Making moussaka

Moussaka is a Greek casserole (in French, a gratin) of eggplant slices and a meat sauce made with tomatoes, onion, garlic, herbs, and spices. The spices — cinnamon and nutmeg, along with parsley and bay leaves — give the sauce and the dish a distinctive flavor. The eggplant is pre-cooked, either in the oven or in a skillet, with olive oil. After the casserole is baked in the oven, the eggplant is soft and succulent.

Eggplants/aubergines from the vegetable garden

This recipe, which is a French version of moussaka, calls for putting a layer of sliced potatoes on the bottom of the casserole. The potato slices give the moussaka an added dimension. They form a sort of pie crust on the bottom of the baking dish.

A layer of partially cooked potato slices for the bottom of the dish...

...and a layer of partially cooked eggplant slices over that

We almost never buy eggplants (called "aubergines" — the French word — by the British) but we grow them in our vegetable garden here in Saint-Aignan. For us, moussaka is a once-a-year treat these days. It's one of the first rituals of fall, or late summer, when the eggplant crop comes in, and there are fresh tomatoes from the garden to cook with them.

A sauce of ground meat, tomatoes, spices, and aromatics

The best moussaka is made with ground lamb, but ground beef works fine too. The cinnamon and nutmeg, along with tomatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs, give whatever meat you use a good flavor. I've never tried it, but I'm sure moussaka would be very good made with ground turkey. Last year, I posted a recipe for a kind of moussaka using zucchini instead of eggplant. That would be courgettes instead of aubergines...

A layer of thick cheese sauce goes over the top...

...with some more grated cheese to make a good crust

Julia Child has a fancy French recipe for moussaka in her Mastering the Art... and The French Chef books, and a simpler one in The Way to Cook. She adds chopped mushrooms to the sauce, which would be good. She says she uses either mozzarella or Swiss cheese in the sauce. You could also use grated parmesan in the sauce or on top.

Moussaka as it comes out of the oven

Here's my translation/adaptation of the French recipe I used to make the moussaka in the pictures here.

Moussaka
with sliced potatoes

3 or 4 eggplants/aubergines (2¼ lbs.)
1 lb. ground meat (lamb, beef, turkey, etc.)
4 tomatoes (1 lb.), chopped
½ lb. (or more) potatoes, sliced
3 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
olive oil for frying
3 Tbsp. chopped parsley
a pinch of nutmeg
½ tsp. cinnamon
2 bay leaves
½ cup red wine
½ cup grated swiss cheese

For the cheese sauce:
4 Tbsp. flour
4 Tbsp. butter
2½ cups milk (or more)
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 egg yolk
½ cup grated swiss cheese

Cut the eggplants into rounds ¼-inch thick. Put the slices in a colander, salt them generously, and let them disgorge or “sweat” for an hour.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and cut them into thin slices. Peel the tomatoes if you want.

Make the meat sauce. In a skillet or wok, cook the chopped onion and garlic in olive oil until they’re transparent and just starting to turn a golden brown. Add the ground meat (lamb, beef, turkey, etc.) and season it with salt, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Then stir in the chopped tomatoes, some chopped parsley, the red wine, and the tomato paste. Let it all cook together for15 minutes longer, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Set it aside.

After an hour, rinse and pat dry the eggplant slices. Arrange them in a single layer on a baking sheet brushed with olive oil. Brush the tops of the slices with olive oil. Put the baking sheet in a 400ºF/200ºC oven for ten to 15 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and starting to brown. Do the same with the sliced potatoes. If you prefer, you can cook the eggplant and potato slices by batches in a skillet with olive oil instead of in the oven.

Make the cheese sauce in a separate pan by cooking flour in melted butter for a minute or two, and then gradually stirring in milk (+ some cream if you want it rich) until you have a thick, creamy sauce. Add salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Off the heat, stir in the egg yolk and the grated cheese.

Putting the moussaka together
Put the pre-cooked potato slices in a layer in the bottom of a baking dish. Then put on a layer of pre-cooked eggplant slices (half the total you are using). Spoon half of the meat sauce over all.

Put on another layer of eggplant slices and another layer of meat sauce. Finally, pour the thick cheese sauce over the top and smooth it out with a spoon or spatula.

Cooking the moussaka
Set the baking dish in the oven at 350ºF/180°C for 45 minutes. After about 20 minutes, sprinkle grated cheese over the top and let it melt and turn golden brown.

