Stuffed Greek Eggplant

These Greek stuffed eggplant boats are absolutely divine! Justine’s stuffed eggplant features tender roasted eggplant filled with spiced beef mince and topped with creamy fetta béchamel sauce. This Mediterranean stuffed eggplant recipe combines the best flavours of moussaka in individual portions. The cinnamon-spiced meat sauce and rich béchamel make this stuffed eggplant a showstopping dinner. Perfect for entertaining or a special family meal, this stuffed eggplant recipe brings authentic Greek flavours to your table!

Full Recipe: https://everydaygourmet.tv/recipes/stuffed-greek-eggplant

Ingredients:
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 medium-large eggplants
1 onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
500g beef mince
Pinch of ground cinnamon
Pinch of ground cloves
1 tsp oregano
250ml (1 cup) red wine
400g crushed tomatoes
Parsley, finely chopped, to garnish

Béchamel sauce
40g butter
40g plain flour
650ml milk
180g fetta, crumbled
1 egg yolk
Pinch nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Cut the eggplant in half horizontally and arrange on a tray. Using a small sharp knife cut the flesh to form a crisscross pattern, ensuring not to pierce the skin. Drizzle with 1-2 tablespoons of oil and season with salt. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the flesh is soft.

For the meat sauce, heat the remaining oil in a sauté pan over medium heat and add the onions and garlic. Now add the mince and cook, stirring regularly for 5-6 minutes or until well browned. Add spices, oregano and season with salt and pepper. Now add the wine and bring to a boil and then add tomatoes. Lower the heat and cook uncovered for 20-25 minutes or until thick and rich.

For the bechamel, melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon to make the roux. Now using a whisk, gradually add the milk to ensure there are no lumps. Bring the sauce to boil and once thick remove from the heat and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese and egg yolk.

Using a fork, press down on the flesh of each eggplant half to form a cavity. Fill with the meat sauce and cover with the bechamel. Crumble over the remaining cheese.

Turn the oven to grill function and grill the eggplant for 3-4 minutes or until golden brown. Garnish with parsley.

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MORE RECIPES LIKE THIS ONE:
Vegetarian: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Cp-Lm2gLTkJKNlIfpaRPbDh3eeZ101P

