Cottage Pie and a Plan

We are heading to England on Thursday. This is our first international trip in our 2.5 years of marriage, and we are really excited. In honor of our upcoming trip, my husband came up with the idea of some shepherd's pie for dinner. I looked up a a recipe in Joy of Cooking, and learned that traditional shepherd's pie is made with chopped lamb. When you substitute beef, the name changes to cottage pie. The traditional recipe includes 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 celery stalk, 1 lb of ground beef, some beef stock, rosemary, thyme and several potatoes mashed up for a topping. That sounds delicious for a cool fall day, doesn't it? We had to make a couple changes for what we had on hand (our recipe is below). For example, I looked through the cabinet to discover we were out of rosemary and thyme.

Our plan for the rest of the week is:

Monday- Chicken Scampi

Tuesday- Leftover Cottage Pie

Wednesday - Fried Rice with vegetables

Thursday - Off to England





Cottage Pie inspired by Joy of Cooking
2 potatoes, chopped
3 small salad turnips, chopped
2 leeks, whites sliced in half, and cut in thin slices
1 carrot, chopped
6 medium radishes, chopped
1 lb ground beef
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 T flour
2 t Old Bay
1 C Cheddar cheese, grated
olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Add the potatoes and turnips to a pot of cold water. Bring to a boil and cook until tender. Meanwhile, chop the other vegetables and add the leek, carrot, and radishes to a hot frying pan with oil. Cook until tender. Remove from the pan and set aside. Add the ground beef to the pan. When it is almost cooked through, add the tomatoes, flour, and Old Bay. Cook until the tomatoes are softened. Add the leek, carrot, and radishes back in, and stir to combine. Mash up the potatoes and turnips, if necessary add a bit of liquid. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish, and top with the potatoes and turnips. Bake for about 15 minutes. Add the cheese to the top and cook for 15 more minutes.

The traditional recipe does not call for turnips, radishes, leeks or tomatoes. I think this is a very flexible dish that allows you to substitute any vegetables you have on hand.

Joy of Cooking suggested baking it in a pie plate, but I didn't think our pie plate was deep enough to fit everything. We cooked ours in a 9 x 11 pan, so I guess ours was less like Cottage Pie and more like Cottage Cake.

This post is part of Monday Mania and Menu Plan Monday.

Composting

We are composting! Or, at least saving vegetable scraps to put in a compost bin. I always thought composting was out of our reach because we live in a small apartment without a yard or access to any dirt, but last Saturday we discovered otherwise. Our pick-up point for our CSA share moved to a community garden, and they have a compost system. Our CSA organizers pointed out we can bring in our vegetable scraps. They suggested putting the peels in the freezer for the week, and delivering them to the community garden when we pick up our share each Saturday. It was one of those moments when I felt silly that I hadn't thought of that myself. Of course! Freeze the scraps! Why didn't I think of that? At least we are composting now.

We are still getting in the habit of saving our vegetable peels, but we are getting better each day. It's great to see our garbage really decreasing in volume.


Tonight we had chicken baked with kohlrabi, turnips, onions and garlic with sides of beet greens and brown rice. Baked chicken is one of our favorite meals for cool weather because it is so versatile and forgiving. We placed a chicken in our Dutch oven, surrounded in by chopped vegetables, covered it, and baked it. Cook it for 1 to 1.5 hours depending on the size of your chicken.

Here's another post on Oven Roasted Chicken with Vegetables.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade, Frugal Fridays and Grocery Cart Challene Recipe Swap.

Brisket with Vegetables, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

The weather suddenly feels like fall here in New York City. It's making me crave roasts and baked vegetable dishes. It's a great change of pace after spending a hot summer eating lots of salads and planning meals around cooking as little as possible. I thought I'd make another meal plan this week to make sure we eat up all our farm share vegetables.

Monday - Fresh ham baked with maple and mustard sauce, brown rice cooked in chicken stock, boiled corn, and sauteed kale.

Tuesday - Hamburgers with tomatoes, oven roasted beets, and sauteed beet greens.

Wednesday - Leftover ham, baked corn, and kale salad.

Thursday - Baked Chicken with kohlrabi and leeks, and a tomato salad.

Friday - Steak with fried onions, corn on the cob, tomato, radish and salad turnip salad.


