Juliette’s Moussaka
CHEF: MENY VAKNIN
RESTAURANT: MISHMISH
LOCATION: MONTCLAIR
“(My mother) is always the inspiration. I take it wherever I want to take it, but it starts with her.” —Meny Vaknin
When Meny Vaknin returns home to Israel, he catches up on more than just the latest family news. Those trips are also an opportunity for the chef/owner of Mishmish, in Montclair, to enjoy his mother’s cooking as she revisits the dishes and flavors of his youth.
“When I go home, she makes a lot of foods for me from childhood that I like. I ask her to do this and that so that I can just sit and enjoy,” Vaknin says. “She has a big repertoire of dishes. And she’s also super creative.” On his latest visit, his mother, Juliette, prepared a long-forgotten dish—her unique version of moussaka. Vaknin brought the essence of that childhood favorite back to New Jersey, tweaking the recipe to make it his own.
Rather than layering meat and eggplant, as is typically done in moussaka, Vaknin’s mother cuts pockets into the sides of thick slices of eggplant, which she then stuffs with seasoned ground beef. The slices are dipped in beaten eggs, coated with flour and fried in hot oil. Vaknin offers two tips to avoid soggy fried eggplant slices: Make sure that the oil is “super hot” to help minimize the amount of oil that is absorbed, and pat the fried slices with paper towels to remove excess oil. His mother then simmers the eggplant slices in tomato sauce for 30 minutes.
Vaknin alters his mother’s recipe in several ways. Along with onions, garlic, cilantro and his house-made baharat (an aromatic blend of warm spices used in Middle Eastern cuisine), he seasons his ground beef with mint. “My mom doesn’t approve. She hates mint. We have a big fight over it,” Vaknin says with a laugh. “I think it is great and makes the meat bright. But she won’t hear of it.”
Instead of breading and frying, Vaknin lays the un-breaded stuffed eggplant slices on a sheet pan that is coated with a generous layer of olive oil, then steams them in his restaurant’s combi oven—a combined steam and convection oven that allows him to regulate humidity over a wide temperature range. After 15 minutes of steaming, he switches the oven to dehydrate mode to suck the moisture out of the eggplant. Rather than simmering the slices in tomato sauce, he tosses them in the warmed sauce just before serving.
The toppings on Vaknin’s moussaka also diverge from his mother’s culinary tradition. “I add a little feta cheese to it, which we don’t do in Israel because, in my parents’ house, they don’t mix dairy and meat,” he says. “And I added sweet potato fries to have some crunch and texture.”
At Mishmish, this dish is served on a thin layer of pureed sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes). The puree is there to add a layer of savory earthiness, while giving the creamy effect of béchamel sauce.
Vaknin credits his mother for his creative side and for laying the foundation for much of his cooking. “She is always the inspiration,” he says. “I take it wherever I want to take it, but it starts with her.” He believes that a willing cook can be taught how to expand on a dish to make it his or her own, but truly successful dishes require more than just cooking skills. “You have to have a reference,” Vaknin says. “There has got to be a base of emotional foundation there. I feel like if there is no emotional base, then it is lacking a lot.”
For him, that emotional base—and his references for flavor—are rooted in the dishes of his childhood. “That’s how I cook. I always have to find that little bit of childhood reference, and then I just go from there,” he says. “I love that I have that reference for everything because I operate with the senses. If I smell something, I am like, ‘wait, what is this? Where is this taking me?’”
“It is always about memory,” Vaknin adds. “It is true because food is just all memories.”
MISHMISH
215 Glenridge Ave., Montclair
973.337.5648
mishmishcafe.com
