Moussaka

Made it? Rate it!
moussaka
You’ll never miss the lamb!

We know that traditional moussaka is made with lamb (we’ve had plenty made that way), but this one isn’t. That’s why the title isn’t “Traditional Moussaka.” Instead, what we have here is a lighter version of traditional moussaka that tastes just as good, but is nowhere near as oily (a failing of many, many, moussakas, in our opinion) and fatty. Don’t believe us? Read on, and try it out.

We will say that we based this on, well, based is too strong a word; instead, we looked at a traditional recipe for moussaka that we found on the Bon Appetit web page. You can look at it too, if you like, but we think our version is better. Of course we do, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it, right?

Moussaka

Servings: 4
Author: Shawn

Ingredients

For the eggplant

  • 1/2 clove garlic minced
  • 1/2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 1/2 tsp minced fresh rosemary
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 large eggplant peeled and sliced into rounds 1/2-inch thick

For the lentils

  • 3/4 cup puy lentils
  • 2 small dried shiitake mushrooms optional
  • 2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
  • 3/4 cup diced onion
  • 1 1/2 cloves garlic minced
  • Kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/3 cup dry white wine
  • 14 ounces chopped tomatoes (1 can)
  • 3 inch cinnamon stick
  • 6 cloves
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 Tbs dried oregano
  • 1 Tbs white wine vinegar

For the bechamel

  • 3 Tbs unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 1/8 tsp freshly ground nutmeg
  • Pinch ground cloves
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 ounces fresh goat cheese
  • 1 egg yolk

Instructions

For the eggplant

  • Prehat oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
  • In a small bowl, combine garlic, oregano, salt, rosemary, and black pepper. Use the back of a spoon to mash garlic into a paste. Add oil and stir to combine.
  • Place eggplant rounds on parchment and brush with oil mixture.
  • Roast in oven until very tender and slightly charred around the edges, about 40 minutes. Set aside.
  • Reduce oven temperature to 400°F.

For the lentils

  • Place lentils, shiitakes, and 1 1/2 cups of water in a medium saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until tender, about 30-40 minutes. Remove shiitakes, chop, and return to the pan. Remove from heat.
  • Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 7 minutes. Add garlic and cook an additional minute.
  • Add wine, tomatoes, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaf, paprika, and oregano. Reduce heat, partly cover, and simmer about 20 minutes. Remove and discard cinnamon stick, bay leaf, and cloves.
  • Add lentils and continue to simmer, uncovered, until all water has evaporated, about another 20 minutes. Stir in vinegar, taste, and add salt and pepper as needed. Set aside.

For bechamel

  • Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and stir until smooth, about 1 minute.
  • Add milk in three additions, whisking until smooth after each one. Add salt, nutmeg, ground cloves, and pepper to taste, and bring to a boil. Whisk in goat cheese until smooth and remove from heat to cool for 10 minutes. Whisk in egg yolk.

For assembly

  • Lightly oil an 8x8 baking dish.
  • Place a layer of eggplant on the bottom, followed by the lentil mixture, spreading the surface smooth with the back of a spoon. Pour the bechamel over the top, smoothing into an even layer.
  • Bake 40 minutes, or until bubbling and bechamel is nicely browned.
  • Let stand 30 minutes before serving.

Ingredient discussion:

We had a medium-sized eggplant, and, after shrinking during baking, we wished we’d had a bit more. So, we’re suggesting that you get a large eggplant. For the lentils, we suggest you try to find the small French lentils known as puy lentils, as they hold their shape after cooking. For the cloves, cinnamon stick, and bay leaf, you’ll fish these out after the sauce is cooked partway: either place them in a small sachet, or count carefully.

Procedure in detail:

Okay, we have a number of things going on, and it looks as if you’ll be cooking all these things in a long sequence. That’s not the case. Most can be made concurrently. Once the eggplant is in the oven they need little attention, so get the lentils going. Once the lentils are covered and simmering, it’s easy to start up the onions and sauce part. Then, after that’s all done, start thinking about the bechamel and assembly. We’ll still describe them in sequential order, though. About those shiitake mushrooms. They add a lot of savoriness, so, if you have them, use ’em. If not, maybe you have other mushrooms that would work. Choose what will work for you.

For the eggplant:

Preheat oven to 450°F. You want a nice hot oven to char the eggplant a bit, so, line a baking sheet for easy cleanup. Unless, of course, you like scrubbing bits of charred eggplant off the pan.

Crush spices and oil. In a small bowl, combine the garlic, oregano, salt, rosemary, and black pepper, and, using the back of a spoon, mash the salt into the garlic to make a paste. Mash the other spices, too, but the garlic is the most important to mash. The salt crystals will act like little knives to cut and tear apart the garlic while you work. Finally, stir in the olive oil.

seasoning eggplant
You don’t have to brush both sides of the eggplant as the oil soaks in.

