Maria's Muskoka Moussaka

2-3 large eggplants
1 pack ground meat
1 onion (optional)
a few cloves of garlic (optional)
1 large can of spaghetti sauce - your favorite brand - or make your own!

Wash and dry eggplant and slice without skinning.
Spread out the slices NOT overlapping in baking tray and bake in oven with grill on high until browned on one side.
Take tray out and turn over slices, to brown on the other side. Depending on size of oven and pans, do in 2-3 turns, until all eggplant slices are browned on both sides.

You can optionally sprinkle a little olive oil (extra virgin preferably) over the slices before you put in oven.
You can also optionally sprinkle some finely chopped fresh garlic over the slices.
Add your favorite herbs also - thyme, rosemary and oregano all go very well with this.

You can serve these grilled eggplant slices as a side-dish to any meats.
You can also add slices of fresh tomato, or small cherry tomatoes, zucchini, red and/or green peppers and also grill in the oven, and use in this dish or as grilled vegetable side-dish.

Brown ground meat, without adding any oil, the meat will melt down it's own grease and it's usually not necessary to add oil.
I like to brown ground meat on a high temperature and leave it is biggish size chunks. Let it almost burn before you turn over and mix. The very browned meat will be tastier. Add the chopped onion at this point, it will help de glaze the meat stuck to the pan. When it is all well-browned, add a little cooking wine, or left-over wine - it can be white, red, or even beer. It doesn't matter if it's 1/2 can of flat beer from last nite - save it and use to cook (not if you've been drinking from the can, ahem...).
If you don't have any wine/beer on hand, use tap-water, or even a little apple juice - be creative - no problem!
Reduce heat to minimum and let simmer until the liquid has evaporated, but don't let it burn!
Add 1/2 of the large can of spaghetti sauce and let simmer also, mixing well.
At this stage I like to add a little water for the meat and tomato flavors to mix well and to help simmering.

Take a baking dish, and spread the meat sauce mix on the bottom.
Cover with layer of eggplant.
Spread the rest of the spaghetti sauce on top of the eggplant layer.
Top off with your favorite melting cheese.
You can do several layers, depending on size of pan and amount of ingredients you end up with.
Grill in oven until cheese is melted.
Enjoy!


Salt - I cook with little salt, and find that the spaghetti sauce already has enough salt for my taste. But, feel free to add salt to the eggplant in the oven, and to the meat when making the meat sauce.

Moussaka is a Greek traditional dish, and this is my very simple version of it - look for the information and history on the real thing on this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moussaka