Cooking - Shepherd's Pie

Cold weather is wishful thinking on my part! - still longing for a drop to a seasonal norm in the seventies here in Tucson but have to make do with the mid-eighties and a drop into the forties at night. How we suffer here!

Anyway, blissful weather doesn't stop me from thinking comfort food , and Shepherd's Pie is one of those ultimate comfort foods - it's right up there with soup, Cornish pasties, a great stew, chicken and dumplings. Traditionally, when made with beef, this is called Cottage Pie but what the heck! It's origins stem from the acceptance of the potato as a staple ingredient in English/Scottish cooking . Lots of potato and a little meat allowed the frugal housewife to "stretch the roast".

I've had some pretty awful versions of this dish in my life. Probably the nastiest were boarding school fare - glutinous, brown messes topped with post-war dehydrated mashed potatoes. My mother's version back in those days of rationing made use of the left-overs from a Sunday roast be it beef or lamb. The cold meat was minced and added to a brown sauce. It was a pretty tasty dish. It was only later, when meat became plentiful, that her version , and now mine, uses freshly ground beef.

The heart of a Shepherds Pie is the brown sauce, and if you want to be a purist and make your own, James Beard created a flavorful recipe. Follow this link for his recipe. If, like me, you find the occasional short-cut to be inoffensive and a time-saver , look for packaged mix made by Coleman - it takes a lot of the work out of prep time, and with a little doctoring produces an excellent Shepherds Pie. Here's my version of this once humble dish. Allow about 30 minutes for prep and about 1:15 minutes total prep and cooking time. The filling and mash can be made ahead of time. If starting with a cold filling, re-heat it on stove-top before adding the potato layer and putting under the grill.

This makes four, as my kids describe it, "regimental size" servings or six normal servings. It holds very well as left-overs - just re-heat in the microwave. I frequently double the recipe size and slice big squares that I freeze in single serving packages.

Shepherd's Pie

1. About 2 Cups of Brown Sauce


2. OR 1 package of Shepherd's Pie mix used as directed.


3. About 1 TBS olive oil
   


4. 1 llb 93% lean ground beef


5. 1 mid-size onion or a mixture of diced onions and leeks - enough to get 1 1/2 Cups


6. About 1 Cup coarsely chopped carrots


7. 1 Cup frozen peas


8. Dash Worcestershire sauce


9. 1 tsp. Dijon style mustard


10. Fresh cracked pepper and good salt (Maldon Sea Salt preferred) to taste. Dried thyme/parsley.


11. Topping: 4 baseball sized potatoes, 1 medium sized turnip, 1/2 large yam ** peeled and cut in 2" chunks.

** I like a mixture of root vegetables for the topping. It's a sneaky way of introducing variety. You can use all potatoes - all sweet potatoes - or any root veggie mixture.
Method


Make the Brown Sauce according to recipe or follow directions on the package for dry mix .
Pre- heat oven to 350F
Heat the oil in a shallow, oven-proof casserole or skillet. gently saute the onions/leeks until soft and translucent. Remove them to a bowl using a slotted spoon. Bring the heat up, add the beef to the casserole and saute briskly until browned. Return the onions to the casserole, add the raw carrots and peas, stir in the sauce (fresh or mix) season with a dash of Worcestershire sauce , mustard, salt and pepper and a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme or a tsp. dried thyme. Bring to a gentle simmer and transfer from stove-top to the middle shelf of a preheated oven.

While the filling is simmering in the oven. Boil the potatoes. Drain and mash with butter, salt and pepper and a couple of TBS of freshly chopped parsley. (do NOT use any liquids - you want a solid as opposed to runny mash)

Carefully remove the casserole from the oven. Turn the oven setting to Broil. Spread the mashed potato in an even layer over the filling. The thickness of the layer will vary dependent on the diameter of your casserole but try for a minimum 1" thickness. Score it with a fork. You can gild the lily by topping it with a handful of shredded sharp cheese and sliced tomatoes.


Put under the broiler for around 10 minutes or until the top is lightly brown and the filling is bubbling around the edges. Traditionally this is a meal in one and served alone.

Genny made a version of this over the weekend too and she'll post her comments and photos.

Genny's version of the shepards pie is now a staple of our household. Never would I have believed it. My recipe follows Gerry's above except no leeks (which I do happen to love, just didn't have any) and instead of traditional mashed potatoes for the topping I did mashed sweet potatoes. So it is a Thanksgiving version of shepards pie...good year round.! Try it. You would have thought the dish was made by Paula Deen.