Coat eggplant. Place the eggplant on your prepared pan. Ideally in one layer, but if they overlap, that’s okay, too. Brush each round with the oil and spice mixture. We would scoop up a bit with a spoon, place it in the center of an eggplant round, then spread it around with the back of the spoon. Continue until all rounds are coated. If you have more oil mixture, flip the rounds and oil the other side, but, if not, don’t fret. We didn’t, either.

Roast. Place the eggplant in the oven and roast until it’s very soft and the edges are charred just a bit, about 40 minutes.  Once ready, remove the eggplant and set aside.

Lower oven to 400°F. The final dish of moussaka will bake at this temperature, so set the oven temperature now so you won’t forget it.

For the lentils:

You can do pretty much all of this while the eggplant is baking, so let’s get started. Once you have the lentils going, move on and start the sauce; everything will come together at the end.

cooking lentils
A few shiitake mushrooms add a lot of savoriness to dishes making them extra tasty.

Cook lentils. Place the lentils and shiitake mushrooms in a small saucepan along with 1 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until tender. Puy lentils will take longer than regular brown lentils, perhaps 30 to 40 minutes. After about 20 minutes, fish out the shiitake mushrooms, dice them (remove the stems as they’re too tough), and return them to the pan. Once the lentils are tender, remove from heat. Don’t worry if all the water hasn’t been absorbed.

Cook onions. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When hot, add the onions, sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper to get some flavor going, and cook, stirring from time to time, until tender and just starting to brown around the edges, about 7 minutes. Add the garlic, stir, and cook for another minute or until fragrant.

adding spices
Try to keep track of the cloves (or use a small infuser); you want to retrieve them all so no one has a slice with “clove surprise” inside.

Add wine, tomatoes, and spices. Add the wine, listen to it sizzle, stir or shake it and the onions around, then add the tomatoes. Give everything a good stir, then set the cinnamon stick, bay leaf, and cloves in the sauce and submerge under the liquid. Don’t stir in the cloves, as you’ll be taking them out later, and count them, as you’ll be taking them out later, and you want to get every one. Sneak in the oregano and smoked paprika on the other side of the pan and gently stir that in.  Reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook, partly covered, for about 20-30 minutes. Ideally, this should be about the time your lentils are done.

adding lentils
It’s okay if the lentils still have some liquid remaining, we’ll cook that off.

Add lentils. Stir in the cooked lentils (as a side note, the acid in tomatoes will prevent lentils from becoming tender; that’s why we cook them separately).

lentil moussaka filling
You want a nice dry mixture, with almost no liquid remaining, for the lentil filling.

Cook dry. Continue to simmer the mixture until all the liquid is evaporated and it seems as though it’s beginning to stick. This will take another 20 minutes or so. When done, remove from heat.

Season. Add the vinegar, taste, and add salt and pepper as needed.

For the bechamel:

Make roux. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add the flour and stir until smooth and bubbling, about a minute.

making bechemel
A bit of nutmeg works wonders in all savory dairy dishes, along with pepper and cloves, of course.

Add milk. Switch to a whisk and add the milk in three additions (faster than this and it might lump — not good), whisking between additions until smooth.

making bechemel
You can use other cheese, but goat cheese will add a bit of tanginess to the sauce.

Add spices and cheese. Add the salt, nutmeg, and pepper, and whisk in. Finally, whisk in the cheese until smooth.

Cool. We’ll be adding an egg yolk, mainly for color, so we need to let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes, lest we have scrambled egg yolk in our bechamel.

adding egg yolk
The yolk is mainly for color, it’ll eliminate that pasty white look of the bechamel.

Add egg yolk. Whisk in the egg yolk and you’re ready for the final steps: assembly, baking, and eating.

For assembly:
layering moussaka
By pressing the lentils smooth, you’ll have an even layer of bechamel to top your moussaka.

Layer. Lightly oil the bottom of an 8×8-inch baking pan. Place the eggplant in a single layer (or as close to a single layer as you can) on the bottom. Scoop the lentil mixture over the top and press smooth with the back of a spoon. Finally, scrape the bechamel sauce from the pan over the top of the lentils, smoothing so everything is covered.

Bake. Slide into the oven and bake until everything is bubbling and the bechamel is browned in spots, about 40 minutes.

moussaka
Bake until you have nicely browned bechamel; it’s almost impossible to over-bake this dish.

Rest. While you could serve this moussaka immediately, we really suggest that you give it 30 minutes to settle and set. That way, you can cut it into pieces and lift them out intact, using a spatula.

This really does taste a lot like traditional moussaka; at least, it’s very similar-tasting to any moussakas we’ve had in the past, but without that heavy, greasy taste that some moussaka has. So, we think we kept the best part of moussaka, and eliminated all the bad parts. Definitely, four stars,  mainly because it’s an involved recipe. PS: it’s also great left over.

Worth the trouble?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.