.shepherd's pie.

I really do think I'm on an English cooking kick lately. I've been watching too much Gordon Ramsay and Raymond Blanc, apparently. This recipe is adapted from one of my Martha Stewart cookbooks. What can I say? I'm a Martha girl at heart. Her recipe calls for potato and rutabaga on top, but I used straight potatoes. The deep, rich sauce was just amazing and trust me, if you've made this in the past using canned soup, you're really going to see a tremendous difference.

This recipe made enough to feed 3 people. I was surprised it didn't make more and I will remember that the next time I make this dish.


Begin by taking 2 pounds boneless beef or lamb for stew. I couldn't find stew meat, so I bought chops and cut it up into bite sized pieces. Make sure you trim off the fat.









Take 1 celery stalk, a couple sprigs or thyme, 1 sprig of rosemary, 1 bay leaf, and 1 clove of garlic. Martha suggests you put all of this in cheesecloth but I couldn't find mine... so I did the next best thing......








I used butcher's twine. This is called a bouquet garni. We want to give the essence of these herbs to the dish, but not necessarily add all of it in. Does that make sense?









Chop up one onion.












Peel and chop 2 carrots.












In a skillet, melt 2 Tbsp butter over medium high heat. Once it's melted, add the lamb or beef and sear all the sides.










When the lamb is browned, add the chopped onion and cook for about 5 minutes until the onion starts to cook and become translucent.










Sprinkle 2 Tbsp flour on top and mix everything around. Turn the heat down just a bit. If this starts burning, pull away from the heat. You just need to coat the onion and meat with flour and cook it just a little bit.








Add 1 cup dry red wine. It will start thickening immediately so keep stirring and don't walk away from the pan.











Add 1 cup beef stock and our pretty little bouquet garni to the pan. Bring to a boil and then cover the pot. Reduce the heat to low low low and let cook this way for ONE HOUR. This will make that lamb soooooooooo tender.








After an hour, add the carrots. Cover again and cook for 30 more minutes. After those 30 minutes, remove the lid and let cook for a final 30 minutes.

Taste the sauce at this point. Season with salt and pepper. You don't want to season at the beginning because the sauce reduces and reduces and if you add salt at the beginning, it will only concentrate the saltiness and you could wind up with a sauce that is unedible.



While the sauce cooks those last 30 minutes, peel and chop up 6 or 7 potatoes. I used a mix of yukon gold and russett. Put the potatoes in a pot, cover with water and a dash of salt and boil until fork tender.








Once the potatoes are cooked, put in a strainer and let drain until they are dry.











Put the potatoes in a mixing bowl and whip with a little heated milk until they're creamy. Season with a little salt and pepper.










Remove the bouquet garni and pour the filling into the bottom of a baking dish. You could even put this into ramekins if you want to make fancy little individual servings.









Spoon the mashed potatoes on top of the "stew" and spread all over the top using a frosting blade, or spatula.

Bake in a 350* oven for about an hour.

Serve with fresh bread and salad. Enjoy! (Martha if you happen to read this, thanks for a great recipe!)


Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_128f9w585dz

.souvlaki with tzatziki sauce and fresh pitas.

I admit that growing up, we didn't eat a lot of food from different ethnicities. I'm not sure why. Maybe my parents just didn't care for it themselves?



I know a few years ago, when I was home visiting my parents, we were out on my dad's boat on Lake Washington. We went up to Kirkland - a posh little yuppy town - and we had dinner at a Greek restaurant. It was more like a cafe. It was their first experience having souvlaki and gyros! I couldn't believe it!



There was this little cart outside the Navy Exchange in Hawaii that my husband and I used to frequent whenever we were there. This guy made the *most* delicious gyros in the world. I salivate when I think of it. There's a place here that makes pretty decent gyros too which work in a pinch, but I love making these.



