Cottage Pie

Snowy day, ground beef in the fridge, and half a bag of potatoes -- what a nice day for a shepherds cottage pie! Based loosely on a recipe Sharon found for me. [Update: Evidently a "Shepherds pie" is made with lamb or mutton, as the name implies. If made with beef, it is a cottage pie.]

I browned ground beef, minced garlic, two slices of bacon (diced) and some random stuff from the freezer (roasted beets, squash) until well browned in some bacon drippings and olive oil in a dutch oven over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, in the instant pot, I made mashed potatoes by scrubbing and chunking half a bag of russet potatoes and adding a cup of beef broth and a dollop of minced garlic. Cooked on "manual" (pressure cooking) for 6 minutes, releasing the steam when complete.

I had several breaks to take in the beautiful day.

Please brown

When the beef mixture was browned I admixed a can of cream of something (in this case, chicken) soup, a tablespoon of BBQ sauce, a generous pinch of salt, and some ground pepper, long pepper, and grains of paradise.

This was poured into a pyrex pie pan.

The potatoes and stock were mashed with some butter and half-and-half. Maybe a little too much liquid (see later).

I used half the potatoes for the pie topping.

Finally browned

Baked at 400 degrees for 16 minutes.

This was not long enough (see picture). Didn't have any browning to speak of.
I kept checking the oven, then wandering off to check the snow, and twitter, and facebook, then back to the oven. Eventually, it browned.

Sliced up well and tasted delicious and comforting.

Next time: A little more peaking on the topping would make for nicer browning.
I also wonder about a little grated hard cheese either on top or mixed in with the last half cup of potatoes to form the top-most layer.

Freezing Apricot Pies

Over the winter and spring we like to have "fresh" peach and apricot pies. We do this by making up the fillings and freezing them in pie pans until they set. Then bag them in gallon freezer zip-lock bags.

Pi Day Pie

In the summer, when the fruit is at the height of its season we like to buy a crate or two of peaches or apricots and make up a bunch of pie fillings that we stash away in the freezer to be used through the winter months. Pi Day is an excellent excuse to pull one of these buried gems from the cellar, make up a pie crust and have some pie.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie from Scratch

Well, not really pumpkin. In this case I made a butternut squash pie -- it just doesn't sound right. I wanted to make it gluten free (and I didn't feel like making my usual crust which is a lot more work). I also needed to make a substitution: I had no evaporated milk in the house.