Last night we had brisket with mashed potatoes and vegetables. I heated up some oil in my dutch oven, browned the brisket, and set it aside. I then quickly browned some onions and garlic, and added the rest of my ingredients. Once I had everything in the pot, my husband shared that he thought mashed potatoes would be really good with the meal. I had to agree that some mashed potatoes with gravy would be delicious, but I already had the potatoes stewing in the pot with everything else. But then we decided to try something new, we would cook the potatoes in the dutch oven with the brisket and broth soaking up flavor, and then pull them out after 30 minutes and mash them. It worked really well. We ended up with really flavorful potatoes, and only used one pot!

Brisket with Vegetables, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
2 T oil
1 (2 1/2 lb) brisket, with "fat cap" (do not trim)
3 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus for brisket
Freshly ground black pepper
2 medium yellow onions, cut into thick slices
12 - 16 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 c cooking sherry
4 c chicken broth
2 T fresh sage, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled, and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 turnips, peeled and chopped
8 red potatoes, cut into large pieces
2 T butter
1/4 C flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy bottomed Dutch oven over medium-high heat until beginning to smoke. Season the brisket generously with the paprika, salt, and pepper. Place fat side down in the Dutch oven and cook until brown, turn and continue to brown on all sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate and set aside.

Add the onions and garlic and cook over medium heat until starting to brown. Pour in the sherry and cook until reduced by about half. Nestle the brisket into the onions and garlic fat side up, add the broth and sage; bring to a simmer and place in the oven to bake, covered, until the brisket is fork tender, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Uncover, scatter the carrots, turnips and potatoes around the brisket and cook until they are tender, about 30 minutes more.

Fish out the potatoes, and place in a mixing bowl. Mash the potatoes with a fork or masher. Add broth from the brisket until they reach the desired consistency.

Transfer the brisket to a cutting board, thinly slice the meat across the grain.

Use a slotted spoon to remove the vegetables from the broth, and set aside to serve with dinner.

For a Pan Gravy: Melt the butter in a skillet and slowly add the flour. Make sure the four is entirely integrated with the butter before adding more flour. Cook until golden brown, and then starting adding broth ladle by ladle. Stirring until smooth, and then adding more broth. Once the gravy has reached the desired thickness, pour into the gravy boat.

Save the rest of the broth for another dish. We plan to use our for cooking rice this evening.

This post is part of Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Menu Plan Monday at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Fried Rice... or Couscous

I planned on making a quick dinner of fried rice tonight. I texted my husband toward the end of the day to ask him to put on some rice if he got home first. On my way home I realized that there might be a problem. I remembered as I stepped on the subway that we probably didn't have any rice at home. I called him when I got off the train to ask if he found any rice. He didn't. I offered to pick some up on my walk home, but he assured me that he had it under control. Mmm, what could that mean?

When I got home, he explained that he was making fried couscous. It was delicious. I could pick up the strong flavor of the turnip greens, the subtle garlic flavor of the scapes, the sesame oil and the salty soy sauce all with the chewy texture of the couscous. As we were eating, I asked him for the proportions and directions so that I would be able to write it up as a recipe. He told me that he cooked everything separately and combined it at the end. At this point I broke a cardinal rule, and I criticized his technique. When someone makes you dinner, you should tell them it is delicious and thank them for it; you should not criticize how they made it. I was so shocked by his plan of action that it just slipped right out.

I was taught to make fried rice by heating up some oil, adding some cooked rice, and once it was heated through to pour beaten egg over the top and scramble it all together. My husband is not alone in scrambling the eggs separately. I was reading through some blogs during lunch today and found that they had fried rice for lunch at Sixpoint too. Ha, there must be something in the air. She made her fried rice with separate scrambled eggs too. What do you think? Should the eggs be cooked separately? Here are my directions with his ingredient list:

Fried Rice/Couscous
2 C water
1 C couscous
1 salad turnip with its greens
1 zucchini
1 carrot
2 small heads of bok choy
handful of scapes
2 T olive oil
4 eggs
1/4 C sesame oil
2 T soy sauce
1 T honey


Bring the water to a boil, add the couscous, turn off the heat, cover and let sit for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Chop the vegetables and add to hot wok or deep skillet with olive oil. Cook until tender. Add the couscous or rice. Cook until it is heated through. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add the sesame oil, soy sauce and honey. Pour the mixture over the vegetables and couscous/rice. Toss to combine and cook until the eggs are firm. Serve immediately.