What's the difference between souvlaki and gyros (pronounced year-oh)? Souvlaki is pieces of chicken or lamb grilled on a kabob, where the meat on a gyro is a pressed beef/lamb roast that is put on a rotisserie and slow cooked. The meat is then carved away into thin strips and put on a pita with lettuce, tomato, red onion, and tzatziki sauce.



So.. now that you know, here's how you can make them yourself!



I started this marinade this morning when I woke up. The lamb needs to marinate for at *least* 8 hours. If you work, prepare the marinade the night before and let the lamb soak overnight in the fridge.



In a bowl, put 1/2 cup lemon juice, 4 tsp olive oil, 2 Tbsp oregano, and 6 cloves minced garlic.



Cut up lamb into 1" pieces.



If you're afraid of using lamb, DON'T! But if you really don't think you can make yourself eat it, use beef. My daughter thought this was steak. I didn't tell her anything different either. She ate it ALL!

Put the lamb in a large ziploc and dump in the marinade.
Easy enough, right?

Now let's make the Tzatziki sauce.



Tzatziki is a traditional, popular sauce in Greek cuisine. There are a lot of different versions out there. This one I like quite a bit. You can make the sauce up to two days ahead of time. It holds quite nicely in the fridge. Here's what you need to do.



You want to start by straining about 2 cups plain yogurt. If you can find greek yogurt, which is made with sheep's milk and has a much lower milkfat ratio. From what they "say"... it's also much creamier than any kind of yogurt you find here in the states. Since I couldn't find it, I used your basic run of the mill Dannon. *gasp*



What I did is line a sieve with some paper towels and spoon the yogurt on top. You can easily use a coffee filter, but since I don't drink coffee, I don't have any of those. The straining will take a couple of hours. So put in the sieve and then sit it in the fridge while it does its work.

Look how much liquid came out of that yogurt! It's very important to strain this so your tzatziki isn't super runny.



Put the yogurt in a bowl and discard the liquid.












Juice one lemon.

Take one cucumber and slice lengthwise. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. I would have had pictures of this step, but my camera battery decided to run out of juice on me. Once you seed the cucumber, cut into pieces and put in a bowl with 1 tsp kosher salt. This will draw out the liquid from the cuke. Let it sit for 30 minutes.

If you use an English cucumber, you don't need to worry about de-seeding.



You're going to need 1 Tbsp dill weed. I'm sure fresh would be better. This is what I use.
















Put everything into a blender. Crack in some black pepper and hit whichever button you prefer. You want a nice smooth sauce.

Transfer sauce to a bowl. Cover and let sit in the fridge until ready to use.



Now for the pitas. You can buy them from the store if you really don't want to make them. I have always wanted to try it. They were very easy to make and they are soooo moist and delicious compared to storebought. I highly recommend making them.

In a bowl, put 1 1/2 cups warm water, 1 tsp sugar and 4 tsp (2 pkgs) yeast. Let sit for 10 minutes or until the yeast is nice and foamy.

In a large mixing bowl, put 3 cups all purpose flour, 3 cups whole wheat flour, and 2 tsp kosher salt. Mix with a spoon.



(No pictures of this next step because my camera died)

Make a well in the center of the flour/salt and add the water/yeast, 1 Tbsp olive oil, and 1 3/4 cup warm water. Use a dough hook and allow the dough to come together. If it's too dry and not pulling together, add a little more warm water until it's forming a ball.



Pull from the bowl and knead on a floured counter for a minute. Drizzle some olive oil into the mixing bowl. Put the dough back into the bowl and rub it around. Then flip the dough over so that the oily side is facing up.



Cover with a towel and let rise until double (approx. 1 hr).



Punch dough down. Knead on a counter.

Divide the dough into 12 equal parts.

Roll each ball out into a circle. I think I made these too big. They were the size of dinner plates. LOL



You might want to make them slightly smaller.






Spray cookie sheets with PAM and put the rolled pitas on them. I only made 6 pitas and put the rest of the dough in the freezer so I can make them later.



