Shepherd’s Pie

Tags

autumn recipes, brunch, chives, comfort food, easy recipe, lamb mince, lamb sauce, lunch, mash, mashed potatoes, One bowl meal, pie, rosemary, sheperds pie, thyme, winter recipes, worcestershire sauce

I’ve been itching to have a go at making this pie for a while now! What’s not to love about creamy mashed potatoes and a hearty thick lamb mince ragu all in a single bowl? It’s a pretty balanced meal is it not? Carbs, protein and vegetables? Let’s forget for a moment about the amount of cream and cheese that went into it and label it as the ultimate balanced meal.

Comfort food. Easy to put together. I will definitely make this again! The recipe calls for peas and corn as well but I made do without them since I’ve got a picky eater on my hands today!

Ingredients 

Meat Layer

• Minced lamb – around 700 grams
• 2 carrots, diced into smallish cubes
• 1/2 cup fresh corn kernels
• 1/2 cup fresh English peas (if you’re feeling lazy there’s always the frozen mixed vegetables option which has carrots, corn and peas all in one convenient bag. Use 1.5 cups of the mix then)
• 4 cloves garlic finely minced
• 1 cup minced onion
• 3 tsp chopped rosemary leaves
• 3 tsp thyme leaves
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 3 tbsps Tomato puree, have an additional 3 tbsps on hand if you prefer more of it in the ragu
• 2 tbsps Worcestershire sauce – other recipes call for 1 tsp, I found it insufficient and ended to my taste, so add to your taste
• 2 tbsps all purpose flour
• pepper to taste

Potato Layer

• 700 grams peeled russet potatoes approx.
• 200 ml cream
• 30g salted butter
• pepper to taste
• 1 tsp garlic powder (optional)
• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese
• fresh thyme leaves

Cooking Instructions  

• Heat up butter in a large deep skillet on medium high heat
• Add the chopped onions first, and cook until translucent and starting to caramelise.
• Add the garlic and fry for about half a minute or so until that’s soft
• At this point if the mixture is getting a tad too dry, add a little more butter. After which we can now put the lamb mince into the pan to brown. Break up the meat into small pieces (the smaller, the smoother the ragu will be, but that’s only if you like it that way)
•  Mix in the vegetables, we’re only adding them now as we don’t want to overcook them
• Sprinkle the thyme and rosemary over the mixture and give it a good stir.
• Pour in the red wine, chicken broth, Worcestershire sauce and tomato puree and flour.
• Bring the sauce to a boil and lower the heat to simmer for a couple of minutes. The flour should thicken the sauce in the process.
• Turn the heat off and cover with a lid.

• As for the potatoes, place them in a large pot and cover with cold water
• Add salt to the water
• Bring to a boil. Once they are pierced easily with a fork, drain them. Check in about 10 minutes, if the potatoes are still resistant to the fork the leave for a bit longer. However, take care that you don’t overcook them. Don’t want mushy potatoes!
• Press the potatoes through a ricer (or mash them by hand) and put aside.
• Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan and add the cream. Bring this to a gentle simmer before adding the potatoes to the cream and mixing it all up. Season with salt and pepper.
• (Additional step:- you can put the mashed potatoes through a sieve to get rid of all the lumps for that smooth mash)

Ladle the ragu into your prettiest deep dish (one that is oven-compatible). Sprinkle a layer of cheese over the ragu.   Spread the mashed potatoes evenly over the ragu like so.
After which you’re done. You can use a fork to create patterns on the mash which will turn out a little crispy after some time in the oven. My ideal meat ragu to potato ratio  is 3:1.

However, you can add more if you like your mash. Here, I decorated the top by squeezing the potatoes through a decorative nozzle.

Sprinkle some cheese over the top of the mash layer, and arrange some thyme leaves strategically into the top layer as a sort of garnish and for the fragrance.

Bake at 205 Celsius for around 20-30 minutes
Added some chopped chives before serving, just because I like chives.
  

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White truffle series part 1: Garlic soy lamb with white truffles

Tags

aluminium foil, baked, dinner, easy lamb recipe, easy meals, easy meat recipe, easy recipe, garlic, lamb, mains, meat, soy sauce, truffle lamb, truffle oil, truffles, white winter truffles

This is a super easy recipe, all you need is a rack of lamb, some chopped up garlic, soy sauce and some white pepper. And then you shove it in the oven. I used to make this in university when I could spare the money for some lamb meat (definitely did not fancify it with truffles back then!), and I ate it with rice. It made for a really satisfying meal!

