Pesto (Πέστο)

Our house in New Zealand was filled with pot plants. The living room, the TV room, the dining room, as well as the kitchen, they were all filled with all sorts of flowering plants - I remember mainly begonias - while aromatic basil was one of the most popular that my mother grew on the windowsills. Weather conditions in the land of the long white cloud meant that not everything could grow in the garden of our Wellington home, which is why the house was forced to become a greenhouse for the greater part of the year.

Basil is the most important aromatic plant in the Greek Orthodox church. When the priest blesses holy water, he does so with a cross and a large bunch of basil. When the believers file past solemnly to be blessed by the priest, he douses the basil in the holy water, pats it on the congregation's head and gives everyone the cross to kiss. On Good Friday, basil adorns the Epitaph (the tomb of Christ), being one of the main aromatic plants. No village porch or back yard is amiss of basil, which grows in various shapes and sizes, from tiny bead-like droplets to leaves large enough to be made into dolmadakia, from bushy pot plants to large outdoor shrubs, in various shades of the colour green.



I like to brush my clothes and hands past basil as I walk alongside a bush or pot plant. It leaves behind the most alluring aroma, a short-lived whiff of expensive perfume, like a highly scented rose. I'm sure most Greeks will agree that a house without basil is like a house that never sees the sun. The aroma of basil is so strong, that if you touch even one leaf, your fingers will be scented for a good few minutes.

The culinary world knows basil well. Italian cooking uses it wherever the Greek recipes call for oregano. The Venetians left behind a legacy during the time they ruled over Crete, but it seems that their culinary practices did not catch on (which doesn't surprise me as the local people of Crete did not see eye to eye with the Venetians, as is my understanding from the literature). Given its abundance in Greece, why is it that the traditional Cretan cook does not use it more often in the preparation of meals? My Psilakis (6th edition) cookbook makes no mention of its use in any recipe. We'll go to great lengths to source Tamus creticus and Solanum nigrum (both considered poisonous to a certain extent), but we won't snip off a bit of basil from our own garden to add to our dolmades mixture, even if we're out of parsley, mint, dill or fennel, the main fresh herbs used in Crete (dried herbs are usually limited to thyme, oregano and bay leaves).



Recently, a friend of mine well versed in the culinary practices of old-time Crete served me a pesto sauce using basil that she had growing in her garden, together with a good dose of garlic and olive oil. The ground almonds made it a filling protein-filled sauce for thick tubular macaroni, as well as being an appropriately scented summer meal. As this is a no-cook sauce, the ingredients have to be as pure as possible; pesticide residues and other sources of contamination that taint the aromas of the fresh ingredients will affect this meal immensely.

Despite thoroughly enjoying the pesto meal, when wanting to copy the recipe in my own home, I still couldn't bring myself to harvest garden fresh basil for my sauce. It is used in Greece by some cooks, especially in combination with tomato and capers, for spaghetti and pizza bases. Pesto is definitely not a traditional pasta sauce in Greece, but it's becoming more popular in the context of a growing interest in international cuisine. Its colour may be off-putting to the average Greek eater; green sauces are a rarity in Greek cuisine. But it is truly delicious and light, perfect as an apres-swimming meal, especially since it can be made in literally just a few minutes while the pasta's boiling.



My pesto contains my favorite summer herb, purslane, known in Crete as 'glistrida', with widespread use in salads. It is literally rampant in our garden, growing wherever there is a plant being irrigated and in all the run-off channels. Purslane has a sweet taste perfect for salad, so for a sharper spicy taste, I also added a few rocket (arugula) leaves (known as 'roka' in Greek). My only regret about purslane is that it doesn't grow in winter; as invasive as it is in summer, so are nettles in colder weather.



I was inspired to make this after seeing the Weekend Herb Blogging round-up hosted by Briciole, which included a variety of pestos all made with different greens: asparagus, purslane, and various basil varieties.

You need:
3-5 cloves of garlic, according to taste, minced finely
a wineglass of ground almonds (they are more impressive without their skin)
a small glass of olive oil
at least a cup of fresh pesticide-free purslane and rocket leaves
a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
salt (pepper is optional; the rocket is spicy enough)

Whizzed everything together in a mini food processor, the well known multi-mouli, the time-saving arthritis-delaying kitchen gadget no cook can be without: voila, there's your sauce. Serve over tubular macaroni with or without grated parmesan. This meal needs very little else, apart from a good chilled white wine.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Aubergine shoes - papoutsakia (Παπουτσάκια)

These days, I need look no further than the garden for my inspiration as to what to cook. Today's glance into our vegetable patch concluded in a papoutsakia marathon...

