Guest Post: Sean's Shepherd's Pie

So I decided that because my damn schedule is as busy as my girlfriends, it would be a nice idea to try to spend some time with each other to find a nice recipe and make dinner together. Being relatively inexperienced in the kitchen, I turned to Ben for some advice. I found a recipe for Shepherds Pie …

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 pound ground lamb (or substitute half with another ground meat)
• 1 cup beef or chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh or dry rosemary
• 1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup milk (any fat content)
• Kosher salt to taste

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. In a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, heat the oil, then add the onion, carrot, and meat. Cook until browned, 8 to 10 minutes.

3. Drain the fat and add the broth, tomato paste, and herbs. Simmer until the juices thicken, about 10 minutes, then add the peas.

4. Pour the mixture into a 1 1/2-quart baking dish; set aside.

5. Meanwhile, bring the potatoes to a boil in salted water. Cook until tender, about 20 minutes; drain.

6. Mash the potatoes with the butter, milk, and salt.

7. Spread them over the meat mixture, then crosshatch the top with a fork.

8. Bake until golden, 30 to 35 minutes.

I basically followed it all to a T except I added a good bit of Worcestershire Sauce while browning the meat, and I topped the mashed potatoes with shredded cheddar cheese. The only hangup we had was that my girl decided to add milk to the mashed potatoes after I had mashed them with heavy cream – she didn’t like all the cream…so we had some liquidy mashed potatoes on top but it basically baked itself into place in the oven.

I was very nervous about cooking something that I felt was going to be complicated – worried that it wasn’t going to turn out well and worried that I would scare myself away from cooking more often. It came out fantastic and I was thrilled with it…we both enjoyed it a lot. I’m really glad that it worked out well, because it proved to me that you don’t need to be an expert to successfully prepare a great meal. I’ll absolutely be trying to find some more things that we can do together. We’re going to try to come up with at least one night per week that we can make dinner with each other. It was a perfect way to spend a great night together…

Whole Wheat Pizza with Rapini Pesto and Roasted Garlic/Tomato/Red Pepper Puree

This is the pizza I made. It was amazing. AMAZING. I had tentative plans to make pizza this week anyway because of this new recipe I saw for whole wheat crust. I have made whole wheat crust before just by subbing out half of the white flour for whole wheat, but having an actual recipe in front of me lit the fire. I probably could have let thing slide, but Ryan got in touch and said that HE was interested in pizza-making this week as well.

So, I got up early and got the dough going. Dough advice: do not bother with the food processor. There is no reason that I can see to dirty the most annoying appliance in the world to wash, just to do something that is easily executed with a large mixing bowl and a spatula. While the dough was rising, I started preparation for the topping elements. My original concept for the pizza was the standard vegan white sauce (ie nutritional yeast, flour, soy milk, mustard, etc) with some veggies on top. On the way to the store though, I started thinking about Two Boots pizza with its sauce layers and varied crusts and I got the idea for a pizza with side-by-side purees and sparse cheese.

I already had some pesto made earlier in the week, so I decided to do a rapini (broccoli rabe) puree with the pesto worked in (which I have done before as a pasta sauce with great success) and a roasted red pepper and tomato puree alongside. To do the tomato-pepper business, I first blanched a tomato to remove the skin. I cored it and cut it lattitudinally (poles being on the stem ends), then removed the guts so that all was left was the tomato meat. I put the halves on some parchment paper, drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled on some basil, bay leaves, salt, and pepper (terragon also works but I was out), then put them in a hot oven. I don't have a gas oven (arrggghh) so I let the red pepper char in the oven along with the tomates. When the skin of the pepper was blackened most of the way, I put it in a paper bag for a few minutes to steam the skin off, then wiped off the charred skin, cut off the top, and cleaned out the seeds and membranes. I had also roasted some garlic with the other guys, which involves taking a few cloves and wrapping them in foil, still with the husks on. When the cloves are soft, they can be de-husked. All of this got tossed into the food processor with some olive oil and a dot of tomato paste. The rabe puree was just a matter of lightly sauteeing the rabe and then food-processing with the pesto and many squeezes of lemon juice; salt and pepper to taste.




By this time, Ryan had gotten here and we rolled out the dough. I usually do the pat out from the middle with the fingertips style, but Ryan recommended a rolling pin, which ended up giving a more even thickness to the crust. I spread out the green element and piped on the red using the plastic bag with the corner snipped off method.

I call it Green Pie with Red Suspenders:



Disaster was narrowly avoided when we made the decision not to corn meal the underside of the dough before sliding it onto the pizza stone. We tried all kinds of pulling and coaxing with multiple spatulas. The solution was pivoting and nudging with spatulas a little at a time to sneak bits of cornmeal underneath, until shimmying the board got the pie sliding around on the meal.

You can see how much less adorable it was by the time we got it into the oven.



What's that you say? It looks equally adorable as before its near miss? Oh, alright.

Note the pizza stone. This is essential to a delicious crust. We let the pizza hang out until the underneath of the crust was the color of a crust of a pizza that you would want to eat. Then we put Ryan's pizza in. It gets honorable mention, hence fewer pictures:




Ryan went the extra cheese, sliced tomato, and scallions route. Not bad actually.