STEEMIT IRON CHEF #17 ~ Greek Moussaka - and the lamb is still alive!

For the last round this year on the #steemit-ironchef foodporn challenge - initiated and hosted by the famous gourmet 😉 and wonderful chef @progressivechef - we were invited to chose at least two of the ingredients that were used in all rounds before.

Here are the rules to contribute this challenge: STEEMIT IRON CHEF #17.

I missed the first three weeks. So I thought I'd chose the three ingredients I missed cooking with. But I changed my mind and now my three main ingredients are: potatoes, eggplants and zucchini!

I planned to make a meat free Moussaka, a veganized variation of this famous greek dish. 

These are the ingredients I used for my dish:

• 500g potatoes 
• two eggplants
• one zucchini
• one can of chopped tomatoes 
• one pack of purred tomatoes 
• one onion
• garlic
• fresh parsley
• frozen basil (fresh doesn't look nice at present)
• margarine
• plant milk (I used oat milk)
• sunflower and pumpkin seeds
• olive oil

Preparation:

I cut the eggplant in slices, salted them and placed them on kitchen towels to soak the liquid.

I peeled and shredded the potatoes.

I made a pesto of sunflower and pumpkin seeds, a bunch of parsley, the frozen basil (fresh would be better if available), olive oil, salt, pepper and dried ground garlic. I blended everything in a food processor until it had the consistency of pesto.

I made a béchamel sauce of 50g margarine, two tablespoons floor and 250ml oat milk, seasoned with salt, white pepper and nutmeg. Then I added the shredded potatoes and cooked for a few minutes stirring the mixture all the time.

I planned the Moussaka to look a little bit more fancy for this challenge. I thought it would look pretty to make little Moussaka towers. For this I would have needed this metal desert or starter rings. Because I didn't own such things I made some myself off of tinfoil. The idea seemed to be perfect. In the following photos it's visible how I filled the foil. The bottom was a slice of eggplant thinly coated with the parsley-basil-pesto. Then I cove it with a thin coat of the purred tomatoes, a thick coat of the potatoes, more tomato purée, thin slices of zucchini, pesto, potatoes, tomato purée and topped by a second slice of eggplant and pesto. 

I baked everything in the preheated oven (200 degrees Celsius) for 40 minutes. 

Then I prepared a regular ovenproof dish with several layers of the remaining ingredients.

When this beauty was in the oven too I made the tomato sauce I planned to serve with the Moussaka.

I cut an onion and two small gloves of garlic in small cubes, fried them in olive oil until glassy, added a can of chopped tomatoes, a teespoon of dried thyme, salt, pepper, sugar and balsamic vinegar - one teaspoon each. I let it simmer for at least 20 minutes (or until the Moussaka came out of the oven)

The little Moussaka towers looked nice in their foil but this was difficult to remove ... ... 🙈 Next time I am going to buy these desert rings. 😏 The Moussaka was not only difficult to free from their foil coat but also complicated to transfer accident-free to the plate. I wasn't prepared for that!

I am surprised how ok the photos of the dish look like on the plate despite everything! However the taste was very good! The combination of the eggplant and the potatoes with the fruity tomatoes and the few herbs and spices: nice and comforting and: Oh, soo yummy!

The Moussaka in the oven proof dish turned out pretty and this will be my lunch fast food tomorrow ... 😋 I am really looking forward to this!

Here comes my last proof photo of my slightly failed construction:

In the meantime the sheep and the lamb were happily playing in the backyard, wiggling their ears and sending me a friendly baaaaaaah! 🐑