Take the cooked moussaka out of the oven and let it rest at room temperature for at least 10 minutes before you serve it. It’s good accompanied by a green salad dressed with vinaigrette. And bread and red wine, of course.

Making moussaka with grilled eggplant slices (2)

Let me finish up with a few photos of the grilled eggplant moussaka I made over the weekend. I realize that I also made moussaka in July, and I've made moussaka in different ways several times since 2010 and posted about it. I guess it's one of my favorite kinds of food.

Grilling thick-cut eggplant slices seems to be the tastiest way of preparing them for baking in a moussake sauce. Frying them seems pretty oily to me, and it makes a mess on the stove. Baking them in the oven after brushing the slices with olive oil and sprinkling salt, pepper, and even herbs like thyme on them is good too, and less messy. But grilling gives them great flavor.

I call this one "three little aubergines in a blanket."

I put mozzarella slices in layers in this moussaka, but I'm not sure I would do it that way again. I think some grated Swiss-style cheese like Comté, Gruyère, or even Cheddar would be better. Mozzarella has a lot of water in it, and that water is released as it melts. Then the moussaka meat sauce is a little too liquid. It tastes good, but the moussaka can get too soupy. Here is the moussaka ready for the oven.

I made a white sauce to cook as the top layer of this moussaka. It's actually a sauce Mornay, which is what a white sauce with melted cheese in it is called in French. Instead of starting with a butter-and-flour roux, I made the roux with olive oil and flour. I got that idea from a Julie Andrieu show about making moussaka that I found on Youtube, and I like the result. It gives the recipe a more Mediterranean flavor. I sprinkled on some grated Parmesan and some smoked paprika before I browned the moussaka in the oven.

Lamb leftovers (4)

Yesterday we cooked and ate the last of our Thanksgiving leg of lamb leftovers. We had one package of cubed lamb meat, totaling about 400 grams (less than a pound) in the freezer. Walt ran the lamb cubes through the meat grinder. I diced onions, celery stalks, and carrots to flavor a meat sauce, using tomato puree from last summer's vegetable garden. The final product was to be Greek-style moussaka, with eggplant and topped with sauce mornay (cheese sauce).

       
The photos above show the ground (minced) lamb mixed with diced aromatic vegetables; eggplant slices
that I brushed with olive oil and baked in the oven; and the finished meat sauce.

Here's what the moussaka looked like when it came out of the oven.

       
Just above you see the major components of the moussaka, which is a layered gratin (casserole); the moussaka assembled with the cheese sauce poured over the top; and the layers of the finished, baked moussaka.

Here's a recipe. The sliced potatoes, wine, and egg are optional.

Moussaka

with sliced potatoes

3 or 4 eggplants/aubergines (2¼ lbs.)
1 lb. ground meat (lamb, beef, turkey, pork etc.)
4 tomatoes (1 lb.), chopped (or 2 to 3 cups tomato puree)
½ lb. (or more) potatoes, sliced
3 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 or 2 celery stalks, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
olive oil for frying
3 Tbsp. chopped parsley (or dried oregano)
a pinch of nutmeg
½ tsp. cinnamon
2 bay leaves
½ cup red wine (optional)
2 oz. swiss cheese, grated

For the cheese sauce:
4 Tbsp. flour
4 Tbsp. butter
2½ cups milk
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 egg yolk
2 oz. Swiss cheese or cheddar, grated

Cut the eggplants into rounds ¼ inch thick. Put the slices in a colander, salt them generously, and let them disgorge or “sweat” for an hour.

Meanwhile, peel the (optional) potatoes and cut them into thin slices. Optionally, peel the tomatoes.

Make the meat sauce: In a skillet or wok, cook the chopped aromatics in olive oil until they’re transparent and starting to brown. Add the ground meat (lamb, beef, turkey, etc.) and season it with salt, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Then add the chopped tomatoes (or puree), herbs, the (optional) red wine, and the tomato paste.Cook it all cook together for 15 minutes longer, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Set it aside.

After an hour, rinse and pat dry the eggplant slices. Arrange them in a single layer on a baking sheet brushed with olive oil. Brush the tops of the slices with olive oil as well. Put the baking sheet in a 400ºF/200ºC oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and starting to brown. Do the same with the sliced potatoes. (If you prefer, you can cook the eggplant and potato slices by batches in a skillet with olive oil instead of in the oven.)