...now that the courgettes' reign is almost over; they came, they conquered and now they're leaving. The aubergines have now invaded. May their reign be short-lived; I'm fast running out of jigsaw puzzle space in the deep freeze, as there is almost no more room at the inn.



Long and thin ones, short and fat ones, take your pick. The short fat round variety gets used for imam baldi, moussaka, and aubergine dip. The long thin ones can also be used in the same way, but, oh the elegance of the sleek and slender long thin eggplant, turned into little shoes (papoutsakia) - fried eggplant shells stuffed with mince and topped with bechamel and cheese. They come in a wide variety of styles:

ballet slippers...


comfortable loafers...


high heeled stilettos...


evzones' tsarouhia...


strapless mules...


and worn-out sneakers.


A very much healthier alternative to frying the shells is to bake the aubergines in the oven as for melitzanosalata. When they are done, slice off one side, and scoop out the flesh (and make melitzanosalata, thereby eliminating waste). Use the empty shells to make papoutsakia, by filling them with mince sauce topped with bechamel sauce and grated cheese (or just cheese if bechamel sauce is too much fuss and/or too fatty to make).



(Click here for the recipe for papoutsakia.)

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Moussaka (Μουσσακά)

Moussaka is so closely connected to Greece in such a way that most people don't realise it exists in the same format in other countries around Greece, most often countries associated with past links to the Ottoman Empire. Recently my students at MAICh had a party in which they presented traditional Egyptian dishes, one of which was eggplant and potato slices baked with mince, with the Egyptian version being more heavily spiced than the Greek variety).

Although I enjoy making a moussaka every now and then, it's another Greek traditional dish that my children eat with difficulty, and I suspect many modern Greek youngsters will have the same opinion. However tasty it is for an adult, it looks too 'brown' and tastes too rich for a child. My I-hate-vegetables son wants me to pick off all the aubergines, whereas my daughter doesn't want the mince. I end up eating their leftovers, without really being able to savour the work of art that I created in the kitchen. In my opinion, moussaka is a 'too-much' food.

It's said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and I can tell you that my husband is a great fan of moussaka. This is about the only reason I make it; who's going to finish off the tin I cook? But a wife who wants to keep her husband has to be cruel to be kind: so much oil, so much frying, so much of too much - it can only lead to cholesterol-raising arterial blockage and coronary heart disease. I tell him not to ask so often for moussaka, even though research suggests that followers of the Mediterranean diet in Southern European countries suffer the least from diet-related heart problems. Tsk, tsk.

A friend of mine told me about his hilarious adventures when he first came out to Paleohora, having decided to rent out rooms to tourists and run a restaurant in the village, as it was back then in the mid-1970s - his was one of the first eateries in the undeveloped coastal rural town that Paleohora once was.

"I was well versed in the Greek cuisine, having worked elsewhere in the restaurant trade for many years. Coming to Paleohora, I realised that what the mild-mannered English and German tourists wanted when they came to Paleohora in the summer was to savour what they thought of as the authentic Greek lifestyle: the slow-paced ignorant locals, the alluring sun and sea, along with authentic Greek peasant cuisine (if those two words can go together). So my wife and I decided to serve only traditional food in the restaurant.

"I found a wine merchant who supplied me with the best marouva (a local variety of wine) you could find in the area, a more expensive variety than others available on the market at the time. The tourists would order it, but they wouldn't drink it, and I'd be chucking away gallons of it sitting undrunk in their glasses. I realised that they were used to classifying wines into reds and whites, something totally foreign in the Cretan wine sector. As soon as I bought in second grade varieties, which could only be distinguished by their colour, the tourists started ordering a second carafe. 'Very good local wine,' they'd say to me, and I'd just answer back, 'Yes, I made it myself from my own grapevines,' and of course they believed me!