Blackened Chicken Wraps

Once you decide to make some burritos, you have committed. You have purchased a package of tortillas and need to eat them up. We have had vegetable burritos, breakfast burritos and tonight blackened chicken wraps. My husband took the lead on dinner tonight. His vision was to combine the spiciness of the blackened chicken with the sweet tangy flavor of the vinaigrette. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Spicy goodness. They require just a bit of heat from the top of the stove, but the results are fresh and easy. A great quick meal for a hot steamy night.

Blackened Chicken Wraps
1 large chicken breast, cut into fillets
1 oz blackened seasoning
4 scapes, chopped
1 salad turnip, peeled and shaved into strips
1 carrot, scrubbed and shaved into strips
1 shallot, chopped
lettuce
1 T olive oil
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 heaping t honey
1 t soy sauce

Coat the chicken fillets with blackened seasoning and pan fry until cooked through. Let cool and then slice. Saute the scapes until softened. Mix the turnips, carrot, shallot, lettuce and chicken in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey and soy sauce and pour over mix. Toss to combine. Place a couple of scoops in the middle of a tortilla, roll up, and enjoy.

Quinoa Burgers with Beet and Radish Salad

I planned on making this dinner last night, but by the time we got home from a day out and about we decided to stretch the leftover burrito mix with an extra can of beans. We spent the day in Hoboken visiting the Hoboken Historical Museum and following their map for a walking tour of historic sites. Frank Sinatra wasn't the only famous person born in Hoboken. Did you know that Alfred Steiglitz, Dorothea Lange and Stephen Foster are all from there too? I didn't until yesterday. Hoboken makes a great day trip. It's got a small town feel with big city amenities.


Tonight for dinner we had quinoa burgers with beet and radish salad. It took a while to make dinner, but it made enough for several meals and it was delicious. The quinoa burgers were crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and full of flavor. The beets and radishes were cooked which mellowed their bite and combined nicely with the mustard vinaigrette. It had never occurred to me before to cook radishes as a stand alone dish, but I was trolling the web for radish ideas when I came across a whole list of radish recipes. Jack pot!

Quinoa Burgers makes 8 patties
1 C quinoa
1 1/2 C water
1 bunch greens, chopped
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 salad turnips, shredded
1/2 large zucchini, shredded
2 eggs
1 t Old Bay (or more to taste)
Oil

Rinse the quinoa and add to a hot dry sauce pan. Cook until the grains start to smell nutty and add the water. Bring to a boil, and then lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Set aside and let cool.

Saute the greens until tender. Squeeze the turnips and zucchini to get rid of the liquid. Add the shallots, turnips and zucchini to a skillet. Cook until they are soft.

Beat eggs and add the Old Bay. Combine all of the ingredients and chill.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Shape mixture into eight 1/2-inch-thick patties, pressing firmly. Cook in batches until golden brown and cooked through, about 3 minutes per side.

I could taste the Old Bay when I tasted a bit of the mixture raw, but when it was cooked it mostly disappeared. It just added some complexity to the flavor. If you would like to be able to taste the Old Bay you will want to add at least 2 teaspoons.

Beet and Radish Salad serves 2-4
3 small beets
2 long French radishes
2 T olive oil
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 T mustard
lettuce or salad greens

Scrub the beets and radishes. Boil them until they are fork tender. Let cool and then peel the beets. Cut the beets and radishes into bite size pieces.

Combine oil, vinegar and mustard and pour over the radish and beets. Chill in the fridge. Serve over lettuce.

Vegetable Burritos

I'm a cook. I can follow a recipe and come up with the desired results. Since meeting my husband, I have even gotten better at using a recipe as inspiration and adapting the ingredients/directions to what I have on hand. My husband, on the other hand, is a chef (not for a living). He is great at looking at the ingredients before him and coming up with a scrumptious meal. I tell you this because last night my husband took the lead on dinner, and it was lots of fun to see his thought process at work. It was interesting to see how he chopped the vegetables, cooked and then combined them all in a way different from how I would do it. The results were delicious too.

He made vegetable burritos and guacamole. We have made burritos before. The previous burritos were good and really fast, but if you have little bit more time this recipe is even better. I loved the combination of vegetables with the scapes, beans and cheese. As always, our cooking decisions are driven by what is available from our farm share. Cooking radishes and salad turnips for a burrito might sound bizarre, but we really needed to eat them up. If we were head to a store to buy ingredients for vegetable burritos, we might select other things. This can provide inspiration to others needing to eat up some random veggies in the fridge. Try them in a burrito!