Develop your prowess in the kitchen with one of Australia’s most loved cooks, Justine Schofield on Everyday Gourmet.
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I could eat Greek food every day. It’s so wholesome and delicious. And one of the most popular Greek dishes would have to be musaka. I’m going to take the concept of a musaka and change it around slightly by stuffing some eggplants with the white sauce and the meat sauce. It is super delicious. So, you’ll need four eggplants for this recipe. And we’re going to cut them in half. This is going to feed eight people. So, half an eggplant per person. and we’ll place them onto the tray. Now, I also want to get as much heat into the flesh as possible. And the tip of my knife, I’m just going to cut on a diagonal. And then the other way, we’ll cut through. You want to go about 3/4 of the way through, not all the way through because these are going to be the little cups that are going to hold all the delicious flavors from the meat sauce and the bashimal. So, we’ll just very quickly cut through them. So as we know musaka is a layered baked dish that has eggplants, potatoes, lots of meat sauce and then the bashamel where this in fact is just using the eggplants and the meat sauce and the bashamel. In fact, this dish in Greek is called papuakia. I hope I’ve pronounced it correctly. So after you’ve made those incisions into the eggplant, we need to generously oil it and salt it. Eggplants are like sponges, so they can take on a bit of that oil. And what’s Greek food without good quality extra virgin olive oil? A good pinch of salt. And these are going to bake in the oven for about 45 minutes or until they’re super soft and tender. While the eggplants are roasting in the oven, let’s get on to the meat sauce. So, another good gug of extra virgin olive oil into a pan along with one onion, finely chopped. We’re just going to cook that down. Just allow that to soften. And two cloves of garlic. I’m just going to bruise. And then just roughly chop the garlic. I never like to add it with the onions at the beginning because the onions are going to take a little longer to cook than the garlic. in with our garlic and some spices. Now, classic spices of a musaka include some clove, a pinch of cinnamon, and lots of dried oregano. And those three spices make this into a delicious Greek inspired meat sauce. Now, traditionally, you would use lamb mints for this, but I’m using beef. You could use whatever mints you like for this. So about 500 g of mint. You’re going to break that down just with your wooden spoon and coat it in that lovely onion mixture. And it just smells so good with the clove and the cinnamon. Fantastic. A good pinch of pepper and of course some salt. And all we want to do is just brown that meat. Now that the meat has browned and some of the fats coming out of the meat, we can add our red wine. One cup of red wine and do allow that to come to the boil and cook off some of that alcohol. We don’t want that raw flavor of the wine. Once that has evaporated by about half, then we’re going to add one can of crushed tomatoes. Then we’re going to cook it for about 20 to 25 minutes until it’s thick and rich. [Music] Okay, this meat sauce is lovely and thick and rich. You can see a lot of that liquid has reduced. I’ve just turned the heat off and we’ll just let it sit there for a moment while we make the white sauce. So, in a pot, we’ll add some butter. Equal amounts of butter to flour. Just let that melt for a moment. And then in with our flour. Okay. So, we’re just going to make a r. We just want to cook off the flour and little by little we’re going to add our milk. No need to warm up the milk for this one. We just want to add it slowly. If you add all of it at once, we will get lumps. So, start with a small amount. You’ll see that it starts to cluster like that. And then you can add some more. And then what I like to do is just transfer over to a whisk and whisk this vigorously so there’s no lumps. Once all of that rue has dissolved into that first lot of milk, we can add the rest of the milk and then bring it up to the boil until it thickens up. [Music] All right, this sauce has thickened up nicely. I’m going to turn the heat off and now it’s time to add the cheese. Now, my cheese of choice is this lovely feta. It’s crumbly, slightly tangy and creamy. In actual fact, I haven’t seasoned this with salt yet because it will also season it. So, just crumble that up. And I like that there’ll be lots of little speckles of the feta throughout this dish. I’m also reserving some of this feta because I’m going to crumble it on the top before it goes back into the oven to bake. All right, so we’ll just mix that through. Okay, now that that’s incorporated, you can see there’s lots of little chunks and big chunks of the feta in there. It’s going to be delicious. I’ll also add an egg yolk. Now, this is going to bind it even more. And also allow it to set when it’s baking in the oven. So, we don’t need the egg white. So, in with that. And then again, off the heat. Whisk that vigorously so we don’t get scrambled eggs. And it’s going to give us a lovely velvety finish on our sauce. All right. Now for the fun part, assembling the papuakia. So, we’ll grab our eggplants. You can see that they’ve cooked down super tender. Grab a fork and just press down on the eggplant. So, you don’t want to scoop out the flesh. We just want to press down on it. Make a little indent so all of our meat sauce and our bashimal can fit there. Next, I’ll grab a spoonful of our meat sauce. And then into the center of that. Don’t overfill it. Just want to cover the base of the softened eggplant. To that, we’ll add a drizzle of our feta bashamel over the top. This is going to be so tasty. And for an extra hit of that delicious feta, we’ll just crumble some more over the top. And you can do this after it’s cooked or if you want that caramelized finish on it, then I suggest putting it on now. Well, that’s the first one done. I’ll finish off the rest of them and then they go back into the oven and we’re going to cook them until they’re just golden on the top. It won’t take long at all. [Music] [Music] Oh, it smells like Greek comfort food in here. And you can see that these have caramelized nicely on top. I’m just going to place one of these on a plate. This one has my name all over it. And do let them cool down slightly cuz they’re going to be piping hot. All that’s missing here is a little bit of freshness from some herb. So, just going to cut a few sprigs of my parsley. And we’ll just roughly chop that and then add that to the top. I just love that pop of color and like I said, the freshness of that over the top. That served with a simple green salad. A delicious dinner. You can see the elements of the mossaka there with the meat sauce, the bashamel, and the eggplant. Kind of like to say the name of this though. The actual name of this recipe is called Paput Saka. [Music]