This Moussaka has been a favorite fall meal since I discovered this recipe in adolescence. It is a dish that comforts the soul when summer is waning, markets are brimming with shiny, multi-colored eggplants and the scent of fall is in the air.
As a child, I only knew Ukrainian food. During my first decade in America, I ate within a closed circle — at home and at the homes of family friends. Our family’s four cooks — Mama, Babunia (my grandmother) and two aunts, cooked Ukrainian food. They emigrated at the end of World War II without cookbooks, only with memories of what they ate in the past. They prepared traditional Ukrainian foods for us, the dishes they knew from childhood.
Our family arrived in the United States as displaced persons, with few possessions, and for that first ten years, our lives revolved around Baltimore’s Ukrainian community – St. Michael Orthodox Church, Saturday school, Ukrainian scouts and Self-Reliance Credit Union. Like other Ukrainian immigrants, my parents did not understand American culture and thus focused their energy on earning a living and learning English, not socializing with other immigrants from different countries. Deep in their hearts, they believed their immigration was temporary, and they’d eventually return to Ukraine. Like other Ukrainian parents, they feared assimilation, their children — my sister Mariyka, my brother Yura and I would lose our Ukrainian identity in the American melting pot.
But there were other concerns as well. Although Baltimore had many ethnic restaurants, visiting them was out of the question for families that had to stretch modest income to feed five. Mama, a small-town girl from Ukraine, particularly feared eating out – a prejudice that lasted a lifetime; she thought it wasteful and pretentious.
Many ethnic children attended PS 27 elementary in East Baltimore, a block from home, but my sister Mariyka and I came home after school and played with my two cousins and Ukrainian friends. There was little interaction with classmates or their parents outside of school.
Attending junior high school and later high school in downtown Baltimore was a discovery period for me. By then, Mama and Tato resigned to the fact that our stay in America would be indefinite; it was time to unpack the suitcases and settle to life in America. They wanted their children to succeed, which required integrating into American life.
But I now had more freedom to socialize with classmates from other cultures. New friends introduced me a wide range of teen-age interests, many of which dismayed my parents: rock ‘n’ roll music (Elvis, Buddy Holly, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand), jitterbug and other dances, movies, science fiction, underground literature, slang and dating practices. But these friends also opened the door to their families’ favorite foods which I was eager to try as I developed an interest in food. I wanted to expand my family’s meals. Each week, I long sought inspiration in the appetizing photograph on the cover of Woman’s Day magazine in the checkout line at the local A&P.
In secondary school, I was introduced to a smorgasbord of tastes. Italian food – pizza, spaghetti with meatballs and anything else with tomato sauce, lasagne and spumoni –was first to captivate my palate, and we readily incorporated it into home meals. A friend from Kentucky introduced me to dishes from the American South – biscuits, mac ‘n’ cheese, pecan pie and Jello salads which I loved but which did not fit in as well with my family’s taste. Later, a Greek friend introduced me to moussaka and gave me the recipe that I cooked with Mama; it was an immediate hit and further expanded my family’s culinary repertoire.
At the time, I considered moussaka a quintessential Greek dish until I traveled years later in the Mediterranean region and discovered similarly named dishes with local variations, prepared in the kitchens of Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Romania and Lebanon.
The origins of moussaka are unknown, although food historians believe that Arabs introduced eggplant, native to India, into the Mediterranean basin during early Middle Ages. Eggplant was introduced into Greece in the 12th century, but the first published mention of a meat and eggplant dish, maghmuma or musakhkhan, appeared in a thirteenth-century Arabic cookbook titled Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes). The Greek name moussaka seems to derive from Levantine word musakhkhan, which literally means “something that is heated;” Its root saqq means chop in Arabic.
There is no mention of moussaka in Greek culinary literature until the late 19th century. But the Ottomans ruled Greece from the mid-15th century until its successful war of independence in 1821, so it is likely that recipes for Turkish mussaka (made with eggplants, or other vegetables, cut into small cubes and ground lamb or beef) influenced Greek cooks.
Although meat and eggplant combinations were probably prepared by Greek cooks for centuries, moussaka as known today, the iconic dish composed of layers of eggplants, saucy ground meat and topped with béchamel sauce, was introduced only in the 1920s by Nikolas Tselementes, a Constantinople-born and France-educated Greek chef who modernized Greek cuisine. Devastated by the Greek genocide and expulsion of Greeks from Turkey (1914-1922) and the humiliating defeat of the Greek army in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Tselementes set out to “cleanse” Greek cuisine from Turkish influences, and revised many Greek recipes, adapting them to classic French cuisine, believing that European cooking had its origins in ancient Greece.
In his cookbook, Greek Cookery, often called the Greek housewife’s bible, Tselementes provides a classic recipe for a three-layered meat and eggplant moussaka topped with béchamel sauce and six different recipes substituting zucchini, artichokes, or potatoes for eggplant. Over the last 100 years, virtually every Greek family used Tselementes’ recipes to develop its favorite version of moussaka. Today’s moussaka, a dish characteristic of Greek urban cuisine, reflects this recipe’s ancestry as a modernized, European version of an Arabic dish, introduced to Greece via Turkey.
This basic meat and eggplant Moussaka is prepared in four easy steps, all of which can be done several days ahead.
I followed Tselementes’ moussaka recipe with minor variations. Traditionally, eggplant is fried and because of its a sponge-like quality and absorbs a large amount of oil and, resulting in heavy and greasy eggplant slices. Baking eggplant, probably considered blasphemous by most Greek cooks, is a modern and more dietetic alternative to frying, producing soft eggplant light on grease. The meat sauce for moussaka is traditionally made with ground lamb which I used in this recipe, but ground beef is a milder substitute preferred by many cooks and Mama. The meat sauce, flavored with various spices, red wine and crushed tomatoes and paste, is thicker than Italian Bolognese. While moussaka can be topped with a simple béchamel sauce of butter, flour and milk, I opted to stir in beaten eggs and grated sheep-milk cheese (like Greek kefalotyri or Italian pecorino) so the sauce would puff up into a thick, soft and custardy layer during baking.
