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Shepherd’s Pie

February 2, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 7 comments

First of all, if you missed it yesterday, please check out this opportunity to be a part of a new cookbook that is publishing very soon. Bloggers and non-bloggers are welcome to submit recipes.

http://traveleatlove.com/2012/02/attention-boston-bloggers/

Hearty, warm, comforting, and mostly healthy, shepherd’s pie is a cold weather staple that can be changed up to suit the individuals making and eating it. The best part about shepherd’s pie, is of course, the leftovers. I made this shepherd’s pie for dinner on Tuesday night, and it made dinner for two and six lunches. There’s nothing I love more than having lunches out of the way. For some reason I have always hated making work week lunches!

There are many shepherd’s pie recipes out there, some vegetarian, many using beef or lamb, and some, like mine, that use ground lean turkey as the filler of choice.

I started off my pie by boiling four large Idaho potatoes and one sweet potato that had been hanging around, just waiting to be eaten.

While the potatoes were cooking, I thawed some sweet corn.

Chopped up half of a yellow onion

And I used my mandolin to cut perfect carrots.

Photos are missing, but I cooked the turkey and onions in a little bit of olive oil in a pan, then added the carrots and corn and 3/4 of a bottle of this delicious Stovepipe Porter that we picked up in Vermont. Vermont has some great beer!

The beer added a great flavor and richness to the turkey and veggie mixture. While it simmered on low, I got my potatoes mashed with some butter, cream, and salt. I ended up with way more mashed potatoes than I needed, but who doesn’t love leftover mashed potatoes?! As you can tell, I left the skins on the potato. I’m not lazy, I actually like the skins, and they have all of the fiber.

I popped the shepherd’s pie into the oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. At the end, I set the oven to broil for about two minutes to brown the top. It was delish!

On the side we had shredded Brussels sprouts sautéed in a bit of olive oil and topped with an almond “cheese” sauce I made. I have seen so many vegan cheese sauces made with nuts, and I had some almonds in the house so I decided to make my own. I played with a mix of almonds, olive oil, water, nutritional yeast, and garlic until I got it nice and smooth. It didn’t taste like cheese or remind me of cheese in the least, but it was good!

This meal provided the perfect mix of protein and vegetables for us. It was definitely a winner!

Since we’re talking recipes, do you have an all-time favorite?

Technorati Tags: beer, dinner, Food, recipe

Tags: beer, dinner, Food, recipe

Healthy Cooking

January 30, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 5 comments

Happy Monday! It truly is a happy one for me; I am starting on some fun new projects for work this week that you will undoubtedly be hearing about. We had a tiring weekend in Killington, VT (post to come!); I could not get to sleep for the life of me either night and promptly fell asleep upon arriving back home in Boston. I am hoping to build some good energy to put toward marathon training and work this week. And we have a meeting tonight to work on the details for our Boston Marathon fundraising party.

I’ve been cooking up all sorts of simple, healthy meals lately and thought I would share a couple today. The first features Pete & Gerry’s eggs from our Stone Hearth dinner last week. We actually already buy eggs from the Pete & Gerry’s brand, but at the dinner, I also received some of their heirloom eggs, these lovely light blue eggs below.

It’s so easy to build a meal around an egg, so for lunch one day I poked around the kitchen to see what I might eat. I started by making a half cup of wild rice from Minnesota. Wild rice, as you may know, is not rice at all, but is the grain from a grass-like plant that grows in and around the lakes in Minnesota. It’s black and brown and kind of chewy and nutty, and it makes a nutritious base for lots of recipes.

In this case, I topped the wild rice with crispy kale made by quickly cooking it in a little bit of olive oil in a pan. I also cooked one of the heirloom eggs at the same time and added that to the wild rice mix. I topped the whole thing with half of an avocado, some garlic powder, and nutritional yeast, and I had an amazing, filling lunch.

Another easy dish I made recently was a twist on orange shrimp. My lightened up version was sautéed, not fried or breaded, so the result was different but fresh and flavorful.

The saucy ingredients? Lots of fresh cilantro, a sprinkle of brown sugar, a pinch of curry paste, 1/4 cup of peanut butter, two cups of orange juice, and lots of sriracha.

A little sesame oil and soy sauce to taste.

All mixed up in one big pan with peeled and cleaned shrimp and heaps of broccoli. I simmered it to thicken the sauce, which didn’t really happen, so we went ahead and used spoons and forks for this dinner. I can literally still imagine the bursts of citrus, sweet, peanut butter, and cilantro, with a kick of spice.

I love meals that are pulled together with all sorts of random ingredients! We’ve been doing a pretty good job sticking to our healthy eating plan for the New Year, and although the meals are sometimes too simple to even be blog-able, we are feeling great!

Are you looking forward to anything this week?

Technorati Tags: eggs, Food, healthy, kale, recