Experimental Casserole: Southwestern Shepherd's Pie

I often get ideas for dinners by scanning the recipe books I've collected over the years. I usually end up not making what is actually in the recipe that catches my eye, but something based on it. The recipe in the book called for making the meat mixture and putting cornmeal breadsticks in decorative spokes. I didn't have cornmeal breadsticks, so instead I just made cornbread and baked on top. I'm sure it's been done many times before, but it's new to me. ;-)

1/2 large onion

1 or 2 cloves garlic

1 lb ground beef

15oz can kidney beans

15oz can diced tomatoes

8oz can corn

4oz can green chilies

chili and cumin to taste

Preheat oven to 425°. 

In an oven proof frying pan, sautee the onions and garlic then brown the meat. When the meat is cooked, add the remaining ingredients and simmer to reduce out the liquid while preparing the cornbread.

1 cup flour

1 cup cornmeal

4 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp sugar

1 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

Mix the dry ingredients well then stir in the liquids to form a batter. Spread the batter across the top of the mixture in the frying pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cornbread is set and lightly browned.

It ended up pretty good, though I realized after I was done that I should have added some cheddar cheese, either directly in the cornbread mix or between the meat mixture and the cornbread.  I also need to up my spices(1) next time, but overall we enjoyed it.

I intended to take a picture of the final result, which actually looked quite nice when it came out of the oven. Unfortunately my proclivity for cleaning the kitchen right away kicked in, and I didn't think about it again until I sat down to write this up. Next time!

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(1) The "to taste" in the recipe is a result of me just doing my usual "that looks right"; unfortunately I didn't account for the cornbread being such a strong sweet flavor and covering up the spices quite a bit.

Adventures in Brewing - Hard Apple Cider

My first attempt at a hard apple cider was actually a surprising success; the only issue I had with it was that it ended up a bit drier than I would have preferred. We're about out of that batch, so today I set up a new batch with a couple of changes -- one intentional and the other not.  The intentional change was to add 4oz of lactose, which is a non-fermenting sugar used in porters and stouts to add residual sweetness.  The unintentional change was in the juice: before I had three gallons of unfiltered apple cider. This time of year it's harder to get that, so instead I used half filtered apple juice (not from concentrate) and half unfiltered natural apple juice (partially from concentrate).  We'll see how it turns out.

1.5 gallons filtered apple juice
1.5 gallons unfiltered apple juice
1.5 c sugar
1.5 c light brown sugar
4 oz lactose
1 11g packet Nottingham brewing yeast, started in 1c water for 15 min

Dissolv the sugars in 1/2 gallon of juice and bring to a boil, then pour into the rest of the juice. When it cools, add the yeast and seal it up to ferment.

In two weeks I'll bottle it, and in another couple of weeks we'll see how it turned out, and report back!

Spicy + Sweet = Yumm!

My daughter absolutely loves chicken with Shake n Bake Honey Mustard glaze.  For her first day of Junior High, I wanted to make her one of her favorite dinners, so when I went shopping, I went to the spot with all the Shake n Bake stuff, and ... it wasn't there. So when we went shopping for school supplies at Target, I checked the grocery section, and ... it wasn't there either.

At this point, my brain kicks in. Honey mustard glaze. Clearly, this is going to consist of honey and mustard in some proportion, and probably some other spices and such.  I can do this. I just have to get an idea of what the proportion should be, and what the "other spices and such" are. To the InterTubes!

After consulting literally hundreds(1) of sites, I came to the conclusion that there really don't need to be any "other spices and such", and the proportion appears to be somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1 in favor of honey. Consensus appeared to be to use Dijon or spicy mustard, though one maverick was using plain yellow mustard. Now I can be as mavericky as the next guy, and yellow mustard does have its place(2), but I decided I'd stick with the majority.

So I heated about 1/4 cup honey in a pyrex measuring cup, then added a few squirts of mustard. After a few stirs, I tasted, and it seemed about right. Alex agreed, so I gave the chicken a soak while I preheated the oven, then baked it up.

Result: Honey mustard chicken! (I know, it's a shock!)  Put some green beans on the side, and call it dinner.
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(1)  OK, about a half-dozen or so.

(2) Its place is on the door shelf in the fridge, where guests who have no functioning taste buds can use it on their sandwiches or hot dogs, saving the real stuff for the rest of us.