"Then there was the salad oil. We used only local olive oil in all our food, and Paleohora olives make some of the best grade of olive oil in the whole country, not just Crete. But Northern Europeans aren't used to mopping up sauces and oil from their plate with freshly baked bread - they were used to sliced bread anyway - so the oil would just remain in the salad bowl, uneaten, wasted. I stopped buying the best grade, and found a cheaper alternative. It too went to waste in any food that required olive oil as a dressing. So I stopped dressing the salads, and just left a small bottle on the table. I watched the tourists pouring a couple of drops of oil over their salad, and I realised that they simply weren't used to using oil any kind - as much as we are. Olive oil only started to be sold relatively recently in their supermarkets; they used to buy it as an exotic highly priced item from pharmacies in their own country.



"We cooked all the traditional Greek foods: pastitsio with spicy mince and creamy sauce, yemista doused in tomato and olive oil, boureki with staka butter, moussaka with fried potato and aubergine slices. In the beginning, I couldn't understand why most people left most of their meal on their plate. Were the servings too large? Was there something wrong with the food? I realised after a couple of seasons that those tourists had been seeing pictures of Greek food in books, and they knew what to expect, but what they didn't know was that it would be so heavy on their stomach. I dry-cooked the mince in the pastitsio; they licked their plate. I stopped dousing olive oil over the yemista and just cooked them in water; they loved them. I stopped adding staka to the boureki: 'yum yum', they kept telling me. I didn't bother frying the aubergine and potato slices in the moussaka; 'mmm, delicious,' they exclaimed, and I'd tell them that the recipe was a very old one from my mother-in-law. That's the kind of bullshit they wanted to hear because it made their holiday take on an exotic appeal. They had no idea what authentic Greek food was; when they were served it, their stomachs couldn't take it."



Having discovered 'authentic Greek peasantry', those tourists went back home and tried to get as close as their knowledge and taste allowed them to the authentic tastes of the Mediterranean kitchen in the backwaters of Norwich, Nottingham and Northampton. The BBC - the purveyor of independent objective news coverage - does a fantastic job of deconstructing moussaka (and other foreign cuisine), genetically modifying it - in the cultural sense - for the British palate:

• potato-less moussaka: I have heard of it, but that surely makes the dish heavier
• vegetarian moussaka: substituting lentils for mince; call it vegetable medley instead
  
• moussaka in fifteen minutes: don't they just love their fast food?
• moussaka cooked on the hob: using - have a vomit-bag ready - chargrilled JARRED aubergines and reducing the layered work of art to a pile of horse manure, the kind of thing Greeks call skata; even nami-nami made it

Hear ye, hear ye: if you insist on calling something moussaka, at least make it look like moussaka; but have you ever wondered what the first moussaka in the world might have looked like?

Having had a look at things from the tourists' point of view, I don't understand all the fuss made about moussaka either. For a start, it's traditionally associated with summer when the beautiful purple globes are at the height of their production. Eggplant needs to be cooked in olive oil to bring out its maximum flavour; fried food in the summer is exactly the opposite of what you should be eating in hot weather. Slices of fried aubergine, slices of fried potato, a spicy tomato sauce mince, topped with a custardy bechamel sauce: all of which frazzle the cook, heat up the kitchen and clog your arteries. It's just the wrong food for this time of year.



So my advice to you is: don't cook moussaka in the summer. Save it for the winter: the laiki open-air market is full of greenhouse grown aubergine at that time. When you cook moussaka, don't fry the vegetables: you'll be all the more healthy for it. And if you have children, don't bother making moussaka at all: you'll have to eat it for days to get rid of it. If there's a moral in this story, it's something like 'don't cook moussaka'; it's not good for you. (But if you really must cook it, you can use this recipe, written by someone who makes moussaka in its season and freezes it. And when you do cook it, if it doesn't all get eaten in one sitting, it freezes well cooked in individual servings.)

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Pastitsio (Παστίτσιο - Greek lasagne)

I like a well-stocked freezer. It makes me feel relaxed. I know that even if I don't have enough time to cook (and how could I, when I spend so much of my time blogging), there will always be something in the freezer that I have cooked myself, to serve up to the whole family. When I'm having a busy (or lazy) day, I love asking each member of the family what they would like to eat, and hearing them all give me different answers: one little boy wants pastitsio, one big boy wants papoutsakia, and one little girl wants Chinese noodles - just to show that she has her own opinion; she was simply not as fast as her brother in responding to the question (I don't count, as I always eat everybody's leftovers). When I tell them that their wish is granted, one of them will always turn around and say to me: "You're going to cook all three?" In fact, I only cook one, and that's the noodles. The other two are stored in serving size tupperware portions in the deep freeze.

