Shepherd's Pie… Sort of.

Hello, faithful readers! It's been a crazy week full of school projects. Just about one month left until I get back to "real" life. I feel like I've been in school forever…

So, you know how sometimes you have a plan for dinner, and you start cooking and realize you're actually missing half your ingredients? Ya, I'm super-organized like that. Oh well, some of my best meals have come from substituting ingredients.

I had some leftover meat from the chicken I made earlier in the week, and I had boiled 2 or 3 pounds of potato chunks as a side dish, so I thought a modified Shepherd's Pie might be really interesting. A standard Shepherd's Pie is made with a ground beef or lamb filling that may have some small vegetables mixed in, then topped with a thick layer of mashed potatoes and browned in the oven. Check out this Alton Brown recipe if you'd like to get an idea. (I haven't tried it, but Alton Brown is awesome.)

Parts of this recipe are pretty vague, because several of the ingredients are whatever I had on hand, making it up as I go, and the recipe is actually fairly flexible. Check out my notes following the recipe for a bit more on this.

Gratuitous Melted Cheese Shot

Shepherd's Pie, The Chicken Version
Cooked chicken, about 2 C, chopped
1 leek, stem only, sliced into rounds OR 1 onion, chopped
2-3 carrots, cleaned or peeled and sliced
1 C frozen peas
1 packet mushroom & onion dry soup mix
*optional filling ingredients*

Mashed potatoes, made your favorite way, enough to cover the surface of whatever you decide to bake this in
Orange cheese (Cheddar, Colby, etc), I'd guess 1-2 C

Turn your oven to 400 F before starting the filling.
Heat a large skillet or medium saucepan with 1-2 Tbsp olive oil. If you're using onion, you'll want to sauté that for a few minutes before adding anything else. Saute the leek, if using, and the carrots until the leek softens, about 5 minutes. Then add the peas, soup mix, and 2 C water. Bring to a boil, then turn down to medium and continue stirring for a few minutes while the soup thickens. Remove the pan from heat, stir in the chicken, and pour into a casserole dish or baking pan.
Spread the mashed potato on top of the filling. My filling was a little saucy, so "spreading" the potatoes consisted of dropping spoonsful on top and trying to smear them together. Sprinkle cheese on top of the potatoes until you're happy with the coverage. I went a little heavy because my husband's favorite food is cheese. Put in the oven for at least 20 minutes, until the cheese looks good. Mine took closer to 35 minutes, because I like nicely browned.
Serves 3-6, depending on your serving size and what you add to the filling.

*When I mixed the filling ingredients, it didn't seem big enough to me. I probably should have added more vegetables, but I really wanted to add some white beans or lentils. I didn't have either of those, so I ended up throwing in 1/4 quinoa and an extra 1/2 C water. It was really good, and I probably could have doubled the amount of quinoa.

*By the way, did you know you don't always have to peel your vegetables? It's largely a preference thing. I rarely peel my carrots or potatoes, even when I plan to mash the potatoes. I just run both under water in the kitchen sink while scrubbing them with a brush to get off the dirt. If there is a deep crack in the carrot or part of the potato looks funny, I'll break out a knife and remove the offensive part.

Don't be afraid to experiment when you cook. If you're not sure about adding something, just start with a little, you can always add more. This is especially true with spices and salt. They can easily get too heavy, but it's not hard to add more until your food tastes just right.

Who're you calling chicken?

First Time Around
Last week, I saw a "rotisserie" chicken recipe on Pinterest. The trick is that it's made in a slow cooker!
What I really like about it is that I can pull the skin off the chicken before adding the spices. When I get a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store, I always lose the wonderful seasonings that get rubbed on the skin before the chicken is cooked.

A few things that I learned while making this chicken:

• Place the chicken breast side down (the opposite of what you see in the picture)
• If you don't love spicy food, reduce the cayenne pepper to 1/2 tsp
• If you have a regular slow cooker (like you see above, not a Crock Pot), you need to add a bit of liquid to keep the pan from getting damaged. 1/2 Cup water was plenty.

When the chicken was done, I stuck two forks in it, and it practically fell apart. I pulled most of the white meat and the large pieces of dark meat out of the pan, then served a few pieces with potato chunks and some steamed vegetables. After the carcass and broth had cooled, I dumped it all into a container so I could make soup later!

Reruns

One of my favorite things about cold weather is that it's incredibly easy to make soup out of pretty much anything I have in the fridge and pantry. 

I started by dumping the carcass and broth into a big soup pot. Add water to the pot. I used about twice as much water as chicken. (It's not an exact science, you can add more water if you like, just make sure the carcass is completely covered. If you add too much water, you can always use a little chicken bouillon to boost the chicken flavor before serving.) Bring it to a boil, then turn down to medium and simmer for an hour or so. 

Ways to improve the broth:

• Add a couple Tbsps of white vinegar to the water before you start to cook it. The vinegar taste and smell will disappear, but it draws the calcium and minerals out of the bones. If you simmer the broth long enough (about 5 hours), the bones will be flexible when you pull them out. If you decide to do that, leave the lid slightly askew, turn the heat to low, and check the pot occasionally to make sure there is still enough liquid in the pot.
• You can save scraps of veggies that you won't eat--like potato peels, broccoli stems, or wilted lettuce--wash them, and add them to the broth. You'll get the extra flavor from them, but they'll be removed before you finish making the soup.

When you're happy with the broth, you'll need to separate the broth by filtering out all the good stuff. I used a fine mesh sieve placed over a large glass measuring cup. Don't throw the solids out yet!

Put the broth back in the pan, turn up the heat, and start adding things for the soup. My favorite things to throw in:

• leftover vegetables from previous meals
• chopped veggies, anything that's in the fridge. This usually includes carrots, celery, or bell peppers. I also like to chop up a whole onion to add to the soup. Usually I'll sauté the onion in 1 Tbsp olive oil before adding the broth.
• short pasta (my favorites are bow tie, rotini, or elbow macaroni.) or chunks of potato
• canned beans, cooked and crumbled bacon, or leftover cooked meat

While your soup is cooking, spread your solids out on a cutting board and pick through it, looking for bits of chicken meat. Make sure you pull out all the bones when you're sorting the chicken meat! Once it's sorted, chop up those chicken bits and throw them back in the pot. When the veggies and pasta are tender, dinner is served!

Coming Soon

Well, if you're the kind of person who prefers a solid recipe, check back later this week. I'll be posting the recipe for the Shepherd's Pie I made with the remaining chicken.