Sunday, February 6, 2011

Shepherd's Pie

I've been craving something potato-y for a while now, so tonight I decided to make Shepherd's Pie- vegetarian, of course.  Katie had made a vegetarian version once before, so I based mine roughly off of her version.  I'm terrible at keeping track of exactly what I do when I cook something, but here's the approximate recipe:

Ingredients:
5 medium potatoes (or 4 larger ones)
Olive Oil
Boca meat crumbles, or other meat substitute
Half a medium onion
2 carrots, cut into chunks
Peas and corn ( I used frozen for both)
Garlic
Vegetable broth
Soy Sauce (instead of Worcestershire sauce, which has anchovies in it)
Corn starch

Directions:
Peel and quarter the potatoes, then boil until tender- about 15-20 minutes.  Mash the potatoes with minced garlic (maybe 4 cloves?), salt, and add veggie broth until a creamy consistency is reached.  I also added in about 1 1/2 tbs of Smart Balance for a buttery flavor.
While the potatoes are cooking, heat some olive oil in a large pan and add the carrots and onion.  Cook for about 5 minutes, then throw in the fake meat and chopped garlic (again, maybe 4ish cloves).  Add the peas and corn- I don't know exactly how much, maybe 1/2 cup to 1 cup of each, or however much you want.  Pour in a bunch of veggie broth and a few sprinklings of soy sauce, then stir and cover so all the flavors meld together, and let cook for a few minutes.  Stir again, and add salt if necessary (depends on how salty the broth is), and add more veggie broth if it's needed.  You want it to be decently liquid-y.  Mix about a Tbs of broth with some corn starch (approx 2 tsp) until dissolved, then pour it into the mix.  This will thicken the rest of the broth so that there's lots of moisture without being too watery.
Spread the meat/veggie mixture into a casserole dish thingy, and then spread the mashed potatoes on top.  Use a fork to make little peaks on the potatoes, because they'll get brown and crispy and delicious in the oven.
Cook for about 25-30 minutes at 400 degrees, or until the potatoes are beginning to lightly brown.  Caution- when I made this the dish was really full, and halfway through cooking it started bubbling over the sides.  It's much safer to put the dish on a baking pan, so if it overflows it doesn't drip onto the oven and get gross and charred.  Or you could just use a bigger pan and not have it dribble over the sides.

Besides the slight mishap with drippings in the oven, this dish was pretty easy to make and now I have leftovers to eat this whole week.  I especially like it because it's decently healthy, especially when I use veggie broth rather than butter and milk for the potatoes.  Actually, now that I think of it, this might be vegan (except for my tiny bit of Smart Balance in the potatoes).  Yay!  Almost vegan once again.

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