"Sweet Potato Shepherds Pie"

The title of this is in quotes because there will be some purists who may find this and state that Shepherds Pie is only made with lamb and mashed potatoes, and if it's made with ground beef, it's Cottage Pie.  I like calling this Shepherds Pie because most people I know are familiar with the dish, and may not be familiar with Cottage Pie.

Anyway.

A few weeks ago, my husband found a recipe in a newspaper at work.  He took pictures and texted them to me with a request to make it.  It didn't seem difficult (and I have made Shepherds Pie and Cottage Pie before, so I knew the basics), so this week, it was added to the meal planning.  I tweaked the recipe a little bit.  Rather than type out the original recipe and the changes I made, I'm just going to post my updated version.  The original recipe can be found here.

So, without any other rambling, on to the recipe.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Shepherd's Pie

Ingredients:

• 2 Sweet Potatoes (I used large ones)
• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, grated
• 1 medium to large yellow onion, diced
• 3 ribs celery, chopped
• 3 carrots sliced (I used a handful of baby carrots)
• 1/2 pound Italian sausage (I used 3 mild sausage links)
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (I eyeballed fresh ground pepper)
• 1 bottle stout or other dark beer (we had Guinness in the house, so I used that)
• 1 cup or so frozen sweet peas
• 1 1/2-2 Tbsp cornstarch
• 3 Tbsp cool water
• 1 - 8.25 ounce can creamed corn
• 1 cup frozen corn (again, I eyeballed this)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 Tbsp butter/margarine
• 1 Tbsp packed brown sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Spray/lightly oil your baking dish of choice and set aside.

Place chopped sweet potatoes in a pot and cover with water (covering potatoes by approximately 1").  Bring to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes, or until soft.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, combine olive oil, onion, celery, and carrots over medium high heat.  Saute for about 4 minutes, then grate in garlic and continue sauteing another minute.  Add the ground beef and sausage.  Cook until meat has browned and is cooked through (about 8 minutes)

Add beer and peas.  Simmer until liquid has reduced by half (4-6 minutes or so).

In a small glass bowl, mix the cornstarch and the water to make a slurry.  Add this mixture to the skillet and stir until thickened (this should be a very quick thing).  Remove from heat and pour this mixture into the bottom of your baking dish of choice evenly.

Mix the can of creamed corn with the frozen corn and layer this evenly on top of the meat mixture and set aside while you finish up the sweet potatoes.

Once the sweet potatoes have cooked, drain them and return them to the pot.  Add the butter, brown sugar and half of the milk.  Mash this all together and add more milk as needed to make it as smooth as you'd like.  (I ended up using about a half cup of milk.)  Season with salt to taste.

Spread this evenly over the corn layer.

Bake for 35 minutes or until potatoes are lightly browned at the edges.

I put a sheet pan on the shelf directly below this to catch any overflow.  It turned out to be a smart thing to do.

Hubby and I really enjoyed this dish.  I think next time I'll leave out the creamed corn and just add the corn to the meat mixture.  Hubby doesn't like creamed corn anyway and I'm not sure it really added that much to the recipe.

I was a little concerned about the sauce flavor when I was making this.  All the other recipes I've used called for Worcestershire Sauce, but this just used the beer.  I'm not a beer drinker (my husband always tells me I don't like anything good), but the flavor in this sauce was really good.  It didn't need the Worcestershire Sauce in my opinion. 

Please try this and let me know how it comes out for you.

Thanks and Happy Eating!

Ginger Veggie Stir Fry

So, as I stated 2 posts ago, I was making the Ginger Veggie Stir Fry that came in the last packet from Linda.  You can find the recipe on this post.

For the record (and because you'll see by the pictures), I don't really measure my vegetables.  So when the recipe calls for a cup of this and a cup of that, I just chop whatever amount looks good to me.  With this in mind, I did bump up the amounts used in the sauce as well.  And I ended up having to cook the veggies in two different pans.  One non stick skillet and one wok.

Before I started chopping veggies, I mixed up what was going to be the sauce and set it aside.  I made sure that I mixed all the cornstarch in so that it wouldn't be lumpy.  I also added the spices into this mix so that they had time to infuse their flavors into the sauce mix as well.  I don't know how much more flavor it added if any, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I also decided to add meat to this dist (because my husband likes meat in the meal, though he also asked if I was going to make rice with this and I told him I wasn't because it had sweet potatoes in it).  I cooked up some kielbasa while I chopped up the first round of veggies and used the fat/oil that resulted to stir fry the veggies.  After the sausage was browned, I pulled it out and set it aside to add back in at the end.

Because of the amount of veggies I was using, and because I only have one larger cutting board for this purpose, I had to cut the veggies in two patches.  I cut the broccoli, carrots and trimmed the snap peas first.

