Tasty Tuesday | Moussaka and Greek Salad

Apr 20th, 2010No Comments

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It’s all greek to me! I have been having such a terrible craving for Moussaka lately so I decided to brave it and attempt to make it all by myself. The only other time that I ever eat it is when my mother-in-law makes it so I had some big shoes to fill when deciding to try and make it for Jay tonight. All in all, it turned out pretty good and even Joel liked it! That is a big deal in this house. Traditional Moussaka is made with eggplant but you can also make it with potatoes or zucchini or a mixture of the two which is what I made. I will warn you, this is kind of a time consuming dish to make, especially the first time around. The nice thing is, for our family, the recipe made more than enough for 2 servings so I froze one to pull out for a later meal.

Recipe: Moussaka

Ingredients

1 lb. potatoes
1 lb. zucchini
Meat Sauce:
1 lg. onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 T olive oil
2 lbs. ground beef or lamb
1 c. chopped, peeled tomatoes
2 T tomato paste
1/2 c. chicken broth
2 T chopped parsley
1 t. sugar
1/4 t. cinnamon
salt and pepper
Cream Sauce:
3 T butter
4 T flour
2 1/2 c milk
1/8 t nutmeg or cinnamon
salt and pepper
3 T grated parmesan
1 egg, lightly beaten

Instructions

Cut potato and zucchini in 1/4 in slices. Sprinkle with salt and let rest for 30 minutes. Dry with paper towels.
Oil the bottom of an electric skillet and brown both sides of the potatoes and zucchini. Place to the side once browned.
For the meat sauce, gently fry onion and garlic for 10 minutes in oil. Add meat and brown over high heat, stirring well. Add remaining meat sauce ingredients , seasoning to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
To make cream sauce, melt butter in a saucepan, stir in flour and cook gently for 2 minutes. Add milk all at once and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Let sauce bubble gently for 1 minute. Remove from heat, stir in nutmeg or cinnamon, 1 T of the cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Just before spreading on top of the moussaka, stir in the egg.
Grease an oven dish (9×13) and place a layer of potatoes and zucchini on the bottom. Top with half of the meat sauce , place another layer of potatoes and zucchini, top with remainder of sauce and end with a layer of potatoes and zucchini. Spread cream sauce on top and sprinkle remainder of cheese on top.
Bake @ 350 for 1 hour. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting into squares.

* As a short cut, I used canned petite diced tomatoes instead of fresh.

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