busy mum moussaka

With lots of these lovely Lebanese eggplants in our garden I decided to make moussaka the other night.

 As it was so hot, I decided to save heating up the kitchen and use my slow cooker.

 First, I cut the eggplant in half and fried them on both sides in a little olive oil.

(if you are using a conventional eggplant you should cut them in 1cm thick slices and if it is not fresh I would suggest you salt them for 1/2hr and then rinse off, because these are fresh from the garden and very sweet there is no need to do this)

The beauty of my slow cooker is that it has a searing pan, so I just used it and it saves on washing up.

 Once they were brown I set them aside on a plate.

 Then I browned 1kg mince and added a bottle of passata sauce. some cinnamon, cumin and coriander a little sprinkle of Celtic sea salt and some pepper.

The finished product because it was cooked in the slow cooker had a bit too much sauce, 

so next time I would only use 2/3 of the bottle.

 I layered the eggplants on the bottom.

Then I tipped in the meat.

 I mixed together 2C grated cheese, 500g ricotta and 1/2 C Greek yoghurt, then spread it over the meat.

I sprinked some extra grated cheese and paprika on top and grated over some nutmeg.

Then I put it in the slow cooker for 1hr on high and 1hr on low.

Serve with a garden salad.

Now this is where there should be a photo of the finished product, but I wanted to take one the next day with the leftovers but forgot, then when I was out the kids ate them- oops!

We are really enjoying these Lebanese eggplants, they are lovely roasted in the oven too!