Moussaka came to us from Greece. True, the authorship of this dish is disputed by a number of Mediterranean countries: Turkey, Macedonia, Bulgaria and even Moldova, which is close to us. But the classic musaka - with eggplant, lamb, tomatoes, and cheese sauce - is still considered primordially Greek. In other countries, this dish is prepared with potatoes or rice, with white or cauliflower. There is even a vegetarian recipe for Moussaki - no meat. But today we will talk about the classic Greek dish.
So, the ingredients ... And already at this preparatory stage we are faced with certain difficulties. Greek moussaka with eggplant is cooked with lamb, parmesan and olive oil, but we don’t get these products or they are very expensive. Therefore, we will compromise, although gourmets scorn their nose contemptuously. We replace mutton with any meat that we can buy, olive oil with sunflower oil, and parmesan with Russian hard cheese.
We take three medium eggplants, cut them with washers a centimeter thick and add plenty of salt. We leave it for half an hour. During this time, a close relative of the poisonous nightshade will give all its bitterness. If your moussaka with eggplant will be with whole meat, not minced meat, you need to slightly beat off its pieces. After that, we wash the “little blue ones” under running water. We heat vegetable oil in a pan, eggplant breading in flour and fry on both sides until golden brown. We put ready-made washers on a kitchen towel or in a colander so that the excess fat is stacked.
Two onions finely chop and passer in oil. If you have a plan of moussaka with eggplant and minced meat, it's time to use this last ingredient (a pound). It needs to be fried quite a bit, about ten minutes. But you should actively interfere so that he does not gather in lumps.
If you have whole meat, cut it into small pieces (as for beef stroganoff) and also fry until half-cooked.
Scalp one large or two medium tomatoes with boiling water and remove the skin. We cut the tomatoes into small cubes and add them to the meat or minced meat. Sprinkle the contents of the pan with chopped three cloves of garlic and fresh herbs of basil and parsley, salt and spices. Stew for seven minutes. Pour a glass of white wine and continue cooking under the lid for another 10 minutes.
Musaka with eggplant is not possible without cheese sauce. We will deal with them now. First, three finely, "on the powder", 150 g of hard cheese. Then, in one and a half glasses of milk, beat the egg. In a skillet in two tablespoons of butter, the same amount of flour is slightly browned. Pour in the milk-egg mixture and, without interruption, stirring, boil until thickened. And finally pour cheese, stir until smooth and remove from heat. Season the sauce with salt, herbs and spices.
The final step is to connect the components in a baking dish. First, we lap out half of the pieces of “blue”. On them we place an even layer of part of the minced meat fried with vegetables. Then again eggplant and meat mass again. Now pour the sauce into the mold. The oven is heated to 180 ° C. Musaka with eggplant is baked for about half an hour, until the top is covered with a beautiful crust.