Hi, this is Chef John and today we are doing Shepherd’s Pie Moussaka. So I’m taking 2 very old world recipes, one’s Greek and one I think is English but it might be Irish. Man, might get a lot of emails now. Moussaka is a Greek dish of lamb and eggplant usually topped with a cheese-type sauce like a cream sauce. Shepherd’s Pie of course is the ground meat with the potato topping. So I’m going to combine both. So I got some lamb, that’s a couple pounds of lamb, some eggplants, some tomato. You’re going to have to check the website today for sure because that spice mix has some cinnamon, some cumin, salt, pepper, but all the amounts would be on the site, some diced onions, half cup of parmesan. I got to have garlic. That’s a must. It’s about 4 cloves. And then the topping, we’re going to go with the potato topping which again where the shepherd’s pie part is coming in.
So here we go with step one. Let’s make the meat base for this. We’re going to sauté some onions in some olive oil. Alright and we’re just going to get those started. We’re basically just going to cook the onions and the meat together. I put the onions in first, give a little swirl in the oil, this is on medium heat.
Alright, go ahead and add two pounds of lamb. And we’re just kind of simmer that on medium and as we do, we want to break that up. Now, I don’t want any large chunks of meat. I want this to be a very smooth almost like a paste. Okay. So the way to do that is at the initial stages here as you’re sautéing that with the onions, kind of take your wooden spoon and just break up the pieces and let’s go ahead and add our spice and herb mix. Again check the website, there’s about 7 or 8 different things in that. I’ll throw my garlic in it at the same time. Then again, in medium heat we’re just going to keep cooking this until it’s pretty much all broken up. Now I want to get over there and prep and diced my eggplant. But I don’t want to walk away from this to soon because otherwise I’ll have like large chunks of lamb. See, I want it to be all broken up like that.
So once you get into that stage, just leave it in medium, medium well and go ahead and prep your eggplant. Now, I'm going to use two eggplants and I’m going to use the restaurant version how to peel an eggplant. You know the chefs, they don’t grab the peeler. They will grab the knife. Because this is much faster, if you have to do like three or four cases of eggplant. You want to grab your peeler, probably will waste less. But, either way. Go ahead and slice your eggplant. And the size is not a huge factor here. Okay, because this is basically going to melt right into that lamb next to you. But I do want it consistent diced. So I’m going to go maybe half inch, quarter inch squares. So cut it in slices, cut it like half inch thick. Turn it, you know how we do it. And then cut it that way into kind of a large diced. Alright, so I do want to be able to see a little bit of eggplant at the end. But, the smaller you cut it, the faster it’s going to cook. So that’s basically the only option you got here. If you dice it real fine, it will cook faster.
Alright, let’s finish putting this together. So our meat has been simmering in there on medium. Like I say, it’s kind of chili. All the meat is broken up, there’s going to be chunks. I’m going to add third of a cup of tomato paste. And there is my two eggplant that I peeled and diced. Now if you want to leave the peel on go ahead, I don’t suggest it, I think just for the mouth feel of the dish that wouldn’t be appetizing to me. But you’re surely welcome. And we’re going to simmer that. This going to take about 40-45 minutes until that eggplant is just cook down and almost disappears.
So in medium heat, here’s your visual, 40 minutes. The eggplant is completely softened and cooked. There’s nothing worse than under cook eggplant, it’s very bitter and we don’t want that. You don’t have to stand staring that for 40 minutes, just keep it on medium. As long as it’s not burning or sticking to the bottom, you’re going to be fine. Alright. And that’s it.
Now, when that’s done. I’ll show you a little trick here. We’re going to prep up the potatoes for the top. So I want you to take your wooden spoon and I got the pan tilted up on a little bit of a trudit. I’m going to put all the meat on one side and what’s going to happen is the grease, the oil from the lamb is going to seep out through the bottom, we’re going to wipe that off. Okay.
So what will happen is we’ll prep our potatoes and no big thing here. I took my three potatoes, I peel them. Alright, I’m going to bring those to a boil and just like I’m making mashed potato, I’m going to simmer those until they’re tender. And look what happened, that is like ten minutes later. I’m going to take a paper towel and I’m going to just wipe that out. Now I could’ve put that out in a colander and drain it, but I might have lost some of the good lamb juices. So this method tends to just cause the oil to come out. I’m no dietician, but I’m thinking that’s like about 10,000 calories I just soaked up there. So we just made this a nice healthy dish. There’s another cup emails I’ll going to get.
Alright, going to put that into your, I think this is a 9x13 baking dish. Le crouse, as I drop names. Alright. My potatoes are tender, just like we’re making mashed. By the way, watch my mashed potatoes demo on the site if you’ve never mastered the mashed potato technique. So into those three potatoes I put my half stick of butter, I’m going to give that a mashed. I’m going to put a half a cup of milk, don’t write this down, it’s on the site. Just a little pinch of salt, now be careful with the salt. Because we’re going to add almost a half a cup of cheese to this, which I’m going to do right now. There’s a half of grated parmesan, save some for the top, see. Save a few tablespoons for the top. Stir that in. Now parmesan, little bit salty, that’s why you’ve got to be careful adding the salt in the beginning there.
Now because we put the milk and the butter and the cheese, this potato mixture is now cool enough to add my one whole egg. I’m going to take a whisk and just whip it in there. And our topping is pretty much done. The rest is just assembly.
Alright, so that means, we’re just kind of cooled off now a little bit while we’re doing the potato. What you don’t want is pieces of that meat getting up to your topping. Have you ever frost a cake and all the crumbs get into the frosting and then it looks horrible and then you go buy your cake and say made it? Same thing here, I want to take the tines of the fork. I love that word, the tines, that’s like the tip, I think. Take the tip of your fork and just work the potato around nice and even layer being careful not to get any of the meat on the top. You want to nice clean top. And what I did with the fork, I actually made little ridges with the tip of the fork and I top it with the rest of our cheese. Now what’s going to happen here, it’s going to go in that 400 degree oven. We’re going to bake it for 20 minutes. And the top, it’s kind of crisp. See, it’s actually, that’s why I keep tapping the fork on. I couldn’t stop tapping. Alright.
The top has like a firm crisp texture. And just underneath this surface is that delicious, delicious mashed potato and lamb mixture. Alright, there is some chocolate mint, you can use regular mint. Alright, I got a chocolate mint planted in my backyard which actually tastes like mint, but has a little bit of a chocolate aroma. Really interesting. And a little extra tip here, I’m going to put the meat on top of the mint, not the mint on top of the shepherd’s pie. Because I want that warm, that hot meat mixture to be infused with that nice mint flavor on the bottom. And that wouldn’t work as well on top.
So that is a delicious dish. There’s lots of extra info on the site. So you check it out, make sure you let that cool a little bit before you serve it and as always, enjoy.
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