cook: shepherd’s pie

This weekend, I had a huge turnip in the fridge and made a trip to the store just to buy ground lamb because I wanted to cook a shepherd's pie. And wow did it take a couple hours to chop and make a mise en place: dicing turnip, carrots, celery, onion and leeks, slicing radishes, and trimming sugar snap peas took that long.     

The sugar snap peas and radishes in the vegetable bin, which I didn’t want to flounder further, couldn't go into my shepherd's pie, and so I decided to roast them. I can never cook too many vegetables. But first I needed to sauté the aromatics.

And then sauté the vegetables. And oh heck I forgot to brown the lamb.

And so I removed the vegetables from the pot and proceeded to brown the ground lamb. And then added the vegetables back to the pot as well as pork and beef broth (with the help of Better than Bouillon beef base).

And then glorious mashed potatoes, and thank goodness I remembered to get the potatoes boiling and finish by the time my stew had thickened before inelegantly plopping the potatoes atop the stew to form a crust and through which I created runnels by running a fork through the mash.

It was two and a half hours later that I got the pies assembled, and we just couldn’t wait another 45 minutes for it to bake to eat it for dinner. And so into the fridge it went. We then ate leftover (getting rid of leftovers is always a win) split pea soup with kielbasa and the roasted sugar snap peas and radishes for dinner.                    

I plan on serving leftovers all week because we've lots of carne asada, hummus, Greek salad, and now shepherd's pie. I will, however, cook a macaroni and cheese casserole for Patrick as he won't eat my Mediterranean repast though maybe he will be okay with the Japanese ramen kit I bought at Costco as well as the chicken breasts stuffed with broccoli and cheddar rice pilaf. Oh and Denver O'Brien potatoes with poached eggs or kimchi fried rice will also break up the monotony. We've also more heads of Savoy cabbage in the garden, and so I can't wait to make Colcannon and Stuffed Cabbage Rolls.