This time around I made the dish again along with my other truffle themed dishes:-

Top left; uni mixed with sushi rice topped with ikura, truffles and more uni

Centre: Sea bream/tai sashimi with chopped canned black summer truffles in truffle oil, fleur de sel and shaved white truffles. I’ve made this before with black winter truffles

Bottom right: Garlic soy lamb with white truffles

Bottom left: Uni sushi with truffles, japanese mayonnaise, chives and white truffles

Here are a couple more pictures of the sashimi, won’t be doing up recipe posts on it as I’ve done it before:

(Yes, I bought a mountain of uni in honour of the white truffle! Hello cholesterol!)

Ingredients for the trio of truffle carpaccio dish (yeah well it was supposed to be a carpaccio but truth be told I bought it as sashimi)

Chopped canned black truffles

Here’s a peak of the monster white truffle…

Ingredients (for 1 pax):

(Please ignore the ice wine, balsamic vinegar and honey that’s in the photo… I had initially wanted to make a separate sauce for the lamb but I found that the sauce from the lamb after cooking was more than sufficient!)

• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small rack of lamb, around 200g with the bone – this was a really small rack of lamb, thus only feeds one person
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• white pepper to taste
• 1 tsp white truffle oil (optional)
• white truffle shavings to top (optional)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius
• Place the room temperature lamb in a sheet of aluminium foil large enough to entirely wrap the lamb.
• Rub in the soy sauce, minced soy sauce and a dash of white pepper into the lamb

• Place 1 tbsp of water into the sheet before wrapping up the lamb.
• Place the lamb in the oven for about 35 minutes for a pink centre (you can adjust the temperature slightly higher and/or leave it in the oven for longer if you like it well done)
• Remove from oven and let rest for 10 minutes at room temperature.
• Shave white truffles over the top and serve

mmmmm…

White truffle season is here!!! ~

Tags

truffle, white truffle

I’m all truffled out… *urp*

More to come 😉

Roast Lamb

Tags

christmas, dinner, festive, herbs, mains, roast lamb

I love my oven, its so useful for cooking. Leave the food to cook, wander about your business and come back to a meal. I don’t know how I would have lived without it back in university… we microwaved/oven baked our way through loads of frozen food 🙂

This Roast lamb recipe was taught to us by our housemate’s mom, who’s an amazing cook and fed the house whenever she visited. I particularly loved her roast lamb and scones. The most fiddlesome thing in this recipe is probably separating the leaves and the stems of the herbs, but other than that it’s relatively doable. And I love the way I feel like the Flintstones, brandishing a large hunk of meat on bone, like the true carnivore that I am.

Ingredients (Serves 6)

1. 1 leg of lamb at room temperature
2. 1-2 Carrots
3. 1 Large Onion
4. 1 whole Garlic bulb
5. 1 stick of butter at room temperature, it should be soft and malleable
6. Herbs – Thyme (I used the normal thyme as well as lemon thyme), Rosemary, Parsley (I used English Parsley), Mint
7. Mint Jelly (I love Mint Jelly!!!) to serve alongside the lamb
8. 1 cup Chicken stock
9. 1/2 tbsp flour for thickening (or more if you like it thicker)
10. Salt
11. Black Pepper

Cooking instructions

1) Please wash the herbs thoroughly, do not use them directly from the packet. A lot of these herbs have residual mud hiding in the leaves so give them a good rinse.

2) Pat the herbs dry with a paper towel. Then here’s the troublesome bit… strip the leaves off the stems. Of course if you’re lazy you could just chop them all up into bits, but do this at least for the thyme. Remember to leave some rosemary sprigs, we will use that later on as well.

Garden of herbs

Dry the herbs

Strip the leaves off their stems and chop them up finely.

Mince the garlic 

3) Mix the garlic into the butter in a bowl. Add in the herbs and incorporate further to form a garlic butter paste like below:

4) Prepare your leg of lamb. It should be at room temperature and this is very important for a tender chunk of lamb. Rub the lamb leg with some salt and black pepper and make random slits in the meat

5) Slather the garlic butter mixture all over the lamb. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 220 degrees celsius.

6) Remember the slits you made? Stick in some rosemary sprigs like so.

7) Chop the carrots and onions into chunks and large slices and place into a large baking tray. Place the lamb on top and cover with aluminum foil. Pop it into the oven for about 20 minutes.

8) After 20 minutes, remove the aluminum foil and use it to wrap around the bone end of the lamb. This area burns the quickest, so to avoid smoking up your oven, best to cover up the bone end.

9) The lamb will brown once the foil is removed, it is important to keep basting the lamb every 10 minutes or so (I don’t know, but it seems to work?). So every 10-15 minutes, scoop the melted herb butter out of the tray and onto the lamb. Your total cooking time will be around 1.5 hours. You could use a meat thermometer to check whether the meat is rare, medium or well done however my thermometer lied to me and told me that my meat was overdone when it was still rare. I improvised without it.

10) Remove the lamb from the oven and transfer to a warm plate before covering with aluminum foil. Let the meat rest for at least half an hour before carving.

