Lamb Moussaka

For my first entry I intend to begin as I mean to go on; by telling you what I had for dinner.

Moussaka

I had intended to take a picture of the whole thing on my plate, but I got distracted and ate it instead. Here’s a picture of what’s left over.

You can see there’s a lot of it here as I tend to make big batches of food and have the leftovers for lunch over the following days. The system works well, especially if you are going out with a chap with a substantial appetite.

Moussaka is an old Greek dish consisting of lamb mince, aubergine and tomatoes baked with a béchamel sauce on top. It’s one of those dishes where you will never find two recipes the same as everyone cooks it their own way. They are, of course, all wrong. Only my way is the best way.

This will serve 6 small – medium portions or 4 large portions.

For the filling:
500g lamb mince
2 cans chopped tomatoes
2 onions
1 large or 2 small aubergines
1 clove garlic
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp chilli flakes
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground coriander
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

For the sauce:
25g butter
2-3 heaped tablespoons plain flour
½ pint milk
ground pepper
2 bay leaves
Handful of grated parmesan.

As with most recipes, the spices here are purely optional depending on your tastes and what you have in the cupboard. The only thing I would insist on is the cinnamon – it goes beautifully with lamb and has a sweet and aromatic earthiness that really makes this meal one of my favourites.

Fry the onions and crushed garlic in a little olive oil until soft. Add the minced lamb and the spices, and stir until nicely browned. Add the chopped tomatoes and leave to simmer.

Slice the aubergines into rounds about the thickness of a pound coin. Liberally grease a baking tray with olive oil and arrange the slices on this. Drizzle a generous amount of oil on the top, and pop under the grill on a low heat. I do this as a quicker alternative to frying, but both work well. A lot of recipes using aubergine tell you to salt and drain the flesh first, but I have never found this necessary. It does soften them a little, but I think any change to the flavour is negligible.

Make a roux by melting the butter in a saucepan, and frying the flour in this. Stir it constantly for a couple of minutes. It will now look like a golden, crumby ball. Remove from the heat and add the milk, a little bit at a time, whilst stirring constantly. Pass through a sieve if you need to get rid of lumps, but as long as you don’t add the milk too quickly this shouldn’t be necessary. Add the bay leaves and pepper, and leave to infuse.

Get a large sized casserole dish and spoon about half of the lamb mince over the bottom. Cover this with half the fried / grilled aubergine. Spoon the rest of the meat of the top, and finish with the final layer of aubergine. Cover the whole thing with the béchamel sauce (after you remove the bay leaves), then sprinkle with parmesan. Stick under the grill or a hot oven for about 10 minutes, and you’re good to go.

I had this with a very tasty blood orange salad, which I dutifully failed to take a photo of, but I will endeavour to post one in the future.