Comments on: Moussaka, circa 1961

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:37:19 +0000

Thank you for this recipe!

By: psychicchatonline

psychicchatonline — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:24:43 +0000

psychicchatonline…

…

By: AnferTuto

AnferTuto — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 08:53:29 +0000

Hola faretaste
mekodinosad

By: Yvo

Yvo — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 20:56:30 +0000

Actually when you wrote that MtAoFC was co-authored but Vol. 2 was all Julia, I immediately thought that Julie Powell had used Vol. 2 because I don’t recall her mentioning any co-authors. *shrug*

By: cathy

cathy — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:16:48 +0000

I admire Julie Powell’s experiment (and can relate to the tiny kitchen part)–for some reason I didn’t realize she was using “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1″ — I’ll have to see how her Moussaka went!

By: Yvo

Yvo — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:44:31 +0000

Whoa… that recipe sounds so terribly convoluted. Funny enough, I’ve seen moussaka on menus and never ordered it for a few reasons, but now that I know how much work goes into it, I might just pop some allergy pills and try it (I’m allergic to eggplant). It looks pretty good; glad you liked it. Yummy!

By: Aoife

Aoife — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 07:09:32 +0000

What happens is that the salt on the outside of the eggplant dissolves with the moisture on top to form salt water. The salt water is denser than the liquid inside the eggplant, so to balance the densities, the liquid from inside the eggplant travels by osmosis through the cells to the outside, forming beads on top. And we all thought high school biology was useless.

By: sixty-five

sixty-five — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 06:07:24 +0000

Oh my goodness! A blast from the past. This is not a typical moussaka, which is more apt to be a layered casserole with a creamy bechamel part. I used to make this all the time in the early sixties. Of course I saw her make it on TV; that surely helped. The idea was to have a way to use leftover lamb, most likely from a roast (probably something we are less apt to have on hand these days, so just browning some ground lamb, as you did, would be OK. But the main BIG idea was to make a beautiful UNMOLDED (ie taken OUT of the pan for serving) dish. By putting the eggplant skins in the mold “skins facing out” you end up with a shiny purple cylinder sitting in a pretty red pool of tomato sauce which you then serve by cutting into slices, like a cake. It is true that to use this book effectively you have to jump around a lot and use the index. The charlotte mold is pictured on p. 162. Julia uses this pan quite often – not seen so much today. Don’t be discouraged. Keep on using this book and you will learn a lot! Are you familiar with the Julie/Julia experiment?