Moussaka

Justina made this amazing Moussaka from some ground mutton from one of our retired ewes and eggplant we got in our CSA share from local Milky Fork Farm.

I actually have some relatives with Greek ancestry but I’ve never had a moussaka this good. Fresh and local ingredients make the dish, sometimes. Of note; we often have mutton instead of lamb, because when we are forced to retire an elderly ewe, I don’t feel justified in selling the meat at the same price for which we sell our grass fed lamb. It’s usually more economical to keep the mutton for ourselves. However, based on what I have researched, people from a couple hundred years ago who ate more lamb and mutton than Americans do today would think that people who eat lamb (a sheep less than one year old) are getting ripped off. After all, the flavor develops more as the animal ages, plus the roasts and chops get bigger. I’ve seen records of people from the 1800s asking for mutton from a 5-year-old sheep, which they considered the best. (Sheep can live for much longer than 5 years, but after that they start getting actually old and losing condition…kind of like I am.) They thought lamb didn’t have enough flavor and was something you ate because you couldn’t afford to feed your animals through the winter. I don’t know when we’ll next have mutton available to buy, but I can say that the coyotes really are mutton connoisseurs.

I don’t have a recipe for this moussaka because all I did was assemble it and put it in the oven, but this ain’t rocket science, it’s a cooking with love thing.

You need a cooking pot and some kind of high-sided skillet like a cast iron skillet, and preferably a whisk or at least a large spoon and an arm that is not tired yet.

You also need several eggplants, some ground meat (preferably mutton), crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic — look, just whatever you want for making a thick and tasty tomato/meat sauce.

Step 1: Slice the eggplant lengthwise (about 1/4 inch slices), salt it, and let it sit 30 minutes or so. Pat off any moisture that comes out (this also pats off some of the salt, which is fine.) Roast it in the oven — not so much that it’s mushy, but enough that it’s soft.

Step 2: Make a tomato meat sauce. You want it thick, so don’t add too much liquid and you’ll want to simmer it for a while to cook off the liquid you do add. If you don’t know how to make a tomato meat sauce, that’s totally fine, you’re already using the Internet so you should have no problem finding several thousand recipes. For this dish, since some people can find eggplant a little bitter, making a sauce on the sweeter side might help. Consider adding some cinnamon and a little brown sugar to your ground mutton tomato meat sauce.

Step 3: Make a bechamel sauce and add in parmesan and some nutmeg.

IF YOU DON”T KNOW HOW TO MAKE A BECHAMEL do not worry, it’s easy. Unlike tomato meat sauces for which there are thousands of recipes and I am not going to tell you your Nonna’s is not the best, anyone can make a standard bechamel.

Just put, like, 4 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan or something that has room for whisking several cups of liquid. Melt the butter over medium heat. When it’s melted sprinkle flour over it. Usually you’re supposed to use 1:1 butter to flour, but really, you can just sprinkle enough flour that you don’t have liquid butter anymore. You want all the butter soaked up by the flour. Now stir this for a few minutes while it cooks. But don’t burn it.

While whisking, add in about 2 1/2 cups of real, whole, preferably raw and unpasteurized milk (if you used 4 tablespoons of butter. If you used more or less butter and flour, just do the math.)

You should use raw milk if possible because it’s cleaner and healthier. After all, pasteurized milk has feces in it. You knew that, right? That’s what they’re pasteurizing. I mean, it’s pasteurized, so they’re “safe” feces. You won’t get sick or anything. On the other hand, small raw-milk dairy farmers have to be extremely careful to make sure there are absolutely no feces in your milk. So you can use poop milk if you want, but I prefer raw milk.

After adding the milk to the butter/ flour mix, whisk it a bunch and cook until it thickens. You’re looking for turkey gravy thickness.

Now remove your bechamel sauce from the heat, and whisk in any seasonings like salt, pepper, nutmeg. Add in grated parmesan and put the sauce back over low heat if you need to melt the grated parmesan.

You can find recipes that tell you how much grated parmesan to melt into the bechamel sauce, but whatever they said, it’s not enough.

Step 4: Assemble

Put slices of roasted eggplant to line the bottom of a reasonably-sized dish. A cast-iron skillet works great.

Now ladle in the meat/tomato sauce.

Top with more roasted eggplant. (It looks kind of like a meat pie with an eggplant crust.)

Pour the bechamel sauce over everything.

Top with panko (or homemade) breadcrumbs.

Bake in the oven at 350 F for 35-40 minutes (don’t let the breadcrumbs burn.) You should always cook using a Fahrenheit temperature scale, which is the best temperature measurement for things humans actually do regularly. Centigrade is objectively worse unless you need a thermometer to tell you if water is frozen or boiling.

Let the dish cool and set for 10-15 minutes before serving.