Today, it's time to stock up the freezer again with pastitsio, the Greek version of lasagne (or is it lasagna, as my Italian is not up to scratch). A very filling tasty meal, a children's favorite, easy to make in large batches, perfect for freezing, wish I could just serve it up every day because it's that simple and that tasty. To serve it from the freezer, I place the number of servings I want in an oven dish, heat the oven up to a moderate temperature, let the pastitsio (or moussaka or papoutsakia for that matter) thaw out and gradually warm up on its own, and it's usually ready in 20 minutes. Of course, you can also heat it up in the microwave, if you enjoy zapping your food, in the same way that you zap channels. Microwave culture suits television culture well. It tastes as fresh as the day you made it when you heat it up in the oven rather than the microwave.

I like to buy mince from a local village butcher. He has a pleasant manner, and the meat we buy from there always looks fresh and clean. He takes great pride in keeping the place spotless. The display unit is stocked these pre-Lenten days with the most delectable cuts of meat - spicy sausages, meat patties, souvlaki sticks, fatty pilafi chicken, lean chicken for roasting, lamb cutlets, pork chops... The list is endless. As you look at the range of cuts, I guarantee you will be dreaming of the BBQ, warm weather and fresh salads. He also mixes pork and beef mince meat for tasty spag bog and meat patties. In fact, spag bog cooked mince forms the basis of my pastitsio sauce; I cook the same mixture for spaghetti sauce, moussaka, papoutsakia, and have also used it to make cottage pie.

For the mince mixture, you need:
1 kilo of lean mince (pork, beef or a mixture - lamb mince is never used in Hania) - fatty mince will simply not reduce enough to get that dry consistency which is needed for pastitsio or moussaka
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion
3-4 cloves of garlic
1/2 glass of wine
1 eggplant AND/OR 1 large carrot AND/OR 2 bells peppers AND/OR 3 large mushrooms. all finely chopped (this is purely my novel twist to the classic recipe - how else do you get children to eat their veges?)
1/2 kilo of fresh tomatos, pureed (tinned ones do nicely when fresh tomatos aren't available, and just recently, I've been buying organically grown tinned tomatos, which smell and taste as good as fresh summer ones)
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
salt, pepper, oregano to taste










Heat the oil in a pot, and saute the onions and garlic till translucent. Add the mince and let it brown all over. The more time it is given to sizzle in the oil, the tastier it becomes. When it is well-browned, pour the wine over it, and let the mince cook to draw out the flavour of the wine. If you do decide to use the finely chopped vegetables, add them into the mixture at this point, so that they will blend in with the mince, turning them over to mix them in well. Now add the tomatos and paste, along with just enough water to cover the mixture up to no more than 0.5cm above the mince mixture. This is important because mince cooked for pastitsio (as well as moussaka and papoutsakia) must not be made into a sauce, as for spag bog. It will be added to thick spaghetti which will become soggy if there is too much liquid in the mince. Add the salt, pepper and oregano, cover the pot, and let the mince cook for at least 40 minutes, till most of the liquid has been absorbed.

For the macaroni you need:
500g fat macaroni with a hole in the middle (as a guide, I use Barilla No 10)
250g grated cheese (regato is excellent; gouda or edam are also good choices)
salt and pepper to taste
Boil a large pot of water and add the macaroni as the water boils. Cook it till al dente, and drain it well. (If anyone knows of a foolproof method to boil macaroni without sticking to each other, and without having to resort to using a cauldron, or cooking it up in small batches, do let me know; a few drops of oil do not seem to do the trick.) Sprinkle it with salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper. Pour the macaroni into a big baking dish. Sprinkle the grated cheese into the cooked pasta, so that it melts with the heat from the macaroni. Now pour over the cooked mince and mix it into the macaroni. Here is my favorite part of the recipe: if you think there is too much mince mixture to add it all to the macaroni, put the remaining mixture into a container and deep-freeze it. The next time you want to eat spaghetti bolognaise, all you will have to do is defrost it, boil up the spaghetti, and voilà, another simple meal for a busy schedule.