My first bite of this Moussaka instantly floods me with memories of dining many years ago in fading evening light at a small taverna on the Plaka in the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens.
I can readily see why in the 100 years since moussaka’s modernization it has become a legendary dish prepared in virtually every Greek restaurant and household. It is creamy, flavorful and absolutely delicious. The custardy béchamel topping yields to a tomato meat sauce redolent with aromatic herbs and spices (cinnamon, allspice, oregano, garlic and parsley) which impart the taste and smell of Greece. This Moussaka is an irresistible combination with the added advantage that it perfumes the house as it bakes.
Moussaka is a complete meal and requires only a crunchy, refreshing Greek feta salad or a chunky tomato, cucumber, parsley and mint salad, enjoyed with a glass of Greek red wine such as agiorgitiko and xinomavro.
Bon appetit! Καλή όρεξη! (Kalí óreksi!)
Moussaka
For preparing eggplant:
6 ounces (75ml) extra virgin olive oil
3-4 large eggplants, cut into ½ inch (1cm) in slices
1 tablespoon salt
¼ cup (60ml) olive oil
For preparing meat sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large red onion, finely chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 pounds (907g) ground lamb
1 cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon (2.5g) ground allspice
26 ounces (750g) tomato passata or crushed tomatoes,
chopped a few seconds in a food processor or blender
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1½ teaspoons dried oregano
2 bay leaves
6 ounces (175ml) red wine
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1½ teaspoon salt*
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 egg, beaten
For béchamel sauce:
3 ounces (85g) unsalted butter
3 ounces (85g) plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1½ pint (900 ml) whole milk
1 small onion
1 bay leaf
3 ounces (85g) pecorino, grated
2 free-range egg yolks
1 free-range egg
½ teaspoon nutmeg, grated, more to taste
Preparing eggplant: Using a potato peeler, peel strips of the eggplant peel in a striped pattern. (The peel on eggplants is often tough, even when fully cooked and occasionally is bitter. Peeling most of it off while leaving stripes yields tender eggplant that retains the appearance of the shiny purple peel.) Cut the eggplants into ½ inch (1 cm) slices crosswise or lengthwise, depending on eggplant size.
Place eggplant slices slightly overlapping in a large colander or on a tray. Sprinkle each layer with salt. Set aside to sweat for 30 minutes. (Salting draws out moisture and removes bitterness from the eggplant.)
Rinse slices, roll in paper toweling, squeeze out moisture and dry. Lay slices on a parchment paper-lined trays; brush with oil. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes at 360ºF(180ºC) or until lightly browned and softened. Remove and set aside to cool slightly. Layer slices on parchment, wrap and refrigerate if making a day ahead.
Preparing meat sauce: Finely dice onions and garlic. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat olive oil and brown lamb breaking up with a wooden spoon until no pink remains.
Add onions and garlic and continue to cook until onions are soft, about 5-7 minutes. Add passata or crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, cinnamon stick, allspice, oregano, bay leaves and wine and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Remove the lid and simmer sauce for another 10 minutes until most of the liquid is evaporated.
Season and stir in parsley. Set aside to cool and then stir in beaten egg. Refrigerate sauce in a covered container, if making a day ahead.
Preparing béchamel sauce: Place milk, onion and bay leaf in a small saucepan and heat to just below boiling point. Discard onion and bay leaf. Melt butter in another saucepan. Whisk flour into the butter until smooth and cook for a couple of minutes. Remove pan from heat and gradually whisk in hot milk. Return sauce to medium heat and cook for 10-15 minutes stirring constantly to prevent burning to achieve a thick, smooth sauce. Then stir in cheese until melted. Take off the heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes, then beat in eggs, whisking quickly to prevent eggs from cooking. Add salt and pepper to taste and nutmeg (a least ½ teaspoon). (Quick remedy: In the event sauce has lumps, press sauce through a fine sieve while hot to smooth out.) Cool to room temperature.
Béchamel can be made up to a day ahead and refrigerated. When ready to top moussaka, whisk vigorously while reheating sauce until it is as smooth as when made. Thin out, if necessary, with milk.
Assembling and baking: When ready to bake, preheat oven to 360ºF(180ºC). Butter a 9 inch x 13 inch (23 cm x 33 cm) casserole.
Arrange ⅓ of eggplant slices on the bottom, fitting and overlapping slightly. Top with ⅓ of meat sauce, spreading mixture evenly over eggplant. Repeat these layers, finishing with remaining meat sauce. Top with béchamel and dust with a few pinches of additional nutmeg.
Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown, and then leave to cool for half an hour before cutting and serving.
Moussaka’s flavor is more intense when eaten warm, not piping hot, or at room temperature.
Serves 8
*Although I provide the amount of salt needed in the recipe as one item on the ingredient list, it is better cooking practice to add a few grains of salt with whenever adding ingredients and to taste as you proceed, rather than adding all salt at the end. To avoid over-salting, I measure the total amount of salt in a ramekin and use as much as needed to produce the desired taste. Not all salt may be needed.
Moussaka freezes well for several months. Once cooled, cut into serving-size pieces and wrap tightly in plastic wrap and a zippered bag and freeze. To reheat, thaw then reheat at 350°F(180°C) for 25 minutes uncovered or until a knife inserted into the center comes out hot.
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