Recipe: Moussaka

Moussaka is one of my favorite dishes. It's like a cross between lasagna and ratatouille - all the delicious goodness layered together and tastes awesome!

So this is the 'unauthentic version of my moussaka, and...it's a great way to finish up all those leftover vegetables haha. 

Moussaka

[click for printable version]

Meat sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil

250 gm minced beef

3 large tomatoes - roast for 30 minutes or until tender and peel of the skin

2 cloves garlic

half large sweet onion

1 tablespoon tomato paste

salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 large eggplants - thinly cut and drizzled with salt for 10 minutes and rinse

1/2 large green zucchini - thinly cut

1/2 large yellow zucchini - thinly cut

1 large potato - thinly cut

2 tablespoons olive oil

a pinch of saffron, turmeric powder salt and pepper

200 gm of cottage cheese (you can omit this if you want)

Egg custard 

3 eggs

6 tablespoons Greek yogurt

100 gm Gouda cheese (or your favorite cheese)

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

To make the meat sauce and potato filling

1. In a large pot on a medium heat put the olive oil and sauteed the garlic and onion until aromatic and put in the minced beef until browned. Put in the rest of the ingredients and stir well. Increase the heat and wait until the meat sauce thickens and turn off the heat and set aside.

2. Put the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat and sauteed the potato with saffron, turmeric powder, salt and pepper until each side browned. Set aside

To make the egg custard

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.

To assemble

1. Put the fried potato at the bottom layer of a casserole dish followed with meat sauce, cottage cheese, eggplants and zucchini. Repeat the layer and cover the filling with the egg custard. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 40 minutes or until the custard browned. 

p.s: Moussaka tastes great the day after as the flavors developed.

Owh yeah, Eid Mubarak guys! Hope you guys have a great Eid al-Adha :)

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Chicken fricassee for lunch

I flipped through the German Cooking Today cookbook given by one of my husband's relatives, and I have been wanting to try this recipe for a loong time, but was intimidated with the "Advanced cook" logo on top of the recipe O_O 

Today I finally decided to try the recipe out with few modifications, and I must say that it was not as hard as I had imagined :D The taste was great, not too creamy and full of flavor :)

Chicken fricassee adapted from German cooking today with few modifications

4 pieces of chicken (breast part)

4 cups water

1 cup celery, 1 cup carrot, 1 cup leek (I used 2 cups celery because I didn't have carrot and leek :D)

1 onion

1 clove

salt

For the sauce

1 tablespoon butter

3 tablespoon flour

Chicken stock (from above)

2 limau kasturi

1 teaspoon sugar

5 tablespoon milk (you can use heavy cream too)

2 egg yolks (medium)

salt

pepper

Worcestershire suce

1. Boil water in a pot. Combine chicken, salt,  celery, carrot, leek, onion, clove and simmer with low heat for 1 hour. Skim off the foam that forms.

2. Separate the stock from the rest using sieve, set aside. Remove the meat from the bones, remove the skin, and cut up the meat into bite-size pieces.

3. To make the sauce, melt butter in a pan and add flour. Stir until smooth pale yellow mixture formed. Add chicken stock and whisk until there is no lump. Bring the sauce to boil and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Combine sugar and lime juice .

4. Whisk together the egg yolk and milk until the sauce thicken.  Season with salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice.

You can put mushroom and asparagus spear too if you like :) Serve chicken fricassee with rice and salad.

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