Vegetable Burritos serves 4
2 small bunches of turnip greens, chopped
2 small bunches of radish greens, chopped
1 bunch of beet greens, chopped
4 salad turnips, chopped
4 radishes, chopped
handful of scapes, finely chopped
1 can of pinto beans
cheddar cheese, grated
salsa
guacamole
tortillas

Saute the greens until tender. Place in a large mixing bowl. Saute the salad turnips, radishes and scapes until browned, and add to the mixing bowl. Drain the beans and rinse. Drain well and add to the mixing bowl. The heat of the vegetables will heat up the beans. Combine ingredients and mash with a fork until the salad turnips and beans break up a bit. Heat up the tortillas over the burner or in a dry skillet to soften them. Layer the cheese, the vegetable and bean mixture, salsa and guacamole in the tortilla. Roll up and enjoy.

Guacamole
1 avocado, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 pinch of salt

Mash together with a fork. Serve immediately.

Some people like to add tomatoes, onions and lime, but we are purists and like that avocado flavor to shine through. Of course, you should add any other ingredients you enjoy.

Kohlrabi Hash

I woke up this morning wondering what I should make for dinner tonight. In my half-asleep state, I was trying to figure out what we had left in the fridge from the farm share. I could think of greens, radishes, turnips... aha, we have kohlrabi. I was excited to remember the kohlrabi because that guaranteed something new and different to prepare, eat and write about. I decided right then that I wanted to have kohlrabi hash with steak and salad.

I had seen kohlrabi in the stores, but I had never purchased it, prepared it, or eaten it. I got some tips from our CSA coordinator last weekend, and I double checked on the internet to make sure I wasn't missing out on any other stellar ideas. Everyone seemed to agree that kohlrabi hash was a great way to go. When our CSA coordinator mentioned kohlrabi hash, I envisioned grated kohlrabi in a cast iron pan cooking away in some olive oil, but when I looked up kohlrabi hash on-line all the recipes were inspired by potato pancakes. They included eggs, breadcrumbs, onion and seasonings. Of course all 5 or 6 of the recipes ended up referring back to one source – funny how that happens. We decided to go with the original idea - simple kohlrabi hash browns.

We made a salad with salad mix, radishes, carrots and salad turnips from our CSA share. Salad turnips are interesting because from the outside they look like regular turnips with a white waxy skin, but once the skin is peeled off, the texture is much closer to jicama. It has a slightly sweet flavor and is great raw. Salad turnips and kohlrabi are the two new things I have tried so far through our farm share. We topped the salad off with our house vinaigrette. My husband's salad dressing came through yet again - it was delicious!

We cooked the steak in a cast iron pan on the stove top. Before living in an apartment, the idea of frying a good thick steak would have appalled me. I thought the only way to cook them was on a grill, but they turn out great this way. We generously salted and peppered each side and placed it in a hot pan over medium high heat with a bit of olive oil. The trick is to leave it alone for as long as it needs to cook on that side, ours was over an inch thick so we did 6-7 minutes per side. This part is hard for me because I'm a cook that likes to fiddle (stir the pot, push thing around while they are sauteing, etc.). But in this case, it's best to set the timer and leave it alone until it is time to flip it because it will create a wonderful crust on the steak. Here is a photo of the finished meal:


Kohlrabi Hash Browns
2 heads of kohlrabi, peeled
olive oil
salt and pepper

Grate the kohlrabi with a box grater or food processor. Place the grated kohlrabi in a piece of cheese cloth or paper towel, and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Heat up a skillet and generously coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil. Dump in the kohlrabi and spread out into an even layer. Cook for a couple of minutes over medium heat and then flip. Cook until the kohlrabi is browned on both sides. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The kohlrabi hash browns were great! We both wished there were more so we could go back for seconds. They are very similar to potato hash browns, but slightly sweeter and a slightly firmer texture.

Chicken Salad Crostini

The East Coast is in the middle of a horrible heat wave; it was 103 yesterday and 100 degrees today in NYC. The electric company is urging everyone to cut back on their electricity consumption because there are concerns of blackouts. Because of the temperatures, we were determined to prepare a dinner that required no heat.

We cooked some chicken in the crock pot over night, and put it in the fridge for the day. My goal for dinner was to make something new and different that used the chicken and CSA veggies, but required no cooking. Nothing came to mind, but luckily my husband came up with the idea of chicken salad sandwiches with homemade mayonnaise. We discovered in the process that the bread was a bit stale, so the sandwiches became crostini.


