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Moussaka: the original recipe of a great Greek cook

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Moussaka: the original recipe of a great Greek cook

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The holidays are approaching and you still don’t know what the main dish will be for your Christmas lunch or are you tired of the usual tortellini (blasphemy!)? Do anolini no longer titillate your palate as they once did?

Does the classic roast no longer tell you anything? Doesn’t the leg of lamb have that charm of yesteryear?

This year try to celebrate with the Greek moussaka.

What is moussaka?

It is a sort of parmigiana, a pasticcio, a lasagna baked in the oven with meat sauce crowned with steaming bechamel, except that instead of pasta, the Emilian puff pastry, there are slices of fried aubergine. A nice sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg in the béchamel must never be missing to create an enveloping spicy symphony with a sweet aftertaste.

History of the moussaka

Before moving on to the stove, a few words about the original Moussaka recipe. Each country has its version, it is useless to make holy wars for the authorship of this splendid dish.

Let’s start with the name of Arabic origin: musaqqa’ah, which means cooled. And in fact, it is said that the mother of all moussaka is the simple one with aubergines and tomatoes and at most chickpeas. Beef after all is not very common in Greece and the Middle East, indeed the main Arabic recipes of these areas are based on chickpeas: see falafel and hummus.

Moussaka with potatoes, classic recipes with eggplant cooked by real chefs

Yet another recipe is that of the Balkan area, including Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria, where the moussaka is made with potatoes or a mixture of layers of potatoes and aubergines.

The Greek moussaka is the richest and most sumptuous and it is the one we will prepare. The meat is usually lamb, but if you don’t like it, substitute beef. It is much less flavorful, but it’s a matter of taste.

Having said that, today we will prepare the Greek moussaka of Mrs. Georgia from the Ladi Ke Rigani restaurant in Imola.

Ingredients and doses to make the real Greek moussaka

8 servings

  • 1 kg of eggplant
  • 10 grams of salt
  • 8 grams of pepper
  • 45 grams of olive oil
  • 100 grams of grated Parmigiano Reggiano
  • 4 large potatoes

To make the béchamel

  • 80 grams of butter
  • 120 grams of flour
  • 600 ml of whole milk
  • 6 grams of salt
  • 5 grams of pepper
  • 5 grams of nutmeg
  • 15 grams of cinnamon

For the meat sauce

  • 1 yellow onion
  • 600 grams of minced lamb meat
  • 7 grams of salt
  • 6 grams of pepper
  • 1 glass of red wine
  • 400 ml of tomato sauce

How to make the real original moussaka

Let’s start with the meat sauce. Finely chop the onion and stew it in 6 tablespoons of olive oil for 10 minutes. Sweet flame, it must not burn. Use a thick-bottomed pan, cooking will be slow and the heat must be transmitted evenly.

Add the minced lamb, stir, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes. Deglaze with the wine, after another 3 minutes, add the tomato sauce or tomatoes, stir, lower the heat and cook for 50 minutes over very low heat. If you want more creaminess, add 4 cl of milk.

Check that the cooking is gradual and sweet, stir and add water if necessary.

In the meantime, let’s take care of the aubergines for the moussaka.

Cut them into 1.5 cm thick slices and then sprinkle them with salt, stacking them one on top of the other, in a colander.

Wait 1 hour then wash them carefully.

Fry them in boiling seed oil or cook them in a pan or griddle if you feel guilty about calories.

Season them lightly with salt and pepper.

Well, here we are. It took us 3 minutes to write the recipe so far, but in reality, the processing time to make the moussaka is infinite. All the ingredients have to be prepared, cut, cooking takes a long time and there is a lot of downtimes. The beauty is that it is a dish that you can also make overtime or prepare in advance. On the contrary, Mrs. Georgia recommends always preparing the moussaka 1 day in advance. It must thicken and compact. Never eat it the same day it is prepared.

All that is missing is the béchamel.

Heat the milk separately, it must be lukewarm.

Take a thick-bottomed saucepan and melt the butter over low heat. Pour in the flour and mix for 5 minutes.

Add half a glass of milk a little at a time and cook until completely blended.

After 2 minutes, add the rest of the milk a little at a time until you get a smooth and velvety cream.

Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a generous dose of cinnamon.

At this point, we just have to take a rectangular dish and start composing the moussaka.

Put a layer of meat sauce, then add a layer of aubergines, a grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, and then meat and aubergine sauce and cheese, finally cover with a pour of bechamel.

If you want to add the potatoes, boil them, cut them large, and put them on the bottom of the pan. They help to soothe the greasy sensation, thanks to the contribution of starch. They must never be more than one layer.

Bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees for 40 minutes and then let it rest.

Moussaka original Greek recipe, meat pie with eggplant and bechamel

Serve the moussaka only the day after, never the same day!

We thank Mrs. Georgia for her wonderful recipe and we invite you to visit her restaurant, in Imola, via Santerno 13, if you want to eat a simply perfect moussaka.

Which wine to pair with the Greek moussaka?

The protein and lipid impact is prodigious, you need tannins, acidity and / or flavor. We focus on a full-bodied and spicy red such as a Sagrantino, a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Schioppettino from Friuli. The wine we uncorked is the Duca dell’Argillone Cirò Rosso Classico Superiore Riserva 2010 Fattoria San Francesco, splendid for its elegance and tannic vigor.

If you want to pair a cocktail with, clearly serving body, the Bloody Mary is the right choice.

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