FC Dallas: FAIL. Trinity Hall: WIN. Dinner: Get it yourself.

There were several good moments in today's FC Dallas v Red Bull New York game, but not quite enough.  Fortunately the crowd at Trinity Hall was lively and fun as always, so even with a bad game it was a good afternoon.  After three Old Chub Scottish Ales I really shouldn't use anything hot or sharp, so no cooking tonight.  Tomorrow there will be something of Alex's choosing to commemorate her first day of junior high school.

Pastitsio

So today's dinner is Pastitsio.  I've tried it before with moderate success, but decided to give it another go once I found that my local middle eastern grocery carries proper pastitsio noodles. The recipe I used came from Jeff Smith's awesome The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines: China, Greece, and Rome. I modified it a bit(1) but it's mostly his recipe:

Meat Sauce

1 medium onion

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp butter for sauteeing

1 1/4 lb ground beef or lamb

1 16oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 tbsp butter for sauce

salt and pepper

cinnamon

Sautee the onions and garlic until just starting to turn golden brown. Add the meat and brown. Add the tomatoes, additional butter, and spices and simmer for 15 minutes, allowing most of the liquid to reduce, leaving a hearty meat sauce.

Noodles

3/4 to 1 lb of pastitsio noodles. If you can't get them, ziti will do. (2)

3 eggs

1/2 cup grated parmesan

Cook the noodles for 5-7 minutes. Beat the eggs and cheese together, and toss the noodles in the mixture.

Bechamel

6 tbsp butter

6 tbsp flour

1 1/2 cups warm milk

3 eggs

pinch of salt

pinch of nutmeg

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. When the bubbling stops, add the flour and stir together to make a roux. Add in the milk a little at a time and let the sauce come together. Temper the sauce into the egg then stir the egg in and add the salt and nutmeg.

Put it all together

Put half the noodles into the bottom of a 9x12 inch baking dish. If you are using real pastitsio noodles, lay them out parallel (think of it like a lasagna -- the extra effort is worth it). Layer the meat sauce onto the noodles, then the rest of the noodles on top. Pour the bechamel over the whole thing. Bake at 350° for 15 minutes. When it comes out of the oven, give it 10-15 minutes to cool a bit and to let the bechamel set up. Slice and serve.

Jeff Smith says this serves 6-8. The bechamel makes it really rich; I cut it into 12 squares. Based on the ingredients, I estimate about 450 calories per square. Put that with a salad and you have a pretty decent meal. (3)

It turned out really well -- Dorothy even called it "awesome". Next time I'll probably scale up the meat sauce to match the noodles, or maybe do a smaller batch in a 9x9 inch pan for fewer leftovers. I'm freezing about 1/2 of the squares, so I'll report back on how well it revives as leftovers.

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Footnotes:
 (1) I  cut some butter out of the meat sauce (though there's still quite a bit), only used about half the egg wash for the noodles (I can't imagine how he made use of all of it), and used more noodles (because I hate having 1/4 of a package sitting around). Should have scaled up the meat sauce to match the noodles, though the bechamel was probably adequate.

(2) Try to avoid elbow macaroni if you can, but if you can't, just don't tell me.

(3) Of course, as it happens I didn't remember to make a salad, so I ended up having 2 squares. Fortunately, I had eaten light the rest of the day, so my diet isn't horribly blown.

Yet another blog!

All the cool kids are doing it, right? I did LJ for a while, when LJ was where all the cool kids were. I didn't really have that much to say, though, so I just sort of abandoned it.  When I heard about "Julie and Julia", I thought that was a pretty neat idea. So like any good 21st century geek, I decided to steal it. ;-)

I'm not going to blog my way through a cookbook, though. That would just be stealing -- and it would require me to pick a cookbook and make everything in it. I know myself well enough to know I'm not going to do that for very long.  So instead I'm going to just blog about what I'm cooking (and baking and brewing), share my recipes and thoughts, and maybe get some folks to share some of theirs. Being mildly ADD (as most geeks are, if you get right down to it), I'll most likely also talk about things other than cooking. I'm sure you can deal with it.

Comments are open, even anonymous, but if you do comment it would be nice to know who you are. Hopefully Blogger's anti-spam systems will work well enough that I won't have to worry about moderation.