Mousakas

Author Notes

Mousakas is a Greek food, with origin from Turkey. It's usually a summer food, that you can find in restaurants, but you can also make at home,and share with friends and family.
INGREDIENTS:
1) Four(4) to five aubergines
2) Four to five potatoes
3) Four to five green peppers
-One or half kg mince meet of beef
-Three tomatoes for sauce
-Salt, pepper, some spoonful olive oil
-Two tea spoonful cinnamon
-For sauce beshamel :
-Three cups of cold fresh milk
-Five big spoonful flour
-Three-five tea spoonful fresh butter,any kind by preference yellow butter

PREPARATION
-We wash and cut to round pieces all aubergines, green peppers and potatoes to thick round pieces vertically
We put all these in a pan with burnt olive oil and fry them
Then we put all of them in a big flat plate with a paper towel so that olive oil is well absorbed, and leave them there, to get bit cold..
-Mince meat
-We put mince meat in a casserole of medium size, or bit small one, by adding a blended onion, then add four-five tea spoonful olive oil, and fry slightly at round 150-160 C of stove, and wait till mince meat becomes bit brown..Then we add two blended tomatoes for sauce, by also adding salt,pepper, and cinamon. Then we mix all this, till mince meat is well done. We then leave it as it is.
Now, Beshamel cream :
We put four-five big spoonful flour in a casserole, notvery deep one, and we then add four to five big spoonful butter as said above,and mix very quickly, so that this simple mix does not get 'burnt'. Supposed stove is round 150 C or max. 170, we keep mixing and then pour some milk, by mixing also quickly and keep adding milk, so that whole mix becomes liquid, but not sticky. We try all time, till all this becomes cream; this is cream beshamel, and then we add a bit salt, and smashed walnuts,just very little quantity. -Then we turn off stove, and wait till mix is not to hot.

Final stage of food :
We put aubergines, peppers and potatoes fried before, in the pyrex big flat plate, by arranging with fingers first layer. Then we put half of mince meat done, on them;thus first layer is done. Then we put the rest of fried aubergines, peppers and potatoes, and we repeat same thing, thus we put the rest of mince meat on them, so that second layer is also added to food.
Then, when everything is ready, we put cream beshamel, on second last layer of food, obviously, by pouring from casserole, as done before, slowly, and then all rest of beshamel evenly. For succesful food, all ingredients must be put evenly all over plate pyrex.
-NOW,we put the pyrex plate with whole mousakas in the oven, to bake for round 1-1.30 hours. We do this mostly for beshamel.
We must see beshamel made crust on surface, to ensure food is ready to serve.
This quantity is for 4 people, two big pieces each one, or eight persons, one piece per person.
Ready? Yes, enjoy with members of family or with also friends.
You can drink cold beer together, by no means wine, as food is for hot summer, or fall, and it's more preferable to cook it in the evening, after sun set, as all this heat, may be unbearable during the day.
GOOD APPETITE! —Aikaterini Katapodi