Long before I ever thought of cooking as a career I had heard of George Perry-Smith’s restaurant in Bath; The Hole in the Wall.
This was principally because my cousin Dermot Staveacre, who was a student in Cambridge, used to work there as a waiter in his holidays and tell us stories of the goings on behind the scenes.
It all seemed incredibly glamorous to a 14 year old school-boy in Cork.
When, about eight years later, in my early twenties I went to England looking for experience in restaurants I used the Good Food Guide as my short list of the type of restaurants I wanted to work in.
As I looked into these restaurants, the starred restaurants of the early seventies, there was a thread running through them, all the chefs seemed to have worked in Perry-Smith’s restaurant in Bath and been trained by him.

He was the Gordon Ramsey of his age, without the histrionics.
It was he who took the recipes of Elizabeth David which were revolutionising home cooking in England and translated them into restaurant foods.
When I in fact found work, in the Wife of Bath in Wye, the chef, Michael Waterfield was another Perry-Smith protégé and spoke very highly of him.
Perry-Smith had at this time moved to a “Restaurant with Rooms” in Helston in Cornwall called the Riverside but had an ex Wife of Bath chef there; Simon Mallet, so we were all kept abreast of the happenings there when he visited his alma mater.
It was either Simon or Michael who one day , in passing, said that whenever they served Moussaka in The Hole in the Wall they used to top it with a cheese souffle.

This sounded like a brilliant idea to me and obviously intrigued me because I have kept the idea of this Moussaka in my mind since.

Moussaka and Lasagne vied with other as the dinner party dish of choice in the early seventies, they were both ideal dishes, one pot, hostess friendly and cheap.
I think the differences blurred in the seventies, I’m fairly sure I ate a few hybrids but eventually Lasagne conquered all before it and now we see it as the convenience dinner of choice, pre cooked and pre packed in the local deli.
Moussaka, outside of its home in Greece, has become almost forgotten.

There are as many variations for Moussaka as there are for Irish Stew so I presume that this national dish of Greece doesn’t have a true definitive version.
A lamb stew, usually minced lamb (although beef was also used) and aubergines were essential and come sort of topping, a cheese sauce or, as in Elizabeth David’s Mediterranean Food, where she gives a recipe which has a baked batter top like a Yorkshire Pudding.
Perry-Smith’s take, seemed to me ideal.
Moussaka I felt, needed to be looked at again, and I felt I might give the this version a try. I hasten to add that this is all based on a chance remark, I have no idea which this bears any relationship to the Moussaka cooked in Bath thirty some years ago.

Moussaka
(for 4 )

Olive Oil
2 Medium Aubergines
350g (12 oz.) Minced Lamb (or beef)
2 medium Onions
2 fat cloves Garlic

2 Carrots
1 Cinnamon Stick
280g (10 oz.) Tomato Passata or Chopped Tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried Oregano
Salt and pepper

Souffle Topping:
60g (2 oz.) Butter
60g (2 oz.) Flour
225ml (8 oz.) Milk
110g (4 oz.) strong Cheddar
3 Eggs

Method;

First cook the Aubergines.
Slice them in 2 cm. thick slices, diagonally is the easiest.

Fry these on both sides in hot oil until browned and cooked through.

Brown the mince in a pan in a little olive oil, breaking it up well with a wooden spoon.
Put this to one side.

Chop the onion, garlic and carrot and fry these on a high heat for a few minutes until beginning to colour.
Add the mince to the pan, the Oregano ,the cinnamon stick and the tomato.
Bring this to a simmer and simmer gently for about 45 minutes.

Add some water or stock if it dries.
Take out the cinnamon stick and discard.

Now using a casserole or souffle dish of roughly twoand a half litres capacity put in a layer of the sauce, a layer of Aubergine then repeat this ending with a layer of Aubergine on top.

Now make the souffle.

Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour then add the milk to make a stiffish white sauce.
Grate the cheese and melt this into the sauce.
Separate the eggs, stir the yolks into the sauce and beat the whites until stiff.
Fold the whites gently into the cheese sauce then spoon this on top of the layer of Aubergine.

Put the oven to 190C, 375F, Gas 5.
Cook the Moussaka at this temperature for about 40 minutes.

The souffle will rise a little and make a delicious but light crust on top of the Moussaka.

I don’t think this really needs potatoes or rice, maybe some bread and a salad.

Post Script March 5th ’08

I found this quote in an article by Rowley Leigh on Joyce Molyneaux (another graduate of Perry-Smith’s);
Part of the guiding principles in Joyce’s cooking – much of it inherited from the great George Perry Smith at the Hole in the Wall restaurant in Bath – was that nothing was wasted. If a salmon had been poached on the bone, the meat would be scraped off the bones afterwards with a teaspoon, to be used in a croquette or a pojarsky de saumon. Mushroom trimmings would go into a stock, the tops of leeks would clarify a consommé and trimmings from the rack of lamb minced to make a moussaka or at least a shepherd’s pie for the staff.

Perhaps the Moussaka was never served in the restaurant but was merely staff food?