The other night some friends (Steve & Heike) came over for dinner. I guess it was still a bit of fallout from having the cookie party on blizzard night – they had not made the party. Last year, the year of the broken thumb for cookie season, Heike was my kitchen manager for the party. She came in and organized – cleanup was almost the hardest part for me, because I had to rubber glove my cast to not get it wet. She was wonderful. She offered to do the same this year, but then illness and school and the weather all conspired against us.
We ate vegetable shepherd’s pie, from Gourmet. It was a bit of a production, the idea being, or the way the recipe was presented in the magazine, was that it’s a full-flavored vegetarian dish that could be the star of Thanksgiving dinner. Somehow I read “seitan” in the recipe, and bought tempeh – soy based fake meat, instead of wheat based. That had to be browned, for starters. You were supposed to make a rich vegetable stock – I used turkey broth from our Thanksgiving bird, that was rich enough to gel in the fridge. There were pearl onions in the stew – I used frozen ones, but if I’d used fresh, they’d have had to be blanched and peeled. Also in the stew: carrots, parsnips, leeks, and cremini mushrooms. And chopped flat-leaf parsley. After sauteeing all the veg, you reduced a whole bottle of red wince down to one cup, then added the stock, thickened it with beurre manie (flour kneaded into soft butter), added all the veg back, and simmered it for another half hour. Topping was mashed potatoes with celeriac – I used what was left from xmas dinner, and added a few more potatoes (I didn’t have anymore celeriac).
The stew was a little too thin, in my opinion, anyways – maybe I didn’t reduce the wine enough. So the shep’s pie was a little messy – overflowed the sides of the baking dish. The recipe said to place it on a baking sheet with 4 sides, though, so maybe the overflow was planned.
We ate the dregs of the cookies for dessert.
