have to be an all day oven endeavor, however. You can braise the meat–usually beef, lamb or chicken–or vegetables in tomato on the stove (or even faster in a pressure cooker) and add some boiling water to the sauce before adding the pasta or orzo to the pot OR you can quickly par boil the pasta for 2-3 minutes separately if you want less starch & stickiness (which is what I do with pasta other than orzo) and then add to the main dish pot on the stove to let it finish in the sauce. You must stir it often so that it won’t stick, but it only needs to boil for about 5 minutes before turning off the heat and covering so that it absorbs as much liquid as possible. For egg noodles the time is even shorter–around 3 minutes or so, because it continues to cook after you turn it off. Also, shrimp & lobster pasta is made in much the same way, but using broth made from fresh shrimp heads and shells (or boiled lobster broth) which is added to the sauce in which the pasta is boiled–and then the pasta itself is as delicious as the shellfish!
Yiouvetsi
