I have to tell you about the meal I made last night. It was pretty good but now I know how to make it fabulous. Rather than just give you the recipe, here’s how I did it. That way, if you’re not comfortable with creating a recipe on your own, this will give you my process and you can borrow from it.
Part of this recipe came about because of what I had on hand. Part of this whole process thing is to help you get creative with what’s on hand. I started with a medium-sized eggplant and two medium-sized zucchini. What could I do with that? Well, I also had an onion (can’t do zucchini without some onion). I could make some kind of vegetable dish and that would have been good but I kept thinking about moussaka. It’s such a fabulous flavor but it takes a LONG time to make and I really didn’t want to spend that kind of time. Besides, I was going to use what I had on hand—no trip to the grocery store for me.
So, now that I have moussaka on the brain, I have to figure out how to make it. I have to admit that I almost cheated by having looked at a bunch of recipes over the last week or so that used zucchini and eggplant. I also looked at some moussaka recipes. Nothing was jelling. Today I knew I had to do something with the eggplant and zucchini today or tomorrow or I was going to lose them to the trash can and you can imagine how much I hate that idea.
I digress. Since I had already decided kind of what I wanted I knew I wanted to add some kind of meat to it—preferably a ground meat. I had a lovely package of ground beef—about 1.5 lbs. I crumbled it up and added the onion, coarsely chopped. I generally cook my ground meat about 3/4 of the way done and then drain it. Then I add the onion and finish cooking both of them. If you are very concerned with that extra bit of fat, cook the ground meat until it’s done, drain, and even rinse if you want.
I peeled the eggplant and ran it through my mandolin on the largest julienne setting. I also ran my two zucchini through it and, while I was at it, I added about a half pound of cute, little, white, organic potatoes I got at my church rummage sale. If you’ve done any recipe reading about eggplant you’ll know they really want you to salt it and drain for a couple of hours and then rinse and dry—I decided that I want some moisture in the dish anyway so why not just leave it the way it is. It worked great. Once I had the meat browned, I added the rest of the vegetables and tossed the whole thing together. By the time I was done, there wasn’t even a smidge of telltale grease left. If I had gotten rid of every smidgen of grease, I would have had to add oil to keep the vegetables from being too dry. Works for me—might not for you. We can be flexible.
I turned the heat down to low, covered the pan, and let it slowly cook the vegetables. I think it took a little over 30 minutes. I cooked it just until the potatoes were tender. I stirred it periodically to keep everything moving around. By the way, when I first put all those vegetables in the skillet (I used a tall-sided 12” skillet—not a sauté pan—the kind with straight sides that are about 3” high—it’s big) I could barely get all the veggies in there. After it had cooked for a while the whole thing cooked down to about half that volume.
I was still nowhere near the moussaka feeling that I wanted. I had some sour cream in there that really wants to be used up—no, that doesn’t sound quite right. Wait! Moussaka has a creamy sauce with tomatoes in it. I made a little over a cup of white sauce (with milk that was in danger of going sour in the next day or two) and carefully added in a few tablespoons of tomato paste. I also added in garlic, Italian seasoning, and salt. I’m not fond of pepper but that would be a great addition for most folks.
Overview—it was good but it needed a little more kick of some kind. The next time I make it (and I definitely will), I’ll make less white sauce but make it thicker and add a can of chopped tomatoes. I’d also love to use a little Italian sausage to give it a little more interest. You might want to think about some kind of spicy something in it. You know I don’t eat that stuff so I’ll leave it to you what you want to use—maybe some crushed red peppers?
This made enough to feed four starving people or six hungry people, especially if you add a green salad. Of course the dish itself has meat, vegetables, and potatoes. You could add some kind of bread with it. Actually, you really could stretch this to feed up to eight people with a couple of sides.
It may be a while before I make this again but when I do I’ll let you know what I end up doing and how it works.
Comments