my german sheherd's pie italian chickenherd's pie, do they qualify as good REC:s, Madam President?
Greek Shepherd's Piesize>
plus what i did to it last night (by way of variations)...
first the recipe as it appears in Adventures in Greek Cookery by Stella Kopulos and Dorothy
P. Jones
3 medium potatoes
3 tbs butter
2 small onions, chopped
1 pound lean ground beef or lamb
2 tbs tomato sauce
1/4 cup dry wine
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup light cream
1/2 cup grated kefalotyri cheese (or parmesan or romano)
scrub the potatoes and boil them whole in their skins. while they are cooking, prepare the
meat sauce.
melt 1 tbs of the butter in a heavy saucepan. add the onion and saute until golden. then add
the meat and stir until it is well browned. add the tomato sauce, wine, 1 tsp of the salt,
pepper and nutmeg. cover and cook 20 minutes.
when the potatoes are done, peel and mash them in a bowl. warm the cream and add along
with the remaining butter and salt. mix well with a rotary beater.
butter a 9-inch round casserole. spread half the potatoes over the bottom, cover with meat
sace, and spread the remaining potatoes on top. sprinkle with grated cheese. bake at 350
degrees for 30 minutes or until potatoes are browned. serves 6.
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what i did, or, considering that i'm a von Behren:
German Shepherd's Pie
i wanted first to defat the recipe a bit so that's the main reason for most of the changes.
i used a bunch of spring onions (cause i felt like spring onions for a change) and sauteed em
in about a tbs olive oil.
i used ground sirloin Q. what kinda meat do you put inna 230 pound german
shepherd's pie? A. any kind he wants. the lamb woulda been better, but the Giant didn't
have any. ground pork or a meatloaf mix woulda worked, too.
i increased the nutmeg to a tsp and threw in a tsp of cinnamon for the helck of
it. using the nutmeg at all speaks of the triumph of time over the sins of one's youth. a
certain nameless german ate a halffa cup or so of freshly grated nutmeg about 25 years
ago to experience the effect of certain inherant alkaloids and was left only slightly
altered, but retained a marked aversion to even the slightest hint of nutmeg for many
years.
i used red wine case that's what i had. white woulda been fine.
the potatoes coulda been better. hopefully some mashed potato maven will offer some
suggestions. i used 4 insted of 3 (cause i'd done this recipe before and remembered that i
came short on enough potatoes to cover the sauce), nuked em instead of boiling and didn't
peel em (much healthier that way). i substituted nonfat half and half for the cream and didn't
add any butter. they were good, but gooey.
i think that the yukon golds make for heavy mashed potatoes to begin with. i suspect that
evaporated skim milk or even skim milk might have worked better than the nonfat half and
half. the gum in it may have added to the texture problems. it wasn't uneatable by any
stretch of the imagination and the yukon golds do lend a pretty color. i don't know if
mushing them in a food processor instead of a rotary beater made any difference.
i didn't butter the casserole and found no reason to regret it.
thanks to tamiko for reviving my interest in greek cooking and to barbara for getting me to
think more about what meat to use.
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Itslian Chickenherd’s Piesize>
serves 4
Ingredients:
4 links sweet italian sausage
2 tbs olive oil
1/2 pound mushrooms
1 cup carrots, sliced
3 tbs roasted garlic
1/4 cup V-8
1/4 cup red wine
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 bay leaves, crushed
5 medium yukon gold potatoes
3 tbs butter
1/2 cup half and half (I used fat free)
1/2 pound feta
1/4 cup grated romano or parmesan
Preparation:
Crumble the sausage and brown well over medium high heat with the olive oil.
add the mushrooms, carrots and garlic; and continue to sauté, stirring well, for another coupla minutes.
add the V-8, wine, cinnamon and garlic; reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook for about 20 minutes.
nuke the spuds for 15 minutes and 33 seconds, turning the potatoes a coupla times. (be sure to turn the microwave off before opening the door (ask me sometimes why watching this dumb kid at a subway heating the chicken teriyaki reminded me to stick that caution in)). i didn’t peel the potatoes. you can if you don’t mind throwing away all those vitamins (or are less lazy than i). chop the potatoes coarsely, add the butter and moosh with a wooden fork or potato moosher. continue mooshing whilst adding the cream slowly. i didn’t try to beak up all the lumps, but the potatoes were a nice flaky texture and broke up well (much better than the ill-advised method of “mashing the poor guys in a food processor when i did the german shepherd’s pie). crumble in the feta and stir well.
spread about 1/3 of the potato mixture on the bottom of a 3-qt casserole, add the meat and stuff, and top with the rest of the potato mixture.
bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
sprinkle the grated cheese over top and run under the broiler for a minute or so until the cheese browns.
Variations:
increase the wine by 2 tbs and substitute 2 tbs tomato paste for the V-8
can the whole pie bit and just crumble some feta into your next batch of mashed potatoes.