Make the cheese sauce: In a separate pan cook the flour in melted butter (or in olive oil) for a minute or two, and then gradually stir in the milk (+ some cream if you want it richer) until you have a very thick, creamy sauce. Add salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Off the heat, stir in the (optional) egg yolk and the grated cheese.

Put the moussaka together: If using, put the pre-cooked potato slices in a layer in the bottom of a baking dish. Then put on a layer of pre-cooked eggplant slices (half the total you are using). Spoon half of the meat sauce over all. Put on another layer of eggplant slices and another layer of meat sauce. Finally, pour the thick cheese sauce over the top and smooth it out with a spoon or spatula.

Cook the moussaka: Set the baking dish in the oven at 350ºF/180°C for 45 minutes. After about 20 minutes, sprinkle grated cheese over the top and let it melt and turn golden brown. Take the cooked moussaka out of the oven and let it rest at room temperature for at least 10 minutes before you serve it. It’s good accompanied by a green salad dressed with vinaigrette.

Tomates du jardin potager

It's chilly again this morning — in the mid 40s F. Walt said he actually saw frost yesterday morning over in the neighbors' big yard. Nighttime skies are crystal clear, so the temperature really drops. Today's high is supposed to be in the 70s, and it will feel warmer than that out in the sun.

Seventy-five ripe red tomatoes

We're feeling better about the chilly mornings because yesterday we harvested tomatoes. We picked about 100 or more, all red. And about 75 of those were already perfectly ripe. We also picked some that still need ripening.

Peppers and tomatoes, yesterday's haul

We picked peppers and eggplants too. There are cayenne peppers, jalapeños, and something you might call banana peppers. Peppers are easy to preserve. You just wash them, poke a hole in each one with a skewer or a needle, pack them in jars, and pour boiling vinegar over them. They'll keep indefinitely. We're still using peppers that we packed that way in 2004 — the last time we had a good pepper crop.

The 2010 red tomato harvest at La Renaudière

Now we have to figure out what to do with all these tomatoes. Last year we successfully oven-dried quite a few of them, so that's an option. We can always make and can more sauce, like the sauce we put up a few days ago. That's a longer, more involved process. If we had room in the freezer, we could just freeze some of the tomatoes whole, for sauce-making during the winter. But the freezer is pretty much full.

With the eggplants, some tomatoes, and some potatoes from the garden, we made moussaka yesterday. More about that later. Here's the recipe in French, for anybody who's interested:

Moussaka
avec pommes de terre

3 ou 4 aubergines (1 kg)
500 g de viande hachée
4 tomates (500 g)
300 g de pommes de terre
70 g de concentré de tomate
1 oignon
1 gousse d'ail
huile d'olive
persil
noix de muscade
½ c. à café de cannelle
2 feuilles de laurier
10 cl de vin rouge
50 g de gruyère râpé

Béchamel (au fromage) :
60 g de farine
60 g de beurre
70 cl de lait
Sel, poivre, noix de muscade
1 jaune d'œuf
50 g de gruyère râpé

Découper les aubergines en rondelles de 3 à 4 mm d’épaisseur. Faites dégorger les aubergines avec du sel durant 1h.

Pendant ce temps, épluchez les pommes de terre et coupez-les en rondelles de 2 mm d’épaisseur. Pelez les tomates.Rincez puis épongez les aubergines

Faites revenir les aubergines à l’huile d’olive dans une poêle puis réservez. Faites revenir les pommes de terre à l’huile d’olive et réservez. On peut les faire au four.

Faites revenir à l’huile d’olive l’oignon et l’ail hachés. Ajoutez la viande hachée et assaisonnez avec le sel, le poivre, la muscade, la cannelle, les feuilles de laurier, et faites cuire 10 min. Ajoutez les tomates pelées et coupées en morceaux, le concentré de tomate, et le vin, puis laissez mijoter 15 min, jusqu’à ce que le liquide soit évaporé

Faites une sauce béchamel. Salez, poivrez et ajoutez de la noix de muscade râpée. Hors feu, ajoutez le jaune d’œuf puis le gruyère râpé.

Le montage de la moussaka
Disposez dans le fond d’un moule à soufflé ou à gratin, une couche de pommes de terre. Disposez ensuite une couche d’aubergines et puis la moitié de la viande hachée.

