- Bay leaves, like I touched on recently,
like what is the point of 'em?
What is it doing?
Like, what is the point?
Please help me.
(sniffs) Smells like plastic.
(upbeat music)
(logo popping)
Hello everyone, it's Barry here.
Hope you're well.
You, right there.
Wherever you are in the world,
welcome to our kitchen.
Today, we're doing another Taste The World recipe,
the basic series where I travel the world
but stay in my house.
It saves on the air miles and the jet lag,
and I get to try foods from around the world.
Today, I got a little bit inspired
from my kids watching "Mama Mia" the other night.
I didn't watch it, but for some reason,
it made me think of moussaka.
Oh, notes.
A lamb, potato, aubergine infested medley
with bechamel sauce topped.
And there are some debates that
it could originate from Egypt,
but I'll leave that up to you.
It's one of my favourite things.
I remember going to a restaurant,
an actual proper authentic Greek restaurant
in my hometown, and last time I went there,
there was a huge family argument
like smashing plates, but not in a good way.
Had the best moussaka ever,
and then they shut down like two weeks later,
so it must have been a proper like, yeah.
Anyhow, moussaka.
First thing you wanna do is slice up your aubergines.
I decided to slice mine lengthways,
but if you want, you can just cut them
straight into discs.
Oh, aubergines, by the way,
some of you might call eggplants
but I just don't get why.
Aubergine's a cool word.
Eggplant is more like a plant of eggs, like, just.
Weird things anyway, aren't they?
You ever noticed the skin on an aubergine
is really sort of, I don't know,
like fake leather kind of feel.
It's like you're slicing
into a fake leather jacket.
So we've got three aubergines or eggplants right there.
What you wanna do is get yourself
a big old frying pan and add in some oil.
I'm literally using this piece
to prop my camera up.
If I let go, look, it goes like that.
Gonna stick this under my lens and see if it does it.
But fry the aubergines.
I'm sorry, that's what I'm just gonna call 'em,
all right, we'll stick with that.
Fry them in batches either side until brown,
resting them on some kitchen towel,
and just repeat that process
as you go until they're all nice and done,
and they should be a little bit softer.
You know what, you could actually air-fry them.
You could grill them or bake them as well.
Actually, grilling them would be really quick.
You'd just brush 'em, yeah.
Now, I find lamb quite fatty.
This is 10% fat.
You could get 20% fat lamb,
that was a bit cheaper,
but I wanted to keep it a bit healthier.
If you wanna do a vegetarian version,
no lamb and just pad it out
with loads more vegetables, mushrooms,
and lentils and stuff like that.
Make it really, yeah.
And don't just get it to the point
where it's that sort of like blandy browny dull,
where you've just cooked the mince.
Like when I first started cooking,
that was what I would do.
I'd get it to that point
and it'd be like, yay, it's cooked.
But if you keep working away, stirring it
and like rendering off that fat,
you kind of get this like more darker,
deeper brown, a caramelization colour.
A little bit like the outer edge on a burger.
That's completely up to you,
but it's free flavour.
Yeah, basically what we did with the eggplants,
I mean aubergines.
Faux leather jacket vegetables.
But whilst that mince is cooking away,
you can sort of prep your other ingredients.
So I just chopped up an onion
until it was finely diced.
I also rocked my garlic
into nice little pieces.
When it came to the potatoes,
I personally like to leave my skin on, so.
Not my human skin, like the potato skin.
I gave them a decent wash
and then just sliced them nice and thin.
The potatoes then got dumped
into a sauce pan of boiling water to bubble away.
I tried to be economical today,
and once the lamb mince was done,
I, well, just got it out of the pan,
basically, and pushed it away.
I mean, I could just put that in a mixing bowl,
but I wanted to save on the washing up.
This is the dish that
it's all hopefully gonna come together in,
and I need to make sure I don't burn my work top.
Hang on.
