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Mousoka Persane
Pick off all the meat from the leg of lamb left over from yesterday and cut into small square pieces. Cut the same way half a medium, peeled eggplant. Peel and cut two fresh red tomatoes into small squares; place and keep the articles on a plate.
Heat a tablespoon butter in a small saucepan, add six finely chopped shallots and half a finely chopped green pepper; let lightly brown for five minutes, then add the articles on the plate. Moisten with a half gill white wine and gill of white broth. Season with teaspoon salt and two saltspoons paprika; adding one finely chopped bean garlic; mix a little, cover the pan, cook for five minutes on the range, then set to bake in the oven for thirty minutes. Remove, place in a baking dish, sprinkle a tablespoon fresh bread crumbs over, reset in the oven for ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A quick leftover-lamb supper rather than the layered, custard-topped casserole most people now picture. The measurements are Edwardian and the oven temperature is left unstated.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of white wine is 1/4 cup and a gill of broth is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, making the paprika 1/2 teaspoon.
- A bean of garlicThat is one clove, not a head. "Bean" is one of the odd literal renderings of continental kitchen French that run through this book.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given anywhere in the recipe. 350F is a reasonable working default for both the covered 30-minute bake and the 10-minute crumb browning.
- The lamb is already cookedThis is a reheating dish, built on meat picked from yesterday's roast leg. Cut it small so it heats through, and bring the finished dish to a proper serving heat; do not extend the cooking hoping to tenderise it, as cooked lamb only dries out.
- EggplantHalf a medium eggplant, peeled and diced, gives roughly 2 cups. Modern varieties are generally less bitter, so salting and draining is optional, though it does firm the cubes and reduce how much butter they absorb.
- ShallotsSix shallots is a good deal for a small pan. Period American usage of "shallot" was sometimes loose; if using true shallots, three or four may be closer to the intent.
- Use an ovenproof panThe recipe moves the covered saucepan straight into the oven, then turns the contents out into a baking dish for the crumb top. A small braiser or cast-iron pan does both jobs and saves a transfer.
- YieldAs written this serves two, or three at a stretch. It scales cleanly if you have more meat left over.
Moussaka belongs to the whole eastern Mediterranean and the Ottoman world; the name is generally traced to the Arabic musaqqa'a, understood as something moistened or chilled, and versions of eggplant baked with meat turn up from the Levant to the Balkans. What is striking here is what is absent: no layers, no béchamel, no long baking. The thick custard top that now defines the Greek dish is usually credited to Nikolaos Tselementes and his cookbooks of the 1920s, well after this book appeared, and Filippini's version is closer to the older stewed style, a sauté finished under bread crumbs in the French manner he knew best. The "Persane" tag reflects the loose geography of grand-hotel menu French, where a dish with eggplant, paprika and garlic could be assigned an eastern label without much regard for provenance. Its place in the book is practical as much as exotic: it opens with yesterday's leg of lamb, and thrift ran through even the most cosmopolitan kitchens of the period.