Daring Cooks: Shepard's Pie

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2012 Hostess is Andy of Today’s the Day and Today’s the Day I Cook! Andy is sharing with us a traditional French Canadian classic the Paté Chinois, also known as Shepherd’s pie for many of us, and if one dish says comfort food.. this one is it!

Everything sounds delicious in French - doesn't it.  Well the first recipe Andy gave us for Paté Chinois was his family recipe and was very similar to the quick Shepard's pie that I regularly make for a weeknight supper.  It has ground beef, mash potatoes. canned or frozen vegetables.  Well, it seems like Paté Chinois is not quite the same.  It also has a little French Canadian twist,  red wine and creamed corn.  Not sure I have ever seen a recipe with red wine and creamed corn together.

My wife is not a big creamed corn fan so I decided to go with a more tradition Shepard's Pie.  Andy also gave us a recipe for a crock pot Shepard's pie made with lamb and beer.  Since I have never made a "real" Shepard's pie I decided to try this one.

I picked us a nice leg of lamb, unfortunately it was 5 1/2 pounds, about twice as big as I needed.  I decided to take a gamble that we would like it and just make a double batch.  I have a pretty large crock pot so I figured no problem.  Well as I started to put it together and mix all the vegetables and meat, I did not even have a bowl big enough to hold it all.  It definitely would not fit in my crock pot so I pulled out the dutch oven.  It barely fit in my large dutch oven.  The recipe called for 10 hours on low in the crock pot so I cooked mine for 3 hours at 325°F.

I froze about half of the cooked Shepard's pie.  I will be able to just make some potatoes and warm it all up to have it later.  The gamble payed off, because it was yummy.  I (and the rest of the family) will have no problem eating this again.  The meat was very tender and tasty and I pretty much licked the sauce off my plate.  The potatoes are cooked right with everything else so they come out a little brown - maybe don't look the best, but they get all that flavor from cooking with the other veggies and meat.  The only change I might make in the future is to brown the meat on the stove - I think that might add a little color and flavor to the meat.

If you want to check out this recipe or any of the other Shepard's pie recipes Andy gave us they are all posted on The Daring Kitchen recipe archive ( look for Paté Chinois ).

Daring Cooks: Brining and Roasting

Audax of Audax Artifax was our November 2012 Daring Cooks’ host. Audax has brought us into the world of brining and roasting, where we brined meat and vegetables and roasted them afterwards for a delicious meal!

This months challenge comes about a month early for us in the USA.  Thanksgiving is just a few weeks away and I will be doing lots cooking on that day - including a brined and roasted turkey.  I am not really complaining though, you can't go wrong with a roast chicken any day of the week.  

I have done this many times but Audax puts flavorings in the brine, while I normally put my garlic and other flavorings under the skin.  I added some garlic and sprigs of thyme to the brine.  For veggies I used potato, sweet potato, cauliflower, and onions.  

The chicken came out wonderful.  Not sure if I will change my method though.  Hard to tell without a side-by-side comparison but I think the under the skin method adds more flavoring.  I have only used brining with poultry but Audax discusses using it with other meats, seafood, and even nuts and seeds.  I will have to experiment a little more.

Daring Bakers: Mille-feuille

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

You know when you can't pronounce the name of a dessert then it is going to be good.  This Mille-feuille is no exception.  These are also known as Napoleons.

The dessert takes a little while to make but it is not very hard to make and looks very elegant.  The first step is making the puff pastry.  I have made puff pastry before so this was not very different.  The key to puff pastry is all the layers of dough and butter.  It sounds difficult - but isn't.  It does take at least several hours though as there is lots of time in the refrigerator.

The next step is making the pastry cream.  A little stirring but easy to make.  I don't think mine quite thickened enough but not sure.  It oozed a little more than I expected but hard to know - it could be right.  It was good either way.

The pastry and pastry cream get layered together - then comes the tricky part.  You make a royal icing and melt some chocolate for the top and then you need to work quickly.  You quick put the royal icing on, then a thin stream of chocolate, then you use a knife to make the pattern in the top.  You need to do this all in kind of one step since the icing and chocolate both start to set up.  Mine went pretty well.  I used a plastic bag to stream the chocolate on and I cut the hole in the bag a little big so the chocolate was a little wider than desired - but it still looked ok to me.

The hardest part of the whole thing was cutting it after everything had set-up.  The chocolate doesn't really want to cut and the pastry cream wants to ooze.  It came out nice though and tasted delicious.  Nice and flakey pastry and the pastry cream was yummy.  I only wish this was next months recipe since it would work great for the progressive dinner I need to make dessert for.  I'm sure there will be something equally yummy though :)

Daring Cooks: Empanadas

Patri of the blog, Asi Son Los Cosas, was our September 2012 Daring Bakers’ hostess and she decided to tempt us with one of her family’s favorite recipes for Empanadas! We were given two dough recipes to choose from and encouraged to fill our Empanadas as creatively as we wished!

I have been very busy as of late and I notice that I have missed at least two challenges.  Well time to get back into it.  I will post a picture at the end of the post of what has been keeping me so busy this past month.

When I first heard that we were making Empanadas I thought of small pies that you can pick up and eat filled with beef.  The Empanadas that Patri showed us were a bit different than that.  For one it was much larger - not a single serving size like I was used to.  She also introduced us to many different fillings - some with fish, ham, or beef.

I decided to make a beef filling since I knew that is what my family would like.  I used Patri's recipe but I left out the peppers and added some corn I had.  I also sprinkled about a cup of shredded cheddar cheese over the filling before I put the top on.

It was all very simple to make.  The crust was a yeast crust but only needed one rising.  I rolled it out about as thin as I thought I could without tearing it putting it together.  I think the thickness was perfect - just enough and on the edges where you fold it over you get a nice little extra "bready-ness".  The whole family loved it and asked for seconds.

As always,  if you are interested in this recipe or any of the Daring Kitchen recipes then check out the Daring Kitchen recipe archive here.

At the beginning I promised to show you what has been keeping me busy.  Well I am now a Cooking Dad x 2.  This is Evan.  He has been a great addition to our family but not always a lot of time for cooking right now.