Once the first round was cooking up in the wok (as per the directions), I chopped the onion and the sweet potatoes.  I purchased the non-orange sweet potatoes.  I've read conflicting things about what the difference was between sweet potatoes and yams.  I've always thought of the orange variety as yams and the white-ish as sweet potatoes.

By the time I was done peeling and chopping the sweet potatoes, he green veggies were looking pretty good.

I added the onions and sweet potatoes and realized that my wok was too full to really stir the veggies, so I split the mixture into another skillet.  Once the sweet potatoes were tender, I tossed everything back into the same pan, added the sausage and the sauce mixture and let that cook until it thickened up and coated everything.

The sauce helped pack the veggies down a little bit too.  My husband wasn't too sure about the choice of kielbasa in this, but I wanted something with it's own distinct flavor, and chicken just wasn't going to cut it for me.  I kind of liked the combination and after dinner, my husband admitted that it was pretty good too.

Since then, I have made one other stir fry, but that one I did with a bunch of veggies I had to use up (I had some older carrots, some broccoli stems and some celery), stir fried some chicken and made up some rice to go with it.  I needed leftover rice for a dish later on in the week.

I should be getting on here more often to post.  Lately my work schedule has been weird and my days off have been split up which makes it hard to have a day to just do things that I want to do because I'm always taking care of little things around the house or running errands.  However, I have finally been offered a full time position and that comes with a set rotation, where my days off are together for 3 of the 4 weeks in the month.  As of right now, I have a list of 17 more things to share in the blog and that's not counting all the new things that I'm trying to do as well.  So I'll have plenty to share.

Thanks and happy eating!

Lasagna "Cupcakes"

I was wandering around the internet one day.  I don't even remember what I was looking for.  But I came across Lasagna Cupcakes and I immediately shared the link on my Facebook page so that I didn't lose it.  I knew I wanted to make them.

I would like to try them again with a few adjustments.  But for the first time, I made them pretty much according to the recipe (though I can never really stick to a recipe unless it's baked goods).

Ingredients

• 1 cup marinara sauce
• 3/4 pound ground beef
• 12 wonton wrappers
• 8 ounces shredded mozzarella
• 3 ounces Parmesan cheese
• 4 ounces Ricotta cheese
• (optional) basil for garnish

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray.
2. Brown beef and season with salt and pepper. Drain.
3. Cut wonton wrappers into circle shapes using a biscuit cutter or using the top of a drinking glass. You can cut several at a time.
4. Reserve 6 tablespoons Parmesan cheese and 6 tablespoon mozzarella for the top of you cupcakes. Start layering your lasagna cupcakes. Begin with a wonton wrapper and press it into the bottom of each muffin tin. Sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese, Ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Top with a little meat and marinara sauce. Use around 1-2 teaspoons of all the ingredients depending on your personal preference.
5. Repeat layers ending with marinara sauce. Top with reserved Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
6. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until edges are brown. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes. To remove use a knife to loosen the edges then pop each lasagna out.
7. Garnish with basil and serve.

 I followed this for the most part.  I decided I was going to make my own fire roasted tomato sauce for this though.  I had some shallots to use up and I always have garlic in the house.  so I diced those up and sauteed them until they got soft.  I added some pepper and some Italian herbs, then added the tomatoes.  I used canned tomato products that I had on hand as well.  I believe I used 1 can fire roasted tomatoes and one can tomato sauce.  I let it all cook together, low and slow for a while.  I probably cooked it for two hours or so.  Once i felt like the flavors had enough time together, I pulled out my immersion blender (I love my kitchen toys) and blended it all together.

Here's how the sauce came out:

Looks like tomato sauce.  It tasted pretty good too.  I remember thinking I could probably just eat that and be happy.

I also used a zesty Italian sausage instead of ground beef and an Italian 5 cheese blend instead of Mozzarella and Parmesan.  The recipe makes 6, but I made 12 regular cupcake sized mini lasagna.

I layered everything in and here's the before baking picture:

 I baked them until they smelled done and the edges were crispy.  (As you can see, I also didn't follow the "Cut wontons into circles" instructions.... have you noticed that I'm bad at following directions?)

And the finished product:

They were yummy.  I actually took leftovers to work with me and used the dreaded microwave there to eat the rest (for those that know me, know this was a huge step ... I have what I like to call food paranoia... that mostly centers around other people and a lack of trust there).

The next time I make them, I would like to make my own pasta sheets (another of my kitchen toys... a pasta roller attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer).  That's really the only thing that I would really change (other than my improvised changes that I used this time).

Try them... you'll like them.

Thanks (and I need to do more of these... work schedule has been random lately and I haven't had much time to sit at the computer... I still need to put cake pictures on the computer so I can do that entry... and I have another installment of Linda's Herb and Spice World Tour with an herb that I like quite a bit) ... and happy eating!