So the mince can stay there,
but we will grab the frying pan
again using a little bit the oil left in there
and dump in the onion on its own.
And again, you're looking to cook that, and char it up,
and really drive that caramelization into it.
Like I say, I rave about it too much,
but it is free flavour.
Go for it.
Flavour town, one way ticket.
So it'll go translucent at first,
but once you are happy with it,
you can follow up with your chopped garlic from before.
The oregano.
I blooming love oregano.
You know, you smell it. (groans)
It just smells as good as it looks.
I mean, I think it smells better than it looks.
Some ground cinnamon.
But again, bay leaves like I touched on recently,
like what is the point of 'em?
Smells like plastic.
Red wine.
Yeah, that made an amazing sound.
I was thinking, yeah, this is gonna taste really good,
like gremlin style.
Yum yum.
All right, so that's jumbled together.
We will then push that lamb back in,
and give it a little stir.
And then we start to question
the role of a bay leaf.
Like, what is it doing?
Where's its mate gone?
What is the point of you?
So the point of this step
is we are just gonna cook it
over a medium low heat, stirring from time to time,
letting it bubble and reduce down that wine.
Ooh.
But then we follow it up with some more moisture,
so we'll grab a tin of tomatoes,
dollop in some tomato puree,
which for me is one of those like fascinating things.
Never really quite got the point of this stuff.
I mean, it's pretty intense.
I remember when we did like cooking at school
and then we did homemade pizzas
and tomato puree was used as the base sauce.
Woo, that blows your head off.
Keep it mild, folks.
Tomato puree must do something though,
way more than bay leaves anyway.
We'll also add in some sugar, some more water
for a bit more moisture in there,
and some salt, and a good old grind of pepper.
Let it simmer and bubble away
for a solid 20 minutes.
You can then, during that time,
question the role of the bay leaf.
Like, what is the point of a bay leaf?
What? Please help me.
Grab a block of butter
and shove it in that sauce pan,
return it to a heat,
and basically just melt it up.
Dump in your flour,
stirring it together with a spatula.
It'll feel very weird at first,
but just keep going over that heat
for a couple of minutes,
and then for the time being,
take it off the heat.
I could use a spatula,
but this is a whisk worth taking.
One of my favourite puns, sorry.
I love using that one.
What we're gonna do to that pan
is add milk to it in batches.
So keep whisking as you pour slowly through
in little batches, and that should end up
being nice and smooth.
Shove it back onto the heat
for about four to five minutes, whisking as you go.
I really hope this thickens, it should.
Just to let you know, this is skimmed milk
rather than semi-skimmed, or full fat milk,
or whatever you call it in your country.
I bought it because it was pretty much
almost half the price of semi-skimmed milk,
so I thought, let's get that.
And now I'm worried that
there's some sort of higher water content or something,
so hopefully this will thicken.
It should.
Well, I think that answered that question.
That is thicker than me and my maths class
at school back in the day.
Like, whew!
It thickened.
That smells really bland.
Let's add some flavour.
Also, don't overdo it on the heat.
You think, oh, yeah, it's gonna thicken some more.
You could burn it, all right?
Be careful.
So with it thickened,
let's take it to flavour town.
Dump in some grated Parmesan.
This is a whole nutmeg,
and it's actually quite fun grating it.
It makes these amazing little speckles of flavour.
Can you see that?
Also smells a bit like an aftershave as well.
Nutmeg for men.
Grind on a load of freshly cracked pepper,
and this is not a standard egg with two yolks in it.
This is a egg with an extra, extra yolk in it
that went in there and whisked it through.
So it'll take a little bit
of whisking around to break down that egg,
but keep going until you've got a nice smooth mixture.
I might have told this story once before,
but a guy I used to work with on the construction site
who was a farmer in his spare time, a chicken farmer.
I said, "Oh, I've never had a double yolker before."
And he's like, "All you gotta do
is hit the chicken with a stick,
it produces a double yolker every time."
