Black Bean Moussaka

(greek goodness)

Well it’s not just Greek though right? It’s middle eastern, Turkish, Greek kinda. But you know what I mean. Anyway, this might be my favourite vegetarian dish.

Now, some might question why I’m posting a vegetarian version, instead of the meaty original, so let me just clarify: I absolutely adore the meat version. My cousins father was Greek, so a lot of the food in their mother’s (my aunts) house have always been very Greek.

The moussakas I’ve had there have been just… bonkers good.

So why the black beans? Well, my girlfriend is vegetarian and I just couldn’t stand not having moussaka frequently. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. But then, I just started liking it so much I’m not even sure which one I prefer any more…

So what’s the deal with moussaka anyway? As with many dishes it’s not one single thing. The corner stones of a great moussaka are the spicing, heavy with all-spice and possibly cinnamon (I say yes to cinnamon btw. My aunt says fuck no, so… don’t say no, say maybe, maybe, maybe, as a famous Swedish song goes), fried egg plant, and a creamy, egg-infused béchamel sauce with plenty of parmigiano!

A couple of things are, according to myself, crucially important.

  1. Deep frying the egg plant (and the potato if you choose to include it).
  2. Ample amounts of parmigiano in the béchamel.
  3. Lots of eggs in the béchamel.
  4. Daring to spice the bean stew. I think beans need heavier spicing than meat, so go for it.

Just stick to these and you’ll be ok. And the moussaka will be a lot more than ok.

Special Equipment

  • Deep fryer (you can manage without a dedicated fryer, but it's a bit tedious)
  • Kitchen thermometer
Created with Sketch. 3 hours Created with Sketch. 8 servings

Ingredients

  • For the bean stew
  • 500 grwater soaked black beans (excluding the weight of the water)
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 100 grchampignons
  • 2 clovesof garlic
  • 33 clbeer
  • 1 dlred wine
  • 6 grallspice
  • 3 grpaprika powder (smoked if you have it!)
  • 3 grkoriander seeds
  • 3 grcinnamon
  • 1 grblack pepper
  • 50 grchili sauce
  • 25 grsoy sauce (Japanese style, e.g. Kikkoman)
  • 10 grsriracha
  • Vinegar to taste
  • For the layers
  • 700 grpotato (7-9 medium sized potatoes)
  • 800 graubergines (two big ones)
  • For the egg-béchamel
  • 700 gmilk
  • 70 gflour
  • 40 gbutter
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 100 gparmigiano cheese
  • 5 eggs
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 5 piecesof clove
  • 6 gsalt
  • White peppar to taste

Directions

  1. Chop the mushroom and fry them with som oil in a pan on medium heat. While the mushroom are frying, finely chop the yellow onion and the garlic cloves. Add the onion chop when the mushroom have some color.
  2. Mix all of the spices (and salt) in a mortar. Add them into the pan with the black beans when the yellow onion starts to look a bit transparent. After a couple of minutes, also add the sriracha, soy, chili sauce, beer, wine and 3-4 deciliters of hot water.
  3. Let the mixture reduce on low to medium heat. Stir occasionally. When the consistency is gooey (not watery) but not dry, the bean stew is done! Balance the taste with vinegar and additional spicing to your liking.
  4. Do the béchamel while the bean stew is reducing. Start by putting a big pot on medium heat and adding in the butter. Finely chop the yellow onion and add it to the pot when it’s hot and the butter is sizzling.
  5. Put the flour in a bowl. Whisk about 30% of the milk into the flour, until no flour-lumps remain. Add the rest of the milk while stirring/whisking.
  6. Add the salt, som white pepper, the bay leaves and the clove. When the onion in the pot has softened, pour the milk-mix into the pan.
  7. Turn up the heat. Stir the bottom of the pan continuously with a flat wooden spoon. When the mixture starts thickening, lower the heat to low/medium heat and continue to stir. Grate the parmigiano.
  8. After a couple of minutes on low/medium heat (the mixture should simmer ever so slightly), add the parmigiano. When the cheese has melted into the sauce, take it of the stove and let it rest for 10-15 min.
  9. When the sauce has cooled down a bit of the stove, mix in the 5 eggs.
  10. Find and remove the bay leaves and clove and you’re done!
  11. Now for the tedious part – deep frying the aubergine & potato. Start by cutting the aubergine and potatoes into slices about 0.5 – 1 cm thick.
  12. Heat up a big pot of rapeseed oil (alt. sunflower oil) to 180 C. Make sure to have a thermometer to keep tabs on the temperature. Fry in batches. If you put to much in at the same time, the oil can boil over and/ or drop in temperature too much. When the potatoes/aubergine are golden, take them out of the oil and let them drip in a sieve or put them on paper towels. Wait for the temperature to get back to 180 C before starting a new batch.
  13. When done deep frying, salt the potato and aubergine slices. The level of saltiness should be about the sam as if you would eat them separately (maybe just a hair less). Turn the oven to 200 C.
  14. Cover the bottom of a deep (10-ish cm) oven dish with aubergine and potato slices. Spread a thin-ish layer of bean stew on top of this and then do another layer of aubergine and potato. Continue until you run out of ingredients.

  15. Finally, pour the egg-béchamel on top of all of it.
  16. Bake in the oven on 200 C for circa 30 minutes.
  17. Emerge perfection!
  18. So… now for the, by far, hardest part of this recipe.
    You have to leave the moussaka to rest for about 45 minutes out of the oven before eating. I mean… you really don’t have to, but I IMPLORE you. It is so much better lukewarm than piping hot and there is quite a lot of oil in this one so it stays hot for a good while. So plan for it to rest, you’ll not regret it!

Serve with a nice Greek sallad or maybe even some Tsatsiki!

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