Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Greek Night - Moussaka and A Movie


Breading the Eggplant

Preparing the Sauce


This past Sunday a very pleasant afternoon was spent in cooking a very tasty Greek meal. The menu was comprised of Moussaka, (an eggplant based casserole), Saganaki, (a breaded and fried cheese dish), and a  crisp Greek salad , It was followed by a delightful variation (more on this later)  of a traditional Baklava recipe.  

I took advantage of my two chefs in training (see photos ) to help in the prep of the Moussaka, an extremely labor intensive dish involving chopping and sauteing vegetables and meats as well as breading and frying eggplant slices.  All these ingredients are layered into a casserole dish and then topped with a cheesy Bechemel sauce.


The finished products, if I do say so myself, were quite tasty, and my young helpers seemed to enjoy learning the fine points of chopping, sauteing and frying.  Next time, I'd add even less olive oil than than already reduced amount I  used in the moussaka.  The recipe called for  3 "teacups" of olive oil in all, and with only 1 1/2 added, it was still a little heavy for me.    


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The Cooks and their Masterpiece
Dessert was delicious, a lighter and very tasty hand holdable variation of Baklava.  To his dismay, on the morning of the dinner, Rich found out that traditional Baklava preparation involves soaking the dish in honey for 1-5 days.  Pressed for time, he devised an ingenious little treat of phyllo dough sachets filled with delicious almond apricot filling.  He promised  to rise to the challenge this weekend and provide us a version of the real thing this weekend.  Yum!

We finished the evening relaxing in front of the fire watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." and I am sure no one will ever look at Windex in the same way again.

Our next culinary adventure is Indian - one of my favorites - stay tuned!

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