Turkey Breast in Instant pot

We got a seven pound turkey breast from Rinella Produce that I cooked under pressure in the instant pot.

So far we have had it:
With Eggs;
With brown gravy;
With mashed potatoes and bbq beans;
Sandwiches;
On Salads.

We still have turkey.
Trying to figure out more things to try.

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.

Ham and cheese potato pancakes

I have a steady stream of potatoes coming in from our CSA so we cooked up our backlog into mashed potatoes. I have been trying to come up with some new ways to incorporate them into other meals as an ingredient.

Today's experiment: potato pancakes with ham, cheese, and leeks.

Pi-tato pi-ttata for Pi Day

In honor of Pi Day I wanted some pi themed lunch. With mashed potatoes staring me in the face as I opened he fridge I wondered about a potato frittata, or rather, a pi-tato pi-ttata!

Strange brown glop

Just a reminder, this blog is warts and all. So here is a failure I am sharing...

I had some roasted squash and some leftover mashed potatoes and some leftover caramelized apples and thought "what could happen" and pureed them all together in to this strange brown glop.

Caramelized potatoes

Skillet-fried potatoes have been a bit of a challenge for me to get right. I used to microwave the potatoes (after pricking them with a fork) then dicing and frying. In Cooking for Geeks they have a recipe where you dice, par boil for 5 minutes, drain then pan fry. That worked much better. I added a little bacon and salsa to the potatoes and served with some scrambled eggs on the side. 

Quick lunch Potatoes, Turkey, Brussels Sprouts

I was having a low-energy day, but needed to throw together a quick lunch.

Rummaging around in the fridge and putting the microwave to work reheating in parallel with a quick sauté produced a quite tasty ensemble in 10-steps.

Vegetable Shepherd's Pie

Sharon found me a nice recipe for Shepherd's Pie at Cooking For Engineers. Evidently it originates in the Joy of Cooking. I have made this a couple times in the traditional form -- with ground beef. Today I wanted to keep the form of the dish but make it vegetarian. So in place of the beef I thought I would use roast squash, apples, nuts, and maybe some cooked greens. What could happen?!

Cooking veggies in the fireplace

Had a fire in the fireplace and decided to experiment with roasting some veggies in the coals.

Scrubbed two potatoes, an apple, and a carrot and rubbed them with some bacon drippings.

Placed them on a sheet of aluminum foil with a couple sprigs of rosemary.

I tried setting the potato in front of the fire, but it didn't really get hot enough.

So as the fire was dying down to coals, I just set the thing in against the inside wall and piled a bunch of hot coals on top.

I should have waited until it reached 210 degrees, but the coals seemed to be cooling off, and I was ready to eat at 204. This left the potatoes a little crunchy, but still cooked. The carrots were ok. But the Apple was amazing with a noticeable hint of rosemary.

Sausage Potato Casserole

I had some pork sausage and some potatoes that I wanted to cook. So after a little googling, I found an interesting looking recipe for Sausage Potato Casserole.

I mostly followed the recipe, except I used cream of potato soup rather than cream of mushroom. And I added some spices: ginger, galangal, grains of paradise, long pepper, and cubebs. I used a little more potato and pork than the recipe called for so it ended up being three layers rather than two. I thought about using a larger dish, but I like the added thickness.