Moussaka

• 1. Introduction

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  Moussaka is a dish built on aubergine or potato, often with ground meat, and it turns up across the Balkans and the Middle East. Ask for it in two neighbouring countries and you may get two plates that have almost nothing in common. Some cooks bake it hot, others serve it chilled. Some build it in careful layers, while others skip layers entirely. This documentary asks how one name came to cover so many dishes. It asks where the word began and who gave the Greek version its modern shape. It also follows the dish as it drifted from kitchen to kitchen, swapping its main vegetable and its topping along the way.

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• 2. Pounded or Cold

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  The Arabic word muṣaqqa‘a, written مصقعة, literally means pounded or cold. That meaning is odd for a dish so often served steaming from the oven. The word passed into Ottoman Turkish, which handed it on to Greek and the other languages of the Balkans. Greek gave it the form mousakás, written μουσακάς. English borrowed it from Greek and from those neighbouring tongues. The first English appearance on record dates to 1862, and the spelling there was mùzàkkà. That odd spelling shows how unsettled the word was for English readers at the time. The version most diners now picture, though, arrived in Greece during the 1920s.

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• 3. Tselementes and His Three Layers

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  Nikolaos Tselementes was a Greek chef trained in the French tradition, and he created the modern Greek moussaka in the 1920s. His recipe asks the cook to prepare three layers separately before any of them meet. The bottom layer is sliced aubergine sautéed in olive oil. The middle layer is ground lamb, lightly cooked with chopped or puréed tomatoes, onion and garlic. Cinnamon, allspice and black pepper season the meat. The top layer is béchamel, the French white sauce, or a savoury custard. Only then does the whole dish go into the oven for its final bake. In Greece it is typically served hot. Tselementes also wrote a version for Orthodox fast days, and it appears in his cookbook. It contains no meat and no dairy. Ground aubergine takes the place of the meat, and the dish relies on tomato sauce and bread crumbs.

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• 4. Little Shoes and Other Variations

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  Greek cooks do not always follow the Tselementes blueprint. Some leave off the top sauce altogether. Others slip in extra vegetables beside the aubergine, such as sautéed courgette slices, part-fried potato slices or sautéed mushrooms. One relative of the dish has a name that sounds like a joke. Papoutsákia, written παπουτσάκια, means little shoes, and the full name is melitzánes papoutsákia. Instead of slicing the aubergines, the cook leaves small ones whole and stuffs them with ground meat. A cap of béchamel goes on top, and the shoes are baked.

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• 5. The Potato Belt

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  Travel to Albania, Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia or Romania and the aubergine often gives way to potatoes. The meat there is pork or beef mince. The topping is usually milk or yogurt mixed with raw eggs, sometimes with a little flour added. One three-layer version puts ground pork and beef on the bottom, potato slices in the middle and custard on top. Each layer is cooked alone, then stacked in a pan and baked until the top browns. Romania stretches the idea further. Cooks there may use potatoes, aubergine or cabbage, alternating vegetable and meat until the pot is full. Pork is the usual meat. Bread crumbs are sometimes the topping, and sometimes it is tomato slices with crushed cheese. Tomato sauce then fills the pot. A pasta variant replaces the vegetables, and the Romanian fasting version, which is vegan, uses mushrooms or sautéed onions with rice in place of meat.

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• 6. Moussaka Abroad

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  Elizabeth David's book Mediterranean Cookery carried the Balkan custard-topped moussaka to the United Kingdom. In Britain it remains the usual way the dish is presented. Cooks there often finish it with grated cheese or bread crumbs. Norway took a different route. Potato moussaka is the most common kind there. The best-known Norwegian product of that type is sold under the name Toro. It is marketed, incorrectly, as Greek moussaka.

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• 7. Chickpeas, Chilling and Tomato

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  In Lebanon, moussaka is mainly tomatoes and aubergine, and it resembles the Sicilian dish caponata. Chickpeas may join in. Served cold, it counts as a mezze, a small shared plate. It can also come to the table hot. The Syrian and Lebanese musaqa'a, written مسقعة, differs a great deal from the Greek dish. It may include whole small fried aubergines, onions and chickpeas, and it can be cooked on a stove top. Saudi Arabia, where it is spelled muṣagga‘a, eats it hot. Many other Arab countries eat it cold, though occasionally hot. In Egypt, mesaqa‘ah is made from fried aubergine layers soaked in tomato sauce and then baked. Cooks usually tuck a layer of seasoned ground beef between the aubergine. Egyptians can make it vegan, vegetarian or with meat, and the fried aubergine is always the main ingredient. It is typically chilled for a day or so, because waiting improves the taste.

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• 8. The Turkish Plate

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  Turkish musakka breaks the rule that moussaka must be stacked. Thin slices of aubergine are fried and served in a tomato-based meat sauce, with green peppers, garlic and onions. It may be eaten warm or at room temperature. Turks usually pair it with pilav and cacık. Cooks also vary the vegetable, making kabak musakka with courgettes and havuç musakka with carrots. The potato version, patates musakka, echoes the potato dishes of the Balkans.

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