Disposez une nouvelle couche d’aubergines, et terminez la moussaka avec le restant de viande hachée.Pour finir, versez la béchamel.

Cuisson de la moussaka
Enfournez la moussaka à 180°C durant 45 min. A la moitié du temps de cuisson, disposez sur le dessus de la moussaka 50 g de gruyère râpé et laissez gratiner.

A la sortie du four, patientez 10 minutes avant de déguster la moussaka, qui s’accompagne très bien avec une salade verte.

Click here for the translation.

Moussaka, an eggplant-season dish

Our eggplant crop was a complete failure this year. Luckily, over at Intermarché I found pretty, plump, round aubergines in the produce department for just two euros per kilogram — about a dollar a pound. We were still hoping for some home-grown eggplants at that point, but the weather turned very rainy and that was the end of such hopes.

I had my heart set on eggplant dishes including ratatouille, eggplant parmesan, and (above) Greek moussaka. If I had to buy the eggplant, tant pis. At least the store-bought aubergines were grown in France, according to the sign in the produce department.

I guess I didn't take any photos of the process of putting the moussaka together. It's a layered casserole of potatoes, a meat sauce made with tomatoes (from the garden, in our case), red wine, and spices including cinnamon and nutmeg, pre-cooked eggplant slices, and a stiff bechamel sauce with grated cheese in it. I used ground beef for the sauce, but ground lamb might be even better.

I like to pre-cook the eggplant slices, brushed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, on baking sheets in the oven, as you can see above. It's less messy that frying and requires less work. Cook some thinly sliced potatoes the same way and use them as the bottom layer of the moussaka.

Here's a recipe that I first posted in 2010:

Moussaka
with sliced potatoes

3 or 4 eggplants/aubergines (2¼ lbs.)
1 lb. ground meat (lamb, beef, turkey, etc.)
4 tomatoes (1 lb.), chopped
½ lb. (or more) potatoes, sliced
3 Tbsp. tomato paste
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
olive oil for frying
3 Tbsp. chopped parsley
a pinch of nutmeg
½ tsp. cinnamon
2 bay leaves
½ cup red wine
½ cup grated swiss cheese

For the cheese sauce:
4 Tbsp. flour
4 Tbsp. butter
2½ cups milk (or more)
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 egg yolk
½ cup grated swiss cheese

Cut the eggplants into rounds ¼-inch thick. Put the slices in a colander, salt them generously, and let them disgorge or “sweat” for an hour.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and cut them into thin slices. Peel the tomatoes if you want.

Make the meat sauce. In a skillet or wok, cook the chopped onion and garlic in olive oil until they’re transparent and just starting to turn a golden brown. Add the ground meat (lamb, beef, turkey, etc.) and season it with salt, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Then stir in the chopped tomatoes, some chopped parsley, the red wine, and the tomato paste. Let it all cook together for15 minutes longer, until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Set it aside.

After an hour, rinse and pat dry the eggplant slices. Arrange them in a single layer on a baking sheet brushed with olive oil. Brush the tops of the slices with olive oil. Put the baking sheet in a 400ºF/200ºC oven for ten to 15 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and starting to brown. Do the same with the sliced potatoes. If you prefer, you can cook the eggplant and potato slices by batches in a skillet with olive oil instead of in the oven.

Make the cheese sauce in a separate pan by cooking flour in melted butter for a minute or two, and then gradually stirring in milk (+ some cream if you want it rich) until you have a thick, creamy sauce. Add salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Off the heat, stir in the egg yolk and the grated cheese.

Putting the moussaka together
Put the pre-cooked potato slices in a layer in the bottom of a baking dish. Then put on a layer of pre-cooked eggplant slices (half the total you are using). Spoon half of the meat sauce over all.

Put on another layer of eggplant slices and another layer of meat sauce. Finally, pour the thick cheese sauce over the top and smooth it out with a spoon or spatula.

Cooking the moussaka
Set the baking dish in the oven at 350ºF/180°C for 45 minutes. After about 20 minutes, sprinkle grated cheese over the top and let it melt and turn golden brown.

Take the cooked moussaka out of the oven and let it rest at room temperature for at least 10 minutes before you serve it. It’s good accompanied by a green salad dressed with vinaigrette. And bread and red wine, of course.

