Kosher Cottage Pie

I have been craving some serious comfort food recently.  I love playing with new and special ingredients, and I love fresh and fancy produce. However, when I need comfort, I do not turn to salad.  I was raised in a house that relied heavily on meat and starch, after all.

Enter Cottage Pie.  So many people were invited for Thanksgiving last year, that two Cottage Pies ended up as part of the spread to appease the masses.  For me, it stole the show!  Cottage pie is a type of meat and vegetable pie topped with mashed potatoes. Shepherd's pie is traditionally made with lamb, while Cottage pie is made with ground beef.  Traditionally, the mashed potatoes are enriched with dairy and topped with cheese, but when paired with meat or at least not in our house! While trying to figure out what to make, I had never really thought of a savory pie because they so often combine meat and dairy.  Typically, making a kosher savory pie means either making it meat free or making it with faux ingredients using chemicals of which I've never heard.  Because of this, I avoided even trying. I typically just substitute oil for butter when cooking a meat meal, but then I found Earth Balance spread - kosher, pareve, vegan, and all natural.   My Aunt's pie tasted so good, I decided I had to try!  It turned out so well, and hit the spot on the need for comfort food.   This is definitely a make-again recipe.  So good, I have no pictures!  Serve with a salad if your feeling fancy. 

For the Meat Filling:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 medium sized onion, diced
1 pound ground beef
3 large carrots, diced
1 cup chicken broth, reserved from Matzo Ball Soup
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons unbleached, all purpose flour
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary chopped
1 teaspoons fresh parsley, chopped
1 cup frozen peas
Salt and Pepper to Taste

For the Mashed Potato Topping:
3 Large Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into one inch pieces
3 tablespoons Earth Balance Spread
3 tablespoons caramelized onions, reserved from Onion and Thyme Rolls
1 egg
1 teaspoon garlic powder, or one roasted garlic clove if you've got it
Salt and Pepper to Taste



Peel the potatoes and cut into 1inch pieces.  Place in a large saucepan and cover with salted, cold water. Set over medium-high heat, cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, cook until tender and easily pierced with a fork, approximately 10 to 15 minutes.  Drain the potatoes in a colander and then return to the saucepan. Mash the potatoes and then add the spread, caramelized onions, salt and pepper and continue to mash until smooth. Stir in the egg until well combined.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the filling. Place the canola oil into a 12-inch saute pan and set over medium high heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, add the onion and carrots and saute just until they begin to take on color, approximately 3 to 4 minutes. Add the beef, salt and pepper and cook until browned and cooked through, approximately 3 minutes. Sprinkle the meat with the flour and toss to coat, continuing to cook for another minute. Add the tomato paste, chicken broth, Worcestershire, rosemary, and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer slowly 10 to 12 minutes or until the sauce is thickened slightly.

Add the peas to the beef mixture and spread evenly into a large glass casserole dish or . Top with the mashed potatoes, starting around the edges to create a seal to prevent the mixture from bubbling up and smooth with a rubber spatula. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 25 minutes or just until the potatoes begin to brown. Remove to a cooling rack for at least 15 minutes before serving.

Three Sisters Tamale Casserole

Bubble, bubble, toil and casserole?

In my continuing quest for comforting vegetarian main dishes, I happened upon a casserole cookbook at my local library.  A casserole that peaked my interest was a tamale casserole, but there was a big problem inherent in the recipe in that it had cheese and ground beef in the same recipe.  Keeping a kosher-style home means that is against the rules, but it sounded so good I had to try and make it work.  Exchanging beef for zucchini and adding a few spices to enhance the flavor of the veggies made the recipe something I could enjoy at home.

Enter what I like to call Three Sisters Casserole.

Nom nom nom

Rick Bayless' Roasted Garlic and Chile Dressing

I was raised in a family that showed how much they cared with food.  We lived to eat and boy did we.  Because of my family, I loved to cook from a young age.  I loved to cook long before I started teaching, but when I started teaching, I stopped cooking.  When I stopped teaching, I realized I had stopped doing something I loved, and slowly started getting my self-confidence back by experimenting in the kitchen.  I was unemployed and began finding myself in the cookbook section of the library and the kitchen as a way to stave off boredom and depression while on the job hunt.  I tried a Rick Bayless recipe and it felt like I had opened a world into a cuisine I had loved from afar, but had never even thought about making at home.  Enter Mexican Everyday, a cookbook that merges authentic Mexican tastes with modern sensibilities including quick meals, slow cooker recipes and all with a bent towards a healthier style of eating.

Every single recipe I have made from this cookbook has been a success, which has resulted in me buying his cookbook and causing many splattered pages within (always a good sign in my house.)   I've been eating salads for lunch recently, and have been experimenting with different dressings.  This dressing is my newest favorite, at least until tomorrow.  It will be fantastic as a dressing for a main dish steak salad, but will do just fine over just about anything or as a marinade. Just make sure whatever you are using will stand up to the kick of this dressing.  This dressing isn't a wimp, so don't you dare put this over something else wimpy! 

Empty jam jars are super useful for holding homemade salad dressing.

Roast the stemmed chile(s) and the unpeeled garlic cloves in a dry pan, turning frequently, until blotchy brown in spots - about 10 minutes.  Set aside until handle-able.

Once cool enough to touch, peel the garlic and roughly chop the chile pepper.  Combine the garlic, chile, oil, vinegar, salt and sugar in a blender jar or food processor.  I love my immersion (stick) blender for this application.

Process until smooth.  Taste and add more salt or sugar if needed. 


Ingredients:

4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
Fresh hot green chiles to taste (the recipe states 2 Serranos or 1 jalapeno, but I just used one Serrano)
3/4 cup vegetable oil (1/2 cup safflower oil, 1/4 cup olive oil is a suggested riff that I followed)
1/4 cup red wine vinegar (he recommends Sherry Vinegar, but I didn't have it and this was a suggested riff too)
Pinch sugar (not needed if using Sherry Vinegar)
Pinch salt

Caramelized Onion and Thyme Rolls

I love bread.  My favorite smell may be of freshly baked bread.  I love bread (how much you say?) so much that my grandmother taught me by telephone how to bake it myself when I went to college.   As in, emergency calls of a panicked college kid asking "are you sure it's supposed to look like this?"