Cover and let sit for another hour. They'll get bubbly but won't double.

Bake in a preheated 500! degree oven for 4-5 minutes. When you turn on the oven, make sure you put the rack on the lowest level in the oven.

They should be slightly golden on top. Pull from the oven and let cool.



You can store these pitas in your fridge for up to 3 days or in the freezer for 6 months.







Once the pitas are done, spark up the BBQ!

Aren't these skewers awesome? I got them from my husband for my birthday. Love them.

Skewer the marinated lamb onto the skewers. Don't overcrowd otherwise they might not cook all the way through. Put on the bbq and grill until they're cooked.



Cut up some lettuce.

Slice up some red onion. We want to use the outer rings. Discard the insides.

Dice up some tomato. Ignore the Frankenstein job I did on these. The baby was being very fussy tonight so I had to chop up one handed. NOT an easy task!

Here's how our platter looked. I brought out some feta cheese and kalamata olives to enjoy with our souvlaki. See how honkin huge those pitas turned out? We wound up cutting them in half and then making our "gyros". Paige doesn't understand all of these fancy words so I told her they were like tacos.

We enjoyed our souvlaki with some couscous. I would have really loved to make loukoumades, which is a donut like dessert. Fried dough with honey drizzled on top, dusted cinnamon, and sesame seeds but I just didn't have the time or energy once I got dinner made.

Looks like I'll have to make those another time and share them with you!

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_66czbf2tc7

.irish stew.

This is a recipe I make around St. Patrick's Day every year. It is comfort food for me. I had planned on making corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes this year, but we were right in the middle of remodeling our master bathroom and I just didn't feel like making it, and I hadn't gone to the store early enough to buy the ingredients to make it.

So... I decided to make the stew.

Years ago when we lived in Virginia, we used to go to Busch Gardens Williamsburg all the time and in their little village of "Ireland", there's a cafe there that sells Irish Stew. They serve it in Irish soda bread bowls. Pretty amazing stuff for a theme park. This is my adaptation of theirs however I use lamb vs. their beef.

Ingredients you'll need:

lamb chops

baby carrots

baby dutch yellow potatoes

pearl onions

frozen peas

sage

bay leaf

broth (chicken or lamb)

burgundy wine

milk

flour


Trim the lamb chops of fat and cut the meat away from the bones. Cut into small pieces. Cut your carrots in half. Peel a strip away on the potatoes and then cut in half. Peel the pearl onions by first dunking them in boiling water for a minute, then pulling out and putting in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Cut off the root end and squeeze the onion out.

Throw the lamb bones and fat into a pot. Add some carrots, onion, garlic cloves, celery, and a bay leaf. Add enough water to cover everything and then put on the stove. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and let simmer for an hour. This is the broth you want to use for this stew. After the hour is up, strain to take all the veggies and bones out. Set aside.

Lightly coat your pieces of lamb with some flour and salt and pepper.

In a soup pot, heat a little olive oil and 2 Tbsp butter. Add your floured lamb pieces and sear the meat on all sides.

Halfway through the searing process, add the carrots, potatoes, and a bay leaf. Cook until the outsides of the potato become a little glossy looking and translucent. Add 1 tsp sage.

At this stage, add 1 1/2 cups wine, the lamb broth and some chicken stock if you need it. Also add the pearl onions. Cover the pot and let cook until the potatoes become fork tender.

In a bowl, mix together 2 1/2 cups milk and 1/3 cup flour. Whisk until all lumps are gone.

While stirring, add the soup/flour mix to the soup. Stir until the soup starts thickening.

Oh and now would be a god time to take that bay leaf out. You don't want someone to accidently eat it!

Add a little bit of this stuff to your stew. It's called Kitchen Bouquet and it's a browning liquid that gives your soups and gravies great color. We want our Irish Stew to be nice and brown so don't leave this out.

Re-season with salt and pepper. Serve your soup with rolls, or Irish soda bread.

Printable version:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_16d37zjzdp