La moussaka de novembre : une recette

Couper 2 grosses aubergines en tranches. Les arranger sur une plaque à pâtisserie et les badigeonner d'huile d'olive. Les mettre à dorer pour au four préchauffé à 180°C pendant 12 à 15 minutes. Les sortir du four et les laisser refroidir. Faire de même avec cinq pommes de terre précuites à la vapeur et coupées en tranches fines.

Mélanger 500 g de viande 'agneau ou de bœuf hachée, un oignon haché, 3 cuillerées à soupe de sauce tomate très réduite, de l'origan sechée, de l'huile d'olive, une pincée de canelle et une pincée de noix muscade, puis du sel et du poivre. Faire cuire le hachis de viande dans une sauteuse sur le feu.

Huiler un plat allant au four et mettre une couche de tranches de pommes de terre au fond. Puis le remplir de couches de tranches d'aubergines alternées de couches de hachis de viande en terminant par du hachis. Mettre le plat au four préchauffé à 180 °C pendant 45 minutes. Éteindre le four et y laisser 15 minutes la moussaka, porte entrouverte. Sortir le plat du four et servir la moussaka chaude.

P.S. As a finishing touch, make a sauce Mornay (a Béchamel with some grated cheese melted into it). You can make the roux for the Mornay sauce using butter or oil, along with milk and/or cream. Off the heat, add a beaten egg to the Mornay sauce and stir it in well. Pour the Mornay over the top of the moussaka before putting the dish into the oven. It's done when it's golden brown. Don't forget the cinnamon and nutmeg. They give the moussaka its delicious flavor. Here's a link to a recipe in English.

Zucchini moussaka

The classic moussaka is a kind of casserole or gratin of eggplant slices, ground or chopped lamb in a tomato sauce, and a sauce béchamel with cheese melted in it. You can make the same thing using zucchini slices if you don't have eggplant — ou simplement pour varier les plaisirs (just to do something different).

We had zucchini slices in the freezer that we grew in the vegetable garden. In fact, it was yellow summer squash. It was cut into disks that had been blanched in boiling salted water for a couple of minutes before going into the freezer.

Zucchini moussaka

And we had the rest of the leg of lamb that we cooked on Thanksgiving Day. I cut it off the bone and cut the meat into ½-inch cubes. You could just as easily use ground lamb in this kind of recipe.

The first thing to do is to chop an onion (or two if they are small), a couple of cloves of garlic, and 6 or 8 mushrooms (cep stems are good — see yesterday's post). Sauté those in a skillet in oil or butter, and then add about 1½ lbs. of lamb. Season it with good pinches of dried thyme, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper, and of course salt.

The lamb mixture over a layer of zucchini slices...

...and another layer of zucchini slices over that

When the lamb is browned, add about ½ cup of tomato paste or very thick tomato sauce. Add water or white wine to moisten the mixture, without making it too soupy. If you have pan juices left over from roasting the leg of lamb, add some of those too (but not too much lamb fat).

Meanwhile, put a layer of zucchini slices in the bottom of a big baking dish. The slices can be blanched, sautéed, or just raw, however you want them. Spread the meat mixture over that, and put another layer of zucchini slices over the top. Salt and pepper the top layer.

A thick cheese sauce is the top layer.
It will set up because there's an egg in it.

Separately, in a saucepan melt two tablespoons of butter. Sprinkle in two tablespoons of flour and let it cook in the butter for a minute or two. Then gradually add milk or cream until you have a smooth, thick béchamel sauce. Grate in some nutmeg (or add a pinch). And don't forget salt and pepper.

Into the sauce put about ¾ cup of grated cheese — Swiss, parmesan, or feta, for example. When it has melted into the sauce, take the pan off the heat. Let it cool for a few minutes, while you break one egg into a bowl and beat it. Then add a spoonful of the cheese sauce to the egg and whisk it in well. Now pour the egg mixture to the cheese sauce, stirring it energetically so that the egg will be incorporated but won't scramble.

Pour this thick cheese sauce over the top of the casserole and spread it around to cover all the zucchini slices. Put some more grated cheese on top if you want. Bake the casserole in a 350ºF/180ºC oven for at least 45 minutes, until it's golden brown on top. Let it cool slightly before you cut it or spoon it out onto plates.

