Moussaka Frankenstein
L and I cooked up a vegetarian moussaka storm last night! It took quite a bit longer than we had anticipated, but Oh. My. God. was it delicious!
We cobbled it together from 2 existing recipes plus our own brains (hence the Frankenstein):
It was based on a moussaka recipe from foodnetwork.com. That gave us the overall structure and proportions. Instead of tomato sauce, we used a beet/butternut squash puree from my favorite cookbook evar, Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon. Instead of meat, we created something we will *definitely* do again in other contexts as well, using tempeh and walnuts and spices. And we made the custard sauce with soy milk instead of whole milk because that's what we had. (Not recommended, by the way.... But everything else was awesome!)
EGGPLANT:
Basically sliced, oiled, salted & peppered, and baked covered till soft. This was the easiest part. :)
SAUCE:
L made an adaptation of Crescent's "Macro-Red Sauce" (beet/butternut squash puree) and got it, very magically, to taste like tomato sauce! He left out the onion & garlic, added celeriac and black cardamom, used maple syrup instead of honey, and used apple cider vinegar instead of balsamic. Amazing.
MEAT:
While L worked on the sauce, I worked on this Gift from the Kitchen Gods. I diced up some tempeh very small (so it looked like ground beef), then cooked it in olive oil in a cast iron skillet with the spices suggested by the moussaka recipe for the meat (sans onion & garlic) plus ginger, cayenne, maple syrup, Bragg's, and (L's inspiration) a handful of chopped walnuts. NOM. When the sauce was ready, I added it to the "meat" to let them cook together awhile before continuing on to assembling the moussaka.
CUSTARD:
Note to self: Next time, do not use soy milk in place of dairy milk. It didn't get very thick at all. It tasted okay, but could have been oh so much better. pdxyogini suggests trying cashews and/or rice milk instead of soy; that's worth experimenting with as well, since L's a bit lactose intolerant.
ASSEMBLY:
Oil the pan, sprinkle in some breadcrumbs, layer in half the eggplant, then half the meat sauce, then the rest of the eggplant, then the rest of the meat sauce, then the custard, then a sprinkle of pecorino-romano, and then bake for an hour.
We cobbled it together from 2 existing recipes plus our own brains (hence the Frankenstein):
It was based on a moussaka recipe from foodnetwork.com. That gave us the overall structure and proportions. Instead of tomato sauce, we used a beet/butternut squash puree from my favorite cookbook evar, Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon. Instead of meat, we created something we will *definitely* do again in other contexts as well, using tempeh and walnuts and spices. And we made the custard sauce with soy milk instead of whole milk because that's what we had. (Not recommended, by the way.... But everything else was awesome!)
EGGPLANT:
Basically sliced, oiled, salted & peppered, and baked covered till soft. This was the easiest part. :)
SAUCE:
L made an adaptation of Crescent's "Macro-Red Sauce" (beet/butternut squash puree) and got it, very magically, to taste like tomato sauce! He left out the onion & garlic, added celeriac and black cardamom, used maple syrup instead of honey, and used apple cider vinegar instead of balsamic. Amazing.
MEAT:
While L worked on the sauce, I worked on this Gift from the Kitchen Gods. I diced up some tempeh very small (so it looked like ground beef), then cooked it in olive oil in a cast iron skillet with the spices suggested by the moussaka recipe for the meat (sans onion & garlic) plus ginger, cayenne, maple syrup, Bragg's, and (L's inspiration) a handful of chopped walnuts. NOM. When the sauce was ready, I added it to the "meat" to let them cook together awhile before continuing on to assembling the moussaka.
CUSTARD:
Note to self: Next time, do not use soy milk in place of dairy milk. It didn't get very thick at all. It tasted okay, but could have been oh so much better. pdxyogini suggests trying cashews and/or rice milk instead of soy; that's worth experimenting with as well, since L's a bit lactose intolerant.
ASSEMBLY:
Oil the pan, sprinkle in some breadcrumbs, layer in half the eggplant, then half the meat sauce, then the rest of the eggplant, then the rest of the meat sauce, then the custard, then a sprinkle of pecorino-romano, and then bake for an hour.