September 14, 2013 New Recipe - Moussaka We drove to Santa Fe today to see the new Erin Currier show at Blue Rain and we went by Gerald Peters and Zaplin Lampert Gallery and spoke to Richard Zaplin a bit and said hello to Jim Parker and his wife Linda, who were there. Then we drove home and on the way discussed dinner. I had bought Chinese egg plants at Ta Lin ($1.49/lb.) and pork steaks at Pro’s Ranch Market ($.97/lb.) and a 10 lb. bag of potatoes ($1.99), so we discussed making an eggplant dish we had not made in while and quickly decided to make Moussaka, because we had lots of PPI béchamel sauce and milk and the tomato sauce she had made Thursday night and the pork and potatoes. When we arrived at home Suzette looked up a recipe on the internet posted by Peggy Lynninma. Here is the recipe. We did not have parsley, so we used celery leaves and lovage instead of 2 T of lovage and instead of fine herbs we used about 2 t. of a mix of Sumac, Feenegrek and Zaattaarr, which is a mixture containing roasted sesame seeds, Oregano, Thyme, and Sumac, that I bought a few years ago at the Middle Eastern Spice booth at the Flea Market next to the Opera in Santa Fe. Also, I had picked and de-stemmed and chopped up several cups of chard, so we put a layer of chard in the moussaka. Suzette sliced the eggplants and the potatoes and chopped the onion and I chopped up about 1 c. of pork steak and then de-boned and bagged the rest for future use and put it in the freezer. We have been eating tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden with many meals lately and this meal was no exception. Suzette sliced up a ripe tomato and I sliced up ½ cucumber and we dossed them with PPI tarragon vinaigrette as our salad. The ripe includes ½ cup of red wine. Suzette said do we have any Bull’s Blood, meaning a cheap Eastern European red. We did not but I found an equally inexpensive red, Cutler Creek Cabernet Sauvignon, which was a pretty close match to Bull’s Blood because the grape in Bull’s Blood is a relative of Cabernet Franc and the Cabernet Sauvignon grape is a hybrid of Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Franc. We also substituted Romano Pecorino for some of the 1 1/2 c. of Parmesan cheese. The moussaka was delicious with the red wine and tomatoes and cucumbers, especially since it was a chilly night. Bon Appétit