For the bechamel sauce, you need:
2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of flour
2 teaspoons of butter
1 egg AND/OR some grated cheese (these two ingredients are optional - the sauce is thicker and fattier if you include them)
grated nutmeg to taste
This sauce makes a thin covering for a large oven tin of pastitsio. Most people would use up to double the milk, flour and butter for a heavier sauce. We prefer a lighter sauce; whether you double the sauce is up to you.
This sauce is also exactly the same one used for moussaka and papoutsakia. You can also nake the sauce saving yourself time and hassle by using the same pot that you used to cook the mince. It also gives the sauce a meaty taste.
Mix the milk, flour and butter together in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the beaten egg and/or cheese if you wish to use them. Mix the sauce till it thickens. Don't leave the pot at this stage, as the sauce might stick to the bottom. Once the sauce starts to set, pour it evenly over the mince and pasta. Sprinkle some grated cheese over the top of the sauce for a crustier taste (that is, if you didn't already add any into the white sauce). Grate some nutmeg over the sauce; the aroma is intoxicating! I grated the nutmeg straight into the sauce, because I didn;t want the little boy, the big boy and the little girl asking me: "What are those black things on the macaroni, Mum?"

Cook the lasagne in a medium oven for an hour. The ingredients were all essentially cooked before going into the oven, so they only need to blend in with each other. When the pastitsio is done (the top will have taken on a golden colour), leave it to cool before cutting, so that it is allowed to set to a point that makes the dish easy to cut and serve. Cutting it when it is still hot will only spoil its appearance, making it less appetising. If the pastitsio is mainly for freezing, make sure it has cooled right down before cutting it. Have a freshly cut lettuce salad ready to accompany it. Kids and adults alike will love this meal. The big deep tapsi (the Greek word for an oven dish) makes enough pastitsio for 12-14 servings. Funnily enough, my mother hardly ever made this meal, because she preferred spag bog, although her sister, my aunt who lived across the road made it regularly. On her last visit, she even cooked one for me in my house. That's why I always associate pastitsio with my aunt, and I dedicate this post to her.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE PASTA RECIPES:
Puttanesca
Bologanise
Stir-fry noodles
Stir-fry beef
Blue dragon
Octopus stew
Tuna pasta
Mussels sauce
Pizza carbonara

MORE MINCE RECIPES:
Biftekia
Chili con carne
Dolmades
Makaronada
Moussaka
Cottage pie
Papoutsakia
Soutzoukakia

Moussaka (Μουσσακά)

This dish takes a long time to make, so it's worth making it in big batches to freeze some for later. It tastes just as good when taken out of the deep freeze and cooked (or heated, if you choose to pre-cook the moussaka) in a conventional oven. I usually cook the moussaka and let it cool, after which it is much much easier to cut it up and pack into individual servings in clean tupperware, and pop it into the freezer. Apart from this, I also make some small tins of moussaka without pre-cooking it, which I serve to the whole family on one of my lazy cooking days. It is a heavy meal, but there are plenty of ways to make it lighter and healthier (we prefer the authentic version). And don't forget that aubergines are not easy to freeze, so this is one of the best ways to preserve fresh garden aubergine crop; you can freeze them raw or fried, in slices or shell as for yemista or papoutsakia. Remember to use frozen aubergine (shells or slices, fried or raw, filled or empty) straight from the deep freeze. They taste just like fresh aubergine when used this way. Do not let it thaw under any circumstances; it goes soggy and is completely unappealing.

The first stage involves cooking the mince. You should start cooking this before you deal with the vegetables so that it is ready when you have finished frying (or boiling) the vegetables. I cook this mince in exactly the same way as I have described for papoutsakia or pastitsio. The mince is ready when most of the liquid has evaporated.

While this is cooking, you can prepare the vegetables. You need about 5 medium round eggplants and 5 large round (rather than oblong) potatoes, for every half kilo of mince you cook. Slice the eggplant and potatoes into thin rounds (about 3-5mm thick). The thicker, the healthier, as they won't absorb so much oil. Now fry these rounds (first the aubergine, then the potato) in olive oil till they are just brown. Drain the slices on absorbent paper to soak off some of the oil. First place HALF the aubergines slices at the bottom of the baking dish, then HALF the potatoes on top. (A healthier version omits the frying; I've heard of some people who boil the eggplant and potato slices instead, and drain them very well before they put them in the baking dish, while others do not pre-cook the vegetables at all. Suit yourself.) In restaurants, you will see moussaka being served with a layer of courgette slices, too. If you choose to add a layer of courgettes to your moussaka, they definitely don't need pre-cooking. Slice them and layer them on top of the aubergines, whether you are going to cook or freeze it. This makes a substantial healthier meal.

