How to Cook Spanish Cassoleta

Serves : 6

Preparation time: 5 mins

Cooking time: 50 mins

Ingredients needed to make Spanish cassoleta:

• 4 butifarras or pork sausages
• 60 gms all purpose flour
• 6 medium eggplants
• 60 gms butter
• ¾ liter milk
• Olive oil for cooking
• Grated mozzarella, as required
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cooking instructions for Spanish cassoleta:

• Prepare your oven by preheating it to 200 degrees C.
• Slice each eggplant into two halves and score a ‘X’ mark on its flesh without cutting through the peel.
• Place them in a baking dish and rub salt on the flesh side of the eggplant halves.
• Drizzle oil over them and roast them on the middle rack of the oven for half an hour at preheated temperature.
• Peel off the skin of  butifarras and crumble the meat into a saucepan.
• Drizzle some oil over the raw meat and saute the mixture, while stirring frequently, until it browns.
• Remove the roasted eggplants from the oven and scoop out its softened flesh into the browned meat.
• Add more oil over them if required and stir- fry the mixture for a couple of minutes.
• Taste and adjust the seasonings as necessary; remove from heat and set aside.
• To make the bechamel sauce, melt butter in a pot and remove from heat to stir in the flour immediately to form a smooth paste, free of lumps.
• Return the pan to heat and pour in milk, in a steady stream while you continue to whisk the sauce with the other hand.
• Season with a dash each of salt as well as black pepper and bring the sauce to boil.
• Once the sauce thickens, remove from heat and pour some of it into the base of a baking dish.
• Spread it across the dish with the back of a spoon and top it up with the eggplant-meat mixture.
• Smother it with rest of the bechamel sauce and finish it off with lots of grated mozzarella cheese.
• Bake the casserole in the oven on its top rack  until the crust turns golden brown.
• Serve hot along side slices of spiced bread.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Last Updated on December 26, 2012 by