Bubble and Squeak; Shepherd's Pie; and Cassoulet . . .
other than being some of the best food you'll ever taste, do you know what they have in common?
Good cooks creating a dish from leftovers!
Chris is a good cook. Chris' Moussaka is made from leftovers. And it IS one of the best dishes I've ever had!
Moussaka is an international dish that is made differently depending where you are. In the Levant it is primarily eggplant and tomatoes; in Turkey the eggplant is fried and served with a tomato based meat sauce with green peppers, garlic, onions with a side of pilaf; in Egypt, the eggplants are fried, layered in a pan with seasoned ground meat and tomato sauce and baked; in Greece sautéed aubergine is layered with a layer of cooked, seasoned ground meat all of which is covered with béchamel sauce and baked.
Chris' Moussaka has five layers:
- flavored rice: Over the years she has experimented with making rice. Her process now is to take sushi rice, soak it and wash it thoroughly. While doing this, she heats the water needed for the rice being cooked. After the final drain, she pours a small amount of oil and rice vinegar into the empty pot, adds the rice and water and bakes it covered.
- ratatouille: I saw some beautiful eggplants and red bells on sale and Chris applied her magic to transmogrify them into ratatouille.
- loose meat: During the last three months Chris has gone nuts for Souper Cubes. Consequently she's looking for food that she can prepare ahead, freeze in her Souper Cubes and store in freezer bags. We like pizza. Sausage pizza. Chris makes her own "sausage" by seasoning and frying up ground pork, ground beef, and Jimmy Dean's Original sausage.
- steamed, diced potatoes: No story here, she either puts diced potatoes in a bowl covered with plastic wrap and puts them in the microwave or steams then in a steamer on the stove. Do them until a sharp knife tells you they're soft.
- cheese sauce: We have corned beef as part of our traditional New Year's meal (with cabbage and black eyed peas . . . it's not the most appealing of meals, but Chris being Chris makes the black eyed peas from scratch and adds a key lime pie for dessert to make it an interesting meal). She cooked the corned beef in the crock pot and saved the broth. She used the corned beef broth, added white wine and cheese to make the sauce.
- panko: Yes, I know, I told you 5 layers. But you can't really count a sprinkle of panko as a layer, can you?
- In a casserole dish, layer the rice, a layer of ratatouille, and a layer of the loose meat. Put it in the preheated oven.
- After 15 minutes, put in a layer of steamed, diced potatoes. Cover the dish (Chris likes to "steam" the potatoes a little more in the dish to make sure they're soft enough).
- After 15 minutes, uncover the cassorole and put the cheese sauce on. Since we're trying to brown the cheese sauce, we won't need the cover.
- After 45 minutes, Chris was not pleased with how it looked (cheese wasn't browning) so she sprinkled some panko and cooked until it looked Golden and Crunchy (10 minutes? 15 minutes?)