Don't leave out the cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice when you cook the meat. Those are the good flavors you want in moussaka. You can make it with beef, but lamb is better.

Making moussaka with grilled eggplant slices (1)

Making moussaka — eggplant with a meat sauce and cheese — has been a three- or four-day process this time. I went shopping over in Romorantin on Tuesday and bought three aubergines. On Thursday, our generous neighbor brought us almost a pound of sliced, roasted leg of lamb. It all came together. We obviously had enough tomatoes and tomato sauce, given the season.

I had considered making this gratin with ground chicken or beef. But lamb is best. Serendipity stepped in. On Friday I made the meat sauce with lamb, which I just chopped up finely with a big knife. Herbs and seasonings for the sauce included dried oregano, black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, powdered fennel, onion, garlic, and a pinch of cayenne pepper powder. A splash of red wine also gave the sauce some extra richness.

Usually moussaka recipes say to fry the eggplant slices in olive oil. I'd rather cook them on baking sheets in the oven after brushing them with olive oil. Better still is when Walt cooks them on the grill, as he did yesterday. That adds a lot of flavor to what is a fairly bland, though delicious, vegetable (or fruit, really).

Moussaka is layers of cooked eggplant, cheese, and tomato/meat sauce. I had a block of mozzarella, and I sliced it up and used it in two layers. Sauce, eggplant, cheese. More sauce, more eggplant, and more cheese. More sauce, and then the top layer of eggplant. What remains to be done today is to make a thick and cheesy white sauce (butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, and grated cheese) thickened with an egg. That gets poured over the top layer of eggplant slices, and a little more grated cheese gets sprinkled on top. Then the whole dish bakes in the oven until the cheese melts and the eggplant finishes cooking in the bubbling sauce. Flavors blend. I wish it were lunchtime right now.

Qui faut-il connaître...

...to get a turkey burger around here? Well, Walt and me, I guess. You pretty much have to buy turkey and grind it yourself. That's what we've done this week. In the local supermarkets, you can buy freshly ground beef or packages of ("industrial" is what they call it) ground beef. You can buy packaged ground pork to use in stuffings. But, until recently, that's been about it.

It's true that over the past month or two I've seen packages of "industrially" ground veal and even turkey in the supermarkets, but it's not something you find everywhere or all the time. Years ago, I wanted to make a Greek dish called moussaka, which is best made with ground lamb. I went to the supermarket over in Noyers-sur-Cher and told the butcher I was looking for affordable lamb cuts and told him why. He'd never heard of moussaka.

I explained that moussaka was made using ground (minced) lamb, and he immediately told me he couldn't grind lamb in his meat grinder, which was used exclusively for beef. I told him not to worry, I had a meat grinder at home. I just didn't want to spend a fortune on fine cuts of lamb just for grinding. It all worked out.

It worked out this week too. I bought a turkey breast filet at LIDL on Tuesday over in Romorantin. It weighed a kilogram and cost €7.99. I brought it home and the next day I cut it into pieces that would be easy to put into the meat grinder. We ground it and made burger patties out of it for lunch yesterday and for the freezer. Because it was very lean turkey breast, I ground some fresh pork belly (bacon, or "side meat") with it to add some fat.

Anyway, it turned out really good, as you can see. The buns in my photos are the ones I made about a week ago and put in the freezer. They are definitely better than supermarket hamburger buns. And the sauce is one I found in a recipe on the 'net. It's a blend of mayonnaise and Thai sriracha sauce — three parts mayo and one part sriracha (which is a flavorful hot red pepper sauce). Delicious. Walt diced up a cornichon and added it to the sauce.

With the turkey burgers, cooked on the grill, we had some grilled (guess what...) zucchini cut into thick slices, and some French fries. The weather is very hot right now, and we're cooking on the grill out on the terrace. We also put the fryer out there and cook the frites outdoors. It's summertime living, and we're enjoying it.

Je sais que l'automne est là...

I know it's now autumn when I see scenes like these on my walks with the dog. It's not cold yet, even though our central heat has come on several times over the past week, with the thermostat set at 18.5ºC — about 65ºF. That's our wintertime temperature inside the house.

Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle... Well, not these, actually. They're chestnut leaves that will slowly disintegrate over the course of the winter.Along with almost all of the chestnuts themselves. Nobody seems to want them.