Now pour the mince over the layered vegetables, taking care not to let too much liquid run into the tin if you have fried or boiled the vegetables. On the other hand, if the vegetables have not been pre-cooked, the excess liquid from the mince should not be drained away. Then layer the remaining vegetables over the mince, this time starting with the potatoes, and ending off with the aubergines. Make a bechamel (white) sauce (just like for pastitsio) and pour it over the moussaka. Grate some nutmeg over the sauce. Bake in a medium oven for 40-45 minutes. If the vegetables have not been pre-cooked, the dish will need more cooking time. Test to see if it is done by inserting a knife to feel the texture of the potato. Once the moussaka is ready, let it cool before cutting, otherwise it will not slice well. You will forever be told what a good cook you are if you serve this at a dinner party.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE MINCE RECIPES:
Biftekia
Chili con carne
Dolmades
Makaronada
Cottage pie
Papoutsakia
Soutzoukakia
Pastitsio

Papoutsakia (Παπουτσάκια - aubergine shoes)

We always have an excess of eggplant in our garden, so I have to think of many ways to cook them. Not everyone in the family likes papoutsakia though, so I freeze this meal in small quantities. When I cook them, I can cook something else at the same time - in the same pot or oven tray - to satisfy all the family. Today, for example, I've placed potatoes in the same baking tin.

To make these "little shoes" as we call them, you need to use the long variety of aubergine. Cut off the stalk, then cut a small slice in the center of one side of the aubergine - the same procedure used for YEMISTA (stuffed vegetables with rice), and scoop out the flesh. You can choose to use the flesh in the mince mixture, or to discard it. I prefer to use it, because it is a healthier option; no one suspects me of tainting the mince anyway. You can also use the large round variety of eggplant, which means you cut the stalk off, then cut them in half lengthways, and scoop out the flesh from each half.

Warning! Touching the inside flesh of an aubergine will stain your nails and fingers badly. The brown colour doesn't come off easily, so use plastic gloves, or be prepared to scrub your fingers well afterwards with a lemon (otherwise, you will need a manicure!). And don't forget that you can freeze the fresh aubergine shells as for yemista and moussaka, not forgetting that this is the best way to freeze eggplant. Remember to use frozen aubergine (shells or slices, fried or raw, filled or empty) straight from the deep freeze. They taste just like fresh aubergine when used this way. Do not let it thaw under any circumstances; it goes soggy and is completely unappealing.

In a shallow frying pan, covered with a generous amount of olive oil, lightly fry each shell, drain them on kitchen paper, and place them in a baking dish. If you prefer a healthier option, don't fry the eggplant; turn it into baba ganoush or melitzanosalata. Just place it in the baking dish as they are. It will cook in the same way that eggplant cooks as for yemista. My eaters prefer the unhealthy version of this dish. Once they are in the dish, put it aside. Cook some mince the way you prefer to cook it for a spaghetti dish. We like to use a mixture of pork and beef mince, which we place in a pot in which a generous amount of onion and garlic has been browning in olive oil (what else?). Once the mince has browned, add some wine, let it cook for 10 minutes, and then add some salt, pepper, oregano and a few freshly grated tomatoes into the pot (enough to top the mince by 1cm). At this stage, you can add some minced aubergine flesh if you have put it aside. Cover the pot and let it cook well.

When the mince is ready, spoon it into the shells right up to the top, and cover each shell with a slice of cheese. Some poeple use white bechamel sauce instead of cheese. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on the cheese. (Now is the time to freeze the dish if you aren't going to cook it when you make it.) If you have some space in the dish, don't let it go to waste; peel and chop some potatoes, and place them in the gaps in the dish. Now drizzle some olive oil over the potatoes, and some freshly grated tomato over everything. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper, and put the dish in the oven and cook on a high heat for half an hour. Serve the aubergines with a fresh tomato salad, or any other leafy green salad.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE MINCE RECIPES:
Chili con carne
Biftekia
Dolmades
Makaronada
Cottage pie
Soutzoukakia
Pastitsio
Moussaka