Recipe Challenge - Book #38

Oh Delicious magazine.  How I hate thy recipes.  And why oh why do I have yet another bloody Delicious magazine on my shelf. I guess it's because it's vegetraian and the pictures are nice and maybe I got it for free.  I can safely say I've never actually used it before, so I had a choice of everything in order to satisfy the criteria that the recipe be something I'd never made before.  In the end I chose something I figured I could make with the minimum of extra purchases from the supermarket.  And since I couldn't find fennel seeds (to roast and grind), that left me with just needing to get buffalo mozzarella . Which I coudn't find either, so I got a ball of regular mozzarella.   

The moussaka recipe dictated I dust each slice of eggplant with flour and fry it for 10 minutes, and that I should do this in two batches. I'd like to know what frying pan is large enough to fit 1.5 eggplants worth of slices as after two batches in our large frypan I realised I was looking at another 50 minutes of frying before even getting close to putting the dish in the oven for another 30 minutes. 

At this point Jett, who doesn't like eggplant anyway,  wisely suggested I halve the recipe so it would serve 2 instead of 4.  I agreed and about an hour later, it was ready to serve.  I must say the recipe was irritatingly vague in many areas - it never said how thick to cut the eggplant, it didn't say how much mozzarella to use, or how thin to slice it. 

It tasted ok I guess. For that much trouble I'd prefer vegetarian lasagne, and I'd definitely use more spices normally - this had just fennel and salt and pepper - even substituting the fennel for cumin seeds left it fairly bland.  But although I was definitely underwhelmed last night,  I had the leftovers tonight (while everyone else had fish) and it seemed to taste a bit better.