Greek Moussaka
This is my third try making a moussaka, and while I’m getting better, I still think there’s way to improve both visually and taste wise. But it’s good enough to post it here anyway, and I might try another approach in the future, with an improved bottom layer!
Ingredients
Original recipe by Akis Petretzikis.
For the vegetables:
- 2 potatoes, cut into thin slices
- 1 onion, cut into thin slices
- 1 eggplant, cut into thin slices
- 2 zucchini, cut into thin slices
- Salt and pepper
- 3 sprigs of thyme
For the meat mixture:
- 400g of ground beef
- 1 onion, minced
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 20g of tomato paste
- 1 can of chopped tomatoes
- Salt and pepper
For the béchamel sauce:
- 400ml of milk
- 75g of flour
- 75g of butter
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon of ground pepper
- 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
- 150g of grated parmesan
Directions
The moussaka will consist of multiple layers - starting with the vegetables. In a well oiled casserole dish, put in the slices of potatoes and onion. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt, pepper and leaves from one sprig of thyme. Mix together, and bake in a 200°C oven for 20 minutes. After that take out and do the same eggplant - drizzle, season, bake for 20 minutes. And then lastly, with zucchini. Drizzle, season and bake.
While all of that is baking, you can be making the meat sauce. In an oiled skillet, first fry the minced onion until it turns golden. Throw in the minced garlic for 30 seconds and mix well with the onion. Then put in the cinnamon and tomato paste, mix well, and sauté for another minute. Now you can put in your ground meat, season with salt and pepper, and make sure you brown it well. After that, add the chopped tomatoes and sauté for 8 minutes.
After making the meat mixture, you can make the béchamel. Into a small saucepan on very low heat, add the butter and melt. When it’ll be melted, add the flour and start mixing with a whisk. Slowly start to add splashes of milk, and incorporate with the whisk. Whenever everything will get to know each other into a paste, add more milk, until you add it all. Based on your flour and the heat, you might be needing more or less milk - most important for you is to get the consistency right. When you’ll see it being saucy and bubbly, remove from heat, add the egg yolks, pepper, nutmeg, and 75g of parmesan and mix well together.
Take around 100ml of the béchamel and mix it into the meat mixture, this will help it bind together once it’ll go into the oven.
Hopefully the vegetables are ready by that time, so you can start assembling. Spread the meat mixture on top of the vegetables. Gently pour the béchamel, spoon by spoon, and using the back of the spoon to spread it over the meat. At the end, sprinkle everything with the other 75g of parmesan.
Since all the insides are almost ready, we just need to bake it so it’ll all get well together - so, you guessed it, 20 minutes in a 200°C oven.
DO NOT cut immediately after that, let it sit down for an hour. It’ll still be warm and ready to it by that time, but it also reheats perfectly after cutting - you do you.
