Greek Geek!

Ever since 2000, when I went to Greece, I have been in LOVE with Greek food!  I have made gyros, and Greek salads, and even a kebab which may have actually been more Turkish  but whatever.  One thing I made for my mom and granddad when I got home, but had never made again was Moussaka.  A delicious dish described as Greek lasagna, or a casserole.  I had an awesome recipe, which I don’t have with me in Korea, but I have been thinking about it ever since.

My challenge with Groove Magazine has me pulling out Korean ingredients trying to incorporate them into my every day life.  Well, one food that I don’t usually use, but have been thinking about for a long time is eggplant.  I have some ground lamb in the freezer from Itaewon (the foreigner district in Seoul), and now I have eggplant in the house at the same time!  What is more perfect that making a traditional moussaka?!  Okay, I cheated a bit, and it would have been less weight watchers points had I not cheated, but I didn’t  feel like making both tomato sauce and a white sauce in my tiny kitchen at the same time.  So those came from jars.  After searching some general recipes on youtube and perusing several different written recipes (although mostly going from memory), I compiled my own recipe.  The first thing I did was wash 3 small potatoes.  I used a mandolin to slice them up very thin and quickly fried them at a high temperature just to make the outsides brown.

Then I did the same thing with thinly sliced egg plant.  I did learn that I should probably slice these things by hand, or at least with a thicker attachment on my mandolin, as the cuts were too thin, browned very quickly almost to the point of burned, and the eggplant cooked into almost nothing.  I peeled the eggplant before slicing, as after doing some research, I found out that unless they were fresh, the peel could be chewy.

Next, I diced up two onions, and two cloves of garlic.  I put them in a frying pan with just a little oil (using up what was left over in the pan from the potatoes and eggplant.  Once they started getting clear, I added in 250 grams of ground lamb.  I stirred it together and let the meat cook.  Once the meat had turned brown, I added 1/2 of a jar of roasted garlic sauce into the pan.  I stirred it, and let the meat soak up the sauce.  I wanted the meat to be the star, and wanted it to be very thick, so I did not overwhelm it with too much sauce.  I removed it from the heat when the liquid had cooked out a little, and it was very thick.

Next, I layered ingredients like a lasagna into a pan.  I put a layer of potatoes, then egg plant, then meat.  My pan was not yet full, so I did that a second time.  After finishing with three layers of potatoes, three of eggplant, and two of meat sauce, I heated up 3/4 of a jar or roasted garlic Alfredo sauce and poured it over the top.  I then topped it off with a sprinkle of dried parsley, and a light dusting of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Next I let it bake until the top was starting to turn golden brown.  The more I think about it, my original recipe had me covering the entire top with fresh mozzarella, but that was not going to happen on weight watchers…

I scoped out 4 servings from this pan, at 17 weight watchers points per serving.  Luckily I had enough points today for two servings, however, I only ate one.

After the two meals with lamb that I have made recently, I am learning that I really don’t like the stuff very much.  this is a sad realization but true.

Anyway, the food turned out amazing.  If the sauces had been homemade, it would have been so much more incredible!