And still to this day,
I am 99% certain that,
well, one, you shouldn't do that,
but two, it's not true. (laughs)
So don't hit a chicken.
Don't hit anything with a stick, nothing.
But double yolkers do exist.
Some of you guys sent me messages
and it's exciting to see.
With the sauce done and the mince still sat there,
it was time to fish out the bay leafs.
Oh, they look like they had a fun time anyway. (laughs)
Get 'em out and still question what they did.
Imagine after all this time, bay leaf?
No, that's just a prop.
It was time to build this moussaka,
so grab your baking dish
and add in a layer of the lamb mince,
then we drape the aubergine layer all on top.
Remember, if you want, you could cut them
into a disc shape, that's absolutely fine.
Then follow up with a layer
of the potatoes we cooked before,
and then we can repeat again
with another layer of the mince.
The remaining aubergine gets draped down.
In truth, I had one left,
and I'll probably eat that in a bit.
And then the layer of potatoes,
finally ending with a good old dump
of the bechamel sauce.
That's a really weird way of phrasing it.
Well, I actually did like little dollops of it
to spread it around.
I didn't wanna completely overlay it,
and I probably had about a third of the sauce left.
I don't want it spilling over too much.
And with that all done,
it was time to shove it in the oven.
All right, in it goes.
We'll see it in a bit.
Tray underneath.
It's baking in there for 50 minutes.
And that is where it is right now.
It's due to finish any moment now.
It smells incredible in here.
Myself and Mrs. B are gonna taste it,
and why don't you come along for the journey?
(Barry laughs)
I would just like to say,
as always with this Taste The World playlist,
if there is anyone from Greece that's going,
"No, you should have used this, this, this, this."
I've tried my best, okay?
Just for comparison, I have seen some people
make English style scones and quivered, okay.
But it's all fair.
It's all in the world of cooking.
It's nice.
And this smells amazing.
It's time to get it out.
Look, that is that bubbling
and that dripping that I was looking for.
You see that?
Oh my goodness.
I'm so glad I put the tray underneath.
Yes!
Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay.
(Barry groans)
That is a beauty.
It is insanely hot though.
I am not going to touch this immediately,
I will burn my tongue,
despite the amazing stench.
(Barry sniffs)
Mama Mia.
All right, here we go.
I'm going to take a big wedge out of this.
(Barry groans)
So let's spatula in, under, lift that out.
Oh my gosh.
I'm gonna catch it here. (gasps)
Look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look.
Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
(Barry groans)
Right, sit on there, sit.
Boston just sat.
You beauty.
Does this remind you of the time
we went to that Greek restaurant,
and they argued and then they shut the restaurant down?
- Yeah. (laughs)
- The perfect post yoga treat.
- Yes. Thank you.
- All right.
(upbeat music)
Mm!
- That's nice.
- Those potatoes and aubergines,
they sort of melt in your mouth.
- That's really tasty.
- Yeah?
- Yeah, they're really soft.
- The bechamel, I don't know,
maybe I should have put a bit more cheese in it.
I'm not really getting a huge flavour spank on that.
It's just kind of like a blanket
over the top that's holding it together.
- It's delicious.
- Yeah, you like it?
- I really like it.
Thank you. - Well, that's your lunch.
- Yeah.
- That's another Taste The World video in the bag.
Blooming love a moussaka.
And we've got quite a lot left. (laughs)
So that's dinner for the next few nights, all right?
- Yeah. (laughs)
- If you've got any cool Taste The World recipes
that you'd like to see, perhaps from your country,
do let me know down below.
Check out the rest of the playlist.
Don't forget to give the video a like,
and subscribe, if you're not already,
for regular food fun.
And yeah, it's time to eat some moussaka.
See you later, folks.
Ciao.
♪ 'Cause cooking is nice ♪
♪ Nice, nice, nice ♪
- [Barry] What is the point?