Well, the true “Dark Days” are officially over with the arrival of spring, but the other challenge participants and I are playing along for the rest of the month. This week I made one of my husband’s favorites, a modified Shepherd’s Pie.
I had loads of local onion leaves left from processing all the onions for the Can Jam challenge last week, so I started by chopping the scallion-y leaves into a skillet with a drizzle of olive oil. I added a couple of cloves of crushed garlic from Providence Farms, a pound of ground beef from Olds’ Farm, a little salt & pepper and sauteed the whole mixture until the meat was cooked through.
Meanwhile in a pot of boiling salted water, I cooked four or five redskin potatoes from Westmaas Farms. When the potatoes were cooked fully I mashed them, skins and all, with some homemade feta cheese.
Drain the extra fat from the cooked ground beef. Scoop the feta-mashed potatoes out of their pan and spread them onto the beef. To make the whole mess extra tasty, grate some Black Star Farms Raclette on top before baking. Everything is fully cooked so you only need to bake the pie long enough for it to become golden and delicious. Or, you can preassemble pies and bake them another day when you need a quick meal and don’t have time to cook.
Fresh from the oven.
I love this dinner because it is simple, I almost always have all the ingredients I need for it in the house, and everyone in the family will eat some variation of it. Sometimes I add corn kernels or other veggies to the ground beef, but it is good without them.
To round out our meal I made a salad with local romaine lettuce, more onion greens and the yogurt-feta dressing I made last week but didn’t eat because I was out of lettuce.
Last Saturday was “Shop Your Community Day” so while I was wandering around the Commons after my trip to the Farmers’ Market, I popped in to Pleasanton Bread and picked up a loaf of their wood-fired brick oven whole wheat bread. It was delicious toasted with this simple meal.
A wintry meal for a spring day.
Great post and really neat to see that you made your own cheese. We made some ricotta this past week and looking forward to making more. But reading your cheese post about the leftover whey, I didn’t know what to do with it and you have some great suggestions. And then I thought, we could use it for the water in our soap!! I know, I’ve kind of got a one track mind and it’s on soap right now! Thanks for the post.
Do you think the whey would add nutrients to the soap like milk would? That would be an interesting experiment.
I don’t know. It was just a thought. However, it might be better to use it with bread as you did.
That feta mashed potato is an inspiration, will have to try it. The whole meal looks delicious!