Chicken Salad Crostini
2 salad turnips, peeled and chopped
1 French breakfast radish, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 C shredded chicken
2 T mayonnaise
salad greens
toasted slices of bread

Mix the turnips, radish, carrots, shallot, chicken and mayonnaise. Layer the bread, salad greens and chicken salad.

Mayonnaise inspired by Joy of Cooking
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 t Dijon mustard
2 t vinegar
1/2 t salt
3/4 C olive oil

Blend egg, egg yolk and half the mustard in food processor or blender for several seconds. Add half the vinegar and salt and blend for several more seconds. Slowly add the oil while the blender or food processor is running. (We are able to pour the oil through a small hole in the top, and it controls the pace for us.) Once the oil has been added, turn off the machine. Fold in the rest of the mustard, vinegar and salt. The mayonnaise will only last 1 -2 days in the fridge.


The crostinis were ok. We kept a lot of the marinade in the chicken salad, but it ended up not tasting great with the veggies. Maybe it burned a bit? Next time I would make the chiken salad with plain shredded chicken.

Hummus

Tomorrow we will finally get our next share. I have really missed all those veggies this week. In the mean time, here's one of our favorite recipes. We love hummus with vegetables, pita, on salad, with falafel, or even CSA radishes, turnips and crackers.


Hummus
1 can chickpeas
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
2 T tahini
1 T cumin
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 T olive oil
water
salt to taste

Add all of the ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. If the texture is not to your liking, add water teaspoon by teaspoon until reaching the desired results.

I usually like a really thick hummus for a dip and a thinner texture to put in a pita with falafel.

Purslane Salad

I'm attending a farewell dinner this evening for one of our beloved staff members. She is off to new adventures and we are taking her to 5 Napkin Burger for dinner. I've never been there before and I'm curious to see what $15 burger tastes like.

Because I knew I would be out for dinner this evening, I saved the recipe from last night's salad for today's post. I was very excited to get three types of wild foods last week in the CSA share. The first one we're trying is the purslane. I tried looking up some recipes, but they were very sparse. The basic message I took away from my research was that purslane is similar to watercress. I have never prepared watercress either, so that wasn't too helpful.



Purslane looks like a jade plant with thinner leaves, and it's hard to imagine it tasting great raw, but it does. Here's the recipe:

Purslane Salad
2 C purslane, broken into bite-size pieces
1 radish, sliced
1 salad turnip, sliced
1/2 cucumber, sliced

Dressing:
1 T balsamic vinegar
2 T oil
pinch of salt and pepper

Mix the salad ingredients in a large bowl. Mix the dressing in a separate container. I like to use a coffee mug and spoon- the handle makes it easy to grasp the mug and the spoon blends the oil and vinegar together well. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss to mix.


Purslane

Roasted Root Vegetables

I have a confession. I don't turn on the oven if it's hot outside. Our apartment is really small, so small that apartments this small don't exist outside of New York City. So if we turn on our oven in the hot weather, even with our window air conditioner running, the apartment will be miserably hot. No worries. I have had some practice at life sans oven because I grew up in a hot climate where we basically didn't use our oven for 6 months of the year. But when I was growing up we had a BBQ, and that was our go to cooking equipment for the summer, we don't have a BBQ in the city. Maybe we will figure a way to get a tiny grill on our fire escape at some point, but I think it's officially illegal... I'm tellling you all of this because yesterday it finally cooled off and I decided to use the oven for dinner! This offered an exciting variety of options different from just using the stove top every night.

We had turnips and salad greens from the CSA share at home and I decided to pick up a couple more things on my way home to round out the meal. It started pouring during the afternoon, and by the time I got home I was sopping wet. All the more reason to get the oven started. I don't know if I fully exploited the oven opportunity, but I decided on steak, oven roasted root vegetables and salad for dinner. I felt like some simple comfort food. Here is the way I decided to use the turnip:

Oven Roasted Root Vegetables
Preheat oven to 450°

3 small red potatoes, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 small turnips, peeled and chopped
1/2 large onion, chopped
olive oil
sea salt
pepper

Combine the vegetables. Add enough olive oil to coat the vegetables and salt and pepper to taste. Bake for 45 minutes, or until tender. Stir occasionally to prevent the vegetables from sticking.

We really enjoyed the meal. It's amazing what a little olive oil, salt, pepper and heat can do.