Bulgarian Musaka recipes

Most of this post was not written by me. I miss Bulgarian food occasionally, and Google has been great for finding recipes. I've found it's a lot more successful, of course, if I search in Bulgarian. Lately, I've been trying to find good recipes for Moussaka. These attempts usually result in dozens and dozens of recipes which have very little in common -- Bulgarians make moussaka with eggplant, sauerkraut, pumpkin, leeks, spinach, rice, carrots, and any number of other things. I found a forum thread that gave a recipe rather similar to the one I remember and love, and went ahead and translated it. This is the thread just as it was written, but translated to English; dashes separate posts, and square brackets give my translation notes. I'm leaving this here partly to have the recipe posted somewhere that I won't lose it, and partially so that people will nag me to try it (you know you want to!).

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Biskvita:
This is the so-called "cafeteria" stew, from a book of recipes for occasions when you're eating with company.

For four portions:
350 g. minced meat (mixed -- pork with beef or whatever you like)
600 g. potatoes
100 g. onion
300 g. tomatoes (fresh or preserved)
50 g. oil
30 g. flour
130 ml. fresh milk [i.e. not yogurt]
2 eggs
50 g. kashkaval cheese [mozzarella or mild cheddar are very similar]
1 tsp. butter
Red and black pepper, parsley [Red pepper is paprika, not particularly spicy]

Peel the potatoes and cut them into thin little slices. Then half-fry them in the fat (in the original recipe it says to "blanch" them). Grease a pan of appropriate size, and layer: chopped tomatoes, half the potatoes, the slightly-rinsed minced meat [maybe it just means 'add a little water'?], the remaining potatoes, and slices of tomato. Add boiling hot [beef] bouillon to cover everything, then bake in a heated oven until it looks cooked. After this, pour on a bechamel sauce: The flour is fried with the butter and then you stir in the milk. After it thickens (while stirring continuously), pull it off the heat and add beaten eggs. Pour this mixture on the musaka, sprinkle grated cheese on the top, and then cook it until the crust browns.

My changes -- I cut the potatoes into cubes and I don't fry them, but just add them raw. I add carrot, I add the tomatoes later, and I use less meat. For spices, I add savory and just a little bit of basil (homegrown -- it has nothing in common with the stuff they sell in packets).

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Raza:
And my changes to your changes B-)
They're the same as yours. We also really like the musaka with the potatoes cut into cubes (It's not particularly aesthetically pleasing, but it's really good, eh? :-D) However, I use yogurt and eggs for the topping. If I have some pumpkin [squash] on hand, I chop that too into cubes and add it to the potatoes. It comes out softer and lighter. I also make musaka with just pumpkin and blue [unripe?] tomatoes. And I've made it a few times with sour cabbage [sauerkraut I think]. Once I was too lazy to roll the surmi [dolmades] and so my sly plan was to try them in the form of a musaka :-D. I was worried [my heart was curling up?] that someone was going to make fun of it :-D.

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Veshtitsa:
Hehe, yeah, Raza ;-)

I add pumpkins and a [sweet] pepper, it makes it really delicious! And because my husband doesn't eat meat, ordinarily I make it with soy minced meat, steamed beforehand with onion and carrots and lots of spices: savory, dill, cumin, and black pepper. My son even thinks that it tastes better with the soy mince than with the meaty variety. I don't do a topping, my family doesn't like it :-D.

An unintended cultural insight

Google has an interesting feature where it tries to guess what you're going to type. So if you type part of a word or phrase, it shows you a list of common ways to complete that phrase from its search history. It seems to censor certain words, but for the most part, you get a clear view of what people are searching for.

One of the curious side effects of this is that it reflects the mood of our times. Try typing in "overcoming," and see the most common results. Now try "mormon," then "lds," for an interesting view of both sides of the coin (Mormons refer to themselves as LDS far more often, thus searches for 'lds' will find mostly things that Mormons are typing in, while searching for 'mormon' will find what others are asking about them).

If this kind of stuff interests you, Google also keeps a site where they show what the most common searches are over time. Look at www.google.com/trends.