Cooking - Roasted Parsnip and Carrot Soup

We're well into fall but you'd be hard pressed to know it this week in Tucson. Temperatures have been hovering in the low nineties - doors and windows are wide open and I'm fighting the urge to turn the AC back on.

Last week was a different story - we had a frost! I have clear childhood memories of my mother commenting that it was best to wait for the first frost before digging parsnips. With that advice in mind I headed for the 17th. Street Market here in town - it's a glorious cornucopia of foods from all over the world plus an organic veggie section. Don't tell my kids but it's also the only place I can find Marmite - the mere mention of it sends then racing away from my house. They consider it a true weapon of mass-destruction. I think if they found out my source for this luscious, gooey brown spread for toast, they'd buy them out and destroy the stock. They claim I forced it upon them in their youth, and sent them to school with Marmite sandwiches making them social pariahs. The clincher to the Marmite hatred was when I "forced" it on kid who had slept over...my son told him it was made of boiled camel feet and his mother called me to inquire, ever-so politely, just what was it I had spread on her traumatized son's toast.

My haul at the market included beautiful leeks, the best looking parsnips I've seen in years, and carrots and potatoes fresh from the field. I pulled a lovely onion from my own garden- spread out my goodies and thought, dinner.

The temporary cold snap brought out my soup making gene so I invited close friends and fellow soup devotees over for a fireside supper. The soup gene reference is a family joke. When my middle boy was serving in Nepal in the Peace Corp he was located in a remote area. He had subsistence rations and his one treasure - a tiny veggie plot , ownership of which he constantly disputed with the village oxen. We received a rare and welcome phone call one day - he had hiked eleven miles to the nearest phone. "Mom," he yelled into the phone, "I've inherited the soup gene," and he went on to describe a soup he had made from essentially nothing. True stone soup.

When choosing root vegetables like carrots, parsips and leeks, look for medium size ones - the monster ones can be tough. This recipe looks somewhat labour intensive but it really isn't. It can be made ahead and re-heated gently before serving.

Roasted Parsnip and Carrot Soup

1. 1 Tbs. butter. 2-3 Tbs. olive oil
   
2. 4 medium carrots
3. 4 medium parsnips
4. 4 medium potatoes cut into 2" chunks. If using fresh, thin skinned red potatoes (recommended) you will NOT need to peel them.
   
5. 1 fat leek, cleaned and thinly sliced
   
6. 1 baseball size sweet onion peeled and thinly sliced.
   
7. 6 or more Cups chicken or vegetable stock
8. several sprigs of fresh thyme or 1 tsp. dried
9. several sprigs of fresh marjoram or 1 tsp. dried
10. 1/2 Cup dry sherry
    
11. 1/2 cup chopped, flat leaf parsley for garnish
12. Optional 1/2 Cup cream or half and half
13. Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Pre-heat oven to 425F. Wash carrots - if they are fresh and tender they will not need peeling - and chop them into 2" chunks.

Wash and peel parsnips and cut into similar size chunks as the carrots.

Put 2 TBs olive oil in a bowl, add the parsnips and carrots, season with salt and pepper and use your hands to toss and coat them lightly with the oil. Tip onto a baking tray. Roast for 20 minutes or until taking on a golden brown tinge. You don't want to burn them but they should be fork tender and browned. Roasting the vegetables brings out their natural sweetness.

As the root veggies roast warm the remaining oil and butter in a heavy bottomed soup pot. Add the leeks and onions and saute lightly until they are limp but not browned - about 10 minutes.

Tip the roasted root vegetables into the soup spot with the onion and leek, scrape in any browned bits. Add up six cups of stock, the fresh or dried herbs and the potatoes. Simmer 30 minutes or until the potatoes are well cooked. If you used fresh herb sprigs, remove stalks now.

Use a hand held immersion blender to puree the soup. (You can use a blender or processor but that involves extra steps and extra clean-up. The immersion blender is my favorite method.) Add the sherry. Simmer about ten minutes to further blend flavours. Check for seasoning, add salt and pepper to taste. If your soup is too thick, thin out with additional stock and simmer to blend.

To serve - ladle into shallow soup bowls, garnish with the parsley and if you want to gild the lily, drizzle a swirly pattern of cream or half and half on top.

I served this with an Asian Pear and Arugula salad, recipe courtesy of Nov. '09 Food and Wine, and Fennel and Smoked Salmon Tartlets for a tasty, satisfying light supper.