11) Scoop out the carrots and onions and place in a serving plate. Pour out the herb/butter into a bowl, and scrape out the brown bits (brown, not burnt!) from the tray as well. This will be used to make the gravy.

12) Skim the excess oil off the herb butter, there’ll probably be a lot, and strain the herb sediments out. I was lazy so the gravy had bits of herbs everywhere.

13) Heat up a small saucepan and pour in the chicken stock. Bring to a simmer. Mix the flour with 1-2 tbsps room temperature water before slowly adding it into the chicken stock. Season with salt and pepper, continuously stirring until the mixture thickens.

Serve your lamb with the gravy and mint sauce. Of course, no roast dinner is complete without other side dishes so I’ll do another blog post on that in the future. What I used to accompany the roast lamb this time is some new potatoes.

New potatoes

1) Boil about 8 new potatoes

2) Quarter them

3) Add 30g of butter into a skillet to melt on medium-high heat

4) Add potatoes to the pan and toss in the butter

5) Add in some chopped parsley, a generous sprinkle of salt and black pepper and if you like, some garlic powder. Toss to coat well. Try not to use a spatula to mix the herbs and potatoes together. It is a messy process and you may break the potatoes into many little pieces along the way. Just use your wrist and toss the ingredients using the movements of the pan. Yes I know, I find it difficult as well since my wrist doesn’t seem to have enough strength for it. But believe me this is the way to do it.

There you have it, a juicy joint of meat (look at the picture below! all those delicious juices gleaming on the meat), potatoes as well as the carrots and onions that were in the pan. Feels very festive doesn’t it?

Greek Sloppy Joe

Tags

bread, lamb, light meals, pita, Sandwich, Snack, western

I don’t eat beef for religious reasons. It’s also pretty hazardous on the skin as, being ‘heaty’ it causes acne and pimples. I’ve stayed away from beef even as a kid. But I cannot ignore the fact that beef is universally enjoyed and the aroma of it even in student kitchens was mouthwatering. Admittedly, it was very difficult for me in the UK especially back in boarding school (Concord college) where they would have 4-5 choices of mains and most of them would be something beef. Beef stew, fried beef slices, beef lasagna, roast beef and the list goes on. The only choice I could go for is the only non-beef main that’s always prevalent… the vegetarian choice. Vegetarian lasagna anyone? I love my meat so the vegetarian option always leaves me craving for something juicy and meaty. The closest substitute I have to beef is lamb, which shares almost the same bloody, red and juicy meat tendencies as beef.

This is a dish I dreamt up after watching yet another beef-related cooking show on food network and Asian food channel. Sort of a Greek play on Sloppy Joe with the thick creamy greek yoghurt and lamb and mint. And it is so rich and gamey, with some arugula and mango to lighten up on the richness and provide some texture to the sandwich. Perfect snack or a light meal to quench my meat cravings. Lamb chops are even better but I’ll save that for another time.

This sloppy joe may not look pretty but aren’t the ugliest dishes sometimes the yummiest?

I’ve adapted this from http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/sloppy_joes

Ingredients (Serves 2)

1. 1 Tbsp olive oil
2. 1 medium onion chopped
3. Optional: 1 medium carrot chopped
4. 2 cloves garlic, minced
5. Salt
6. 500g ground lamb, marinated with 1/2 teaspoon salt and some black pepper
7. 2 squirts of tomato ketchup
8. 1/2 cup tomato sauce
9. 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
10. 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
11. 2 Tbsp brown sugar
12. 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
13. Black pepper
14. 4-6 pita breads
15. Mango, thinly sliced
16. 1/2 tbsp of greek yoghurt per pita bread
17. Thinly sliced mint leaves (1 mint leaf per pita)
18. A handful of arugula, washed and lightly dressed in the creamy Japanese sesame salad dressing you can find in most supermarkets.

1. Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan on medium high heat.
2. Add the carrots (if you’re using them) for about 5 minutes before adding the chopped onion.
3. Cook, stirring every now and then until onions are translucent.
4. Add the minced garlic and cook for 30 more seconds. Remove from heat and set aside in a bowl.
5. Using the same pan, heat the pan on high. Crumble the ground lamb into the pan and ensure that you do not overcrowd the pan. Do this in two batches if need be.
6. Do not stir the lamb mince, just let it cook until it is well browned on one side. Then flip the pieces over and brown the second side.
7. Return the vegetables to the lamb mince in the pan, add the ketchup, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar, rosemary and brown sugar to the pan and mix well.
8. Lower the heat to medium low and let simmer for 10 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste.
9. Lightly toast your pita bread so that it’s a light golden on the outside (you can do this in a frying pan) and cut it three quarters of the way through to form a “pocket”.
10. Spreads the greek yoghurt on the insides of the pita bread, spoon some of the lamb mixture topped with mint into it along with a slice or two of mango and some arugula leaves.