For the first time, I'm participating in the Make It From Scratch carnival hosted by Stephanie at Stop the Ride. I'm excited! My very first carnival, too! Earlier this week, I mentioned I made St. Patrick's Day cookies, but those don't count as 'made from scratch' in my book- I used a mix that involves adding an egg, a stick of butter, mixing & sticking them in the oven. Instead, I've been itching to make shepherd's pie all week. I hadn't ever even eaten shepherd's pie, but it seemed like a good idea, and looked yummy in pictures, so I thought I'd give it a try. I started with the recipe at Simply Recipes.
I was delighted to see that I had all the ingredients on hand. I'm of the school of thought that, when fixing dinner, I'll use what I have, and make it work. And that i did. I went to the freezer and discovered I was lower on ground beef than I had thought- I had only 1/2 lb. A full recipe would be too much for just the two of us anyway, so I cut the recipe in half and used 1/4 lb ground turkey to make up the difference. Also, we don't like onions, so I left those out.
After browning the meat, cooking the vegetables, and mashing the potatoes, the dish was ready to go in the oven. It looked delicious, and I was glad to sneak in veggies to our diet, of which we don't eat nearly enough. Well, half an hour later, after a few minutes under the broiler, the casserole came out browned and yummy.
A discussion we had over the dinner table: Josh asked, "Why do they call it a pie? It doesn't use a pie crust." I surmised, "Well, we had chicken pot pie earlier this week, and it doesn't have a crust." He said, "Normally it does." (I didn't feel like making a crust from scratch Thursday, so I used refrigerator biscuits on the top.) So I had no answer. I figured that it must be a UK-English word for 'casserole' or something. in the end, the consensus was, we like the recipe from across the pond, and it's a keeper. I hope to be making shepherd's pie for years to come!
1 comment:
I'm just happily going through your archives :) I'm in NZ and you're right. It's basically called a pie because it originally have been cooked in a pie dish. We do meat pies here, with crusts on both top and bottom and this is just a variation of that. Potato topped pies are quite common.
Post a Comment