Sweet potato topped shepherd's pie

Since my wreck, I have craved nothing but comfort foods. Heavy foods that pay no mind to my waistline. Mostly, I've been indulging in take-out and super processed foods. While the desire for comfort food has not left, I decided to go for something a bit more nutritious. REAL FOOD! I had some beef stir fry meat (pretty much any minced beef will do...even ground beef) that I chopped up. The idea with all of this is to keep everything roughly the same size. At any rate this is real, unprocessed, comfort food. With veggies and the super food, sweet potatoes, this dish is high in Vitamin A and packs a taste punch!

Sweet potato topped Shepherd's Pie
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

1 lb. beef stew meat, minced (skirt steak or chuck roast also works, as does ground sirloin)
3 larch carrots, chopped
1 small onion, diced
1 cup frozen peas
1 bottle stout (Guiness is awesome in this)
1 cube beef boullion
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
5-6 T. oil (or, to be honest, bacon grease is fabulous here), divided
1/4 cup milk (or half and half)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spread the sweet potatoes out on a cookie sheet. Coat with 3 T oil. Roast 15 minutes or until cooked through.
2. Heat 2 T. oil in a large pan. Add the veggies, and cook for 5-7 minutes on med-high heat. Add a pinch of salt to help them sweat a bit. Keep everything moving in the pan. If things start to stick or if you notice the pan browning, turn down the heat a bit.
3. Dump the cooked veggies into a baking dish, leaving as much of the oil in the pan as possible. If the pan is dry, add 1 T of oil. Toss in the beef and brown well.
4. Turn the heat up slightly and deglaze the pan with half the stout (about 6 oz). If you'd rather not use the stout, use coffee. They both add tons of flavor, don't skimp out with just using water!
5. Crumble the beef boullion cube into the mixture and stir well. Add the veggies back to the pan and stir until everything is coated. Simmer 5 minutes (med-low heat).
6. Put the meat mixture back in the baking dish. Mash the sweet potatoes with the milk. Cover the meat mixture with the mashed potatoes and you're done! Tear it up!

Pasta imperfecto

Yesterday I decided to make some homemade stuffed pasta. I was in the mood for a heavy Italian meal, and felt like getting my hands dirty. I had the best intentions, really. I was going to make fun pasta pillows stuffed with Italian sausage, spinach and cheese. I knew it would be a little labor intensive, but I didn't count on giving up 3 hours of my life (minus shopping time)! I was so exhausted at the end, I could barely enjoy my meal! I neglected to take a picture of some of the stuffed pasta pillows, sorry. They were all randomly shaped, some where oblong rectangles, some where petite rounds, some where massive triangles, all were tasty. :) My sauce was ultra chunky and chocked full of veggies.

Garden sauce:

2 medium zucchini, quartered and thinly sliced
about a cup of carrots, thinly sliced (about the same size as your zucchini)
1 cup cremini or button mushrooms, chopped
1 onion, chopped
4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup red wine or chicken stock
1 small can tomato sauce
2-14 oz cans diced tomatoes (no salt added)
1 tbs oil
S & P
2 Tbs Italian seasoning (usually a mix of basil, fennel, oregano maybe some rosemary)

Saute the veggies in the oil until they begin to caramelize. Deglaze pan with stock or wine, then add tomatoes, sauce and seasonings. Let simmer for 20-30 minutes until nice and thick.

Pasta Dough:

2 cups all purpose flour (plus more for the board)
3 large eggs
1 tsp oil (preferably olive)
1/2 tsp salt

Make a well in the flour, then crack the eggs into it. Sprinkle with salt. Take a fork and carefully beat the eggs. Add the oil, then carefully start mixing in some flour from the bottom (not the sides!) of the well until you have a nice bright yellow paste. Using a bench scraper or a knife with a large blade (think cleaver or butcher knife) start scraping the walls of the well into the moist middle. At this point, you're gently folding in the flour, just to get it incorporated, go easy on it until a dough forms! Once you have a dough, knead it just until it's got a smooth consistency. To test to see if your gluten has been properly developed, poke the dough with a thumb. If it springs back, you're good...if the indentation stays, keep kneading. Once the dough is ready, cover it, and let it rest in the fridge for at least 10 minutes. If you try to roll it out right then, it will keep shrinking back and drive you crazy! Not to mention, the pasta will be tough. Once the dough has rested, half it, then roll it out into workable portions. You can then shape it however you wish. You can cut it into strips for fetutini or squares for ravioli. Use your imagination! Remember: fresh pasta only takes about 3-5 minutes to cook, so don't leave it alone for too long!

Sausage, spinach and cheese stuffing:

15 oz Ricotta cheese
1 cup chopped spinach (I used really well drained and thawed frozen spinach)
1 lb Italian Sausage (or you can make your own with 1 lb of ground pork)*
1/2 cup onion, finely minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup Italian blend of cheeses (take your pick)
1 Tbs oil
1 egg
S & P
1/4 tsp nutmeg (it's generally a good practice to use nutmeg when you have dark green veggies)

Brown the meat in the oil with the onions and garlic. Season with S & P. In a big bowl, mix the remaining ingredients. When the meat mixture is done, allow it to cool to room temp so that it doesn't melt the cheese or scramble the egg. After it's cool, mix it with the cheese. You're now ready to stuff some pasta or use it in a lasagna!

Pasta, please!

I'm in the mood to make some pasta. I haven't made any in a few years, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I'm excited about getting my hands in some dough, though. Here's the game plan, I will make some cheesy, sasuagy pasta pillows, and nestle them in a nice veggie-packed marinara sauce. I'll let you know how it goes!

Sunday eats

I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, Sundays were feasting days. There was usually chicken or pot roast and plenty of sides to please even the pickiest crowd. My mother made Sunday cooking look effortless. Somehow all of this amazing food appeared on the table with little to no effort. I now know that I was just not paying enough attention. Sunday meals take tons of planning, shopping and preparation. Last Sunday, my plans to go to church were thwarted by a flat tire, so I stayed home and treated my parents to a good ol' fashioned Sunday feast.

The menu:

Beef roast braised in red wine
Citrusy green beans topped with crunchy fried onion rings
Roasted garlic-herb potatoes


Since I hadn't been planning on making roast, I had to take one out of the freezer and toss it in the microwave to get it defrosting. While the microwave worked it's magic, I got a pan screaming hot and roughly chopped an onion and the rest of the garlic bulb left from the pizza. I took the meat out of the microwave, and cut it into about 5 large pieces. My pan was starting to smoke, so I quickly dredged the meat with flour and tossed them into the hot oil. I just wanted to get some color (and thus more flavor) on all sides of the meat. After everything was browned, I added about a cup of baby carrots, the onion and garlic. I took the briefest moment to listen to everything sizzle (I just love that sound!) before deglazing the pan with 3 cups of warm water (unfortunately I had no beef stock) and about that much red wine. I just wanted to cover the meat with liquid. A few seasonings (S/P, and about 2 Tbs of Mrs. Dash Southwest chipotle seasoning) went in, then I covered the dutch oven and put it in the 400 degree oven for 3 hours. When I checked on it, everything was bubbling nicely, so I lowered the temp to 375 for another hour.

During that last hour of cooking, I heated a pot of oil to 350, and very thinly sliced an onion. I did the typical egg dip/flour dredge routine then plunged the little darlings into the hot oil for a quick fry. I diced a few potatoes and tossed them with melted butter and garlic salt, then they went on a sheet pan and into the oven. Two cans of green beans, 1 Tbs of orange zest and the juice of the orange + a little s/p went into a casserole dish and then into the oven. I drained the fried onions on paper toweling, pulled out the roast and placed it in a bowl so that I could make a pan sauce with the cooking juices. Thanks to the flour from the original searing of the meat, the sauce thicken really well. The green beans came out of the oven first...they just needed to be warmed through. The potatoes were next once they started to get nice and brown. The fried onions were laid to rest atop the green beans. The gravy was poured on top of the meat, and the potatoes were dumped onto a serving platter.

Things moved very quickly at the end, but thanks to good planning, the timing was great...everything was ready at the same time! Woohoo! Sorry there are no pics of the potatoes, I didn't think they were that interesting looking...I mean, we all know what cut up potatoes look like.