There are patches of mushrooms of various varieties all around the edges of the vineyard, thanks to recent, repeated rains. These have come up just outside our back gate. I wish I knew whether these are edible or not. Dans le doute, abstiens-toi, they say.

Here's where bunches of grapes hung until recently. Nearly all the grapes have been harvested now. That's the surest sign that autumn is here. These were red-wine grapes — Gamay Noir, I assume. They are harvested mechanically, not by hand, so the woody structures the grapes grow on are left behind.

Our "fall colors" are mostly grape leaves, though chestnut and maple leaves are colorful too. Different grape varietals produce autumn leaves of different colors, from bright red to golden yellow. It won't be long before all the grape leaves will be on the ground, and wintertime pruning will start.

And finally, fall food. This is a slice of Greek moussaka, made with potatoes, eggplant (aubergines), lamb cooked with tomatoes and spices including cinnamon, and a firm, cheesy béchamel sauce on top. The weather is cool enough now that we can enjoy cooking foods in the oven, though Walt actually cooked the slices of eggplant (from our 2019 vegetable garden) on the barbecue grill for this moussaka.

Gratin d'aubergines à la polenta

This could be called moussaka but it's not traditional. Instead of making a thick sauce béchamel (flour, butter, milk) as a topping and adding cheese as well as egg to it to make it set up to a firm consistency as it cooks, I just made a batch of polenta with melted cheese in it. That was the topping for an eggplant gratin made with tomato/meat sauce. Those are slices of pre-cooked potatoes on the bottom. They're optional.

The tomato sauce is made with ground beef and flavored with oregano, onion, garlic, bay leaf, cinnamon, and powdered fennel seeds. I used about 500 grams of beef and two cups of home-made tomato sauce thickened with a few tablespoons of tomato paste (also home-made but that's not crucial). After browning the meat, I poured on the sauce and let everything cook together so that the result was not too watery but, instead, pretty thick.

The most time-consuming and labor-intensive part of the recipe is preparing the eggplant (three large aubergines) before putting it in the gratin dish with the sauce. Most recipes call for slicing the aubergines, salting them, letting them drain for an hour or so, and then frying them lightly in olive oil. That's not what I do. I think the salting is unnecessary. I slice the eggplant, put the slices on silicone pads or parchment paper (papier de cuisson) on cookie sheets, brush them with a little olive oil on both sides, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and bake them in a hot oven for 10 to 15 minutes until they are tender and browned. This time, I had three batches of eggplant slices to cook that way, so it took a while. But it's a lot less messy than frying.

The polenta came from the supermarket. I just made it according to package directions and then added about 100 grams of grated Gruyère ("Swiss") cheese to it, along with salt and pepper. Then I spread it over the top of the layered eggplant and sauce and scattered another 50 grams or so of grated cheese over the top of the polenta. It baked in the oven for about 40 minutes, just to brown slightly. I like this revisited « moussaka ». I posted the original recipe in 2015.

Lamb leftovers (2)

Soup — lamb-barley soup. My late friend Cheryl always made turkey-barley soup with the leftovers from her Christmas turkey. And it was always warming, comforting — excellent. Well, I have recently found recipes for lamb-barley soup on the internet, so that sealed it. Soup would be one of the things I would make with what was left of our Thanksgiving leg of lamb.

   
When I took the lamb off the bone, I kept as much of it as I could in thick pieces that I could cut into cubes for stew.
Or I could run those cubes through the meat grinder and make meat sauce for pasta or moussaka.
Still, there were a lot of little morsels of good meat that would be perfect in soup.
That meant I'd also need to dice up a lot of vegetables. So I got busy.

We had barley in the pantry. We had onions. We had turnips, carrots, and celery in the refrigerator. There was nearly
a liter of broth left from cooking the leg of lamb, because I had set the roast on a rack and poured some water,
wine, and herbs into the bottom of the roasting pan to keep the lamb juices from burning and smoking.
I also found a liter of chicken broth (guinea hen broth, actually) in the freezer.

   
The middle photo above shows what is called une mise en place — all the soup ingredients laid out on a table
so that nothing would be forgotten when the soup-making started. I had leftover flageolet beans from
Thanksgiving day, and I had some steamed broccoli florets and steamed potatoes left from the
cold lamb and mayonnaise lunch we had enjoyed the day before. There were some
cooked turnip greens and leek tops in the freezer, and
some cooked smoked-pork lardons in the fridge...