Chicken and Vegetable Moussaka Bake

Moussaka has a reputation for being a Sunday afternoon job, all bechamel and butter and a sink full of washing up. This isn’t that. Our chicken moussaka strips the dish back to what it actually does well: layers of roasted vegetables and a paprika-spiked meat sauce, baked until the top browns and the whole tray sighs when you cut into it.

The trick here is the vegetables carry the weight, not the cheese. You brown a little chicken mince with mushrooms and smoked paprika, then stack it between eggplant, sweet potato, cabbage and kale. There’s a scatter of feta if you want it, but the dish stands up fine without.

The first time I built this in the kitchen I was sceptical a moussaka could hold together without a thick white sauce gluing it down. It does, because the passata reduces down and the sweet potato softens into a base that grips everything above it. What you end up with is closer to a vegetable lasagne with a Greek accent, and I mean that as a compliment.

A word on the paprika before you start. Smoked paprika is doing real work in this recipe, not just colour. Split it the way the method says, half in the meat sauce and half over the eggplant, and you get two different notes from the one spice: deep and savoury in the sauce, a little charred and sweet on the roasted rounds. If all you have is sweet paprika it’ll still be lovely, just gentler.

Ingredients

• 2 brown onions, finely sliced
• 250 g lean chicken mince or french lentils (for a vegetarian option)
• 100 g mushrooms, finely chopped
• 11/2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 250ml passata
• 300 g mixed cabbage (eg red, sugarloaf, wombok), shredded
• 1 eggplant, sliced into 5mm rounds
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 2 sweet potatoes, sliced
• 150 g kale or silverbeet, shredded
• 2 carrots, sliced thinly on the diagonal
• 2 roasted capsicums
• 2 tablespoons reduced fat feta cheese, crumbled (optional)

Get your slicing consistent before you turn the oven on. The eggplant wants to be around 5mm so it cooks through without going to mush, and the sweet potato can go a touch thinner since it sits at the bottom and takes the longest heat. Everything else is forgiving. Have your bowls of prepped veg lined up, because once you start layering you’ll want to move quickly while the sauce is warm.

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and line two baking trays with baking paper.
2. Place onions in a stainless steel frying pan over medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of water and cook until caramelised – about 5-6 minutes. Set aside.
3. Place mince, mushrooms and 1/2 teaspoon of paprika in a frying pan with 2 tablespoons of water or stock and cook, stirring frequently, until mince is browned off. Add 1 cup of the tomato sauce, mix well and cook for 15 minutes.
4. While sauce is cooking, place onions and cabbage on first lined baking tray and cover with foil. Place eggplant on second baking tray and sprinkle with remaining teaspoon of paprika. Place both trays in the oven for approximately 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and add fresh basil to the cabbage. Increase oven temperature to 200°C.
5. Place half the tomato meat sauce into bottom of a baking dish (about 25 cm square), then layer with all the potato slices and one third of the eggplant slices. Add all of the cabbage and onion mix, another third of the eggplant slices and all the kale. Top with the carrot, then the capsicum, and finish off with a layer of crumbled feta, the remaining eggplant and remaining tomato meat sauce. Cover with baking paper and foil and bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and paper and bake for a further 5 minutes, to brown the top.

Serves 6.

Serving, make-ahead and swaps

This is a tray you build ahead and thank yourself for later. Layer the whole thing the night before, keep it covered in the fridge, then bake it off the next evening straight from cold, adding ten minutes to the covered stage. It reheats cleanly too, so a big batch on Sunday sorts out a couple of weeknight dinners. It also freezes in portions once fully cooled, which is handy if you cook for one or two and don’t fancy the same dinner four nights running.

Serve it as it comes, or alongside a sharp green salad and a wedge of bread to mop the tray. If you’re feeding a crowd who want more on the plate, a bowl of brown rice on the side stretches it comfortably. The vegetarian version, built on french lentils instead of chicken mince, is honestly just as good, and it’s the one I reach for when I want something lighter to sit next to a feta, sweet potato and eggplant frittata for a shared table.

Play with the vegetables. If cabbage isn’t your thing, more kale or silverbeet does the job. Roast your own capsicum if you have the time, or use good jarred ones. Eating more veg through the week is one of the simplest changes worth making, and Better Health Victoria has sensible, no-nonsense guidance on getting a decent spread across the plate. For more of the same style of cooking, our golden coconut chicken curry and the mushroom, chicken and quinoa skillet both lean on vegetables doing the heavy lifting.

– Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen