Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The Good Shepherd



Another casserole-type dish?!? Two in a row - you ask? You bet. And you’ll see why in a sec! It’s been cold here in Boston – demonically so, and therefore we wanted comfort food that'll keep your insides warm. We decided on a kicked up version of shepherd's pie that would be topped off by mashed sweet potatoes and sharp cheddar cheese.

We browned up some “meatloaf mix” in some olive oil. This is just ground veal, pork and beef to give a nice depth to our pie. Once browned, we removed from the pan and started sautéing diced carrots and onions. After 10 minutes we added a couple cloves of chopped garlic and some chopped mushrooms. The spicing for this dish consisted of salt, thyme and lots of freshly ground Tellicherry black pepper.



At this point we boiled up 2 diced sweet potatoes, and once tender, we mashed them with S&P, 1.5 TBS Promise, and ¼ cup milk. Returning to the veggies: we deglazed with ¼ cup red wine and 2 cups of beef stock. We returned the browned meat to the pan and added a cup each of frozen peas and chopped spinach.



After most of the liquid had cooked off, we turned off the heat and spread the mashed sweet potatoes over the top of the veggies and meat, topped that with a sharp cheddar and threw the cast iron pan under the broiler for about 5 minutes.

This pie was so delicious, it made great leftovers for days! As you can tell, we LOVE one pot dishes – so if anyone has some fantastic one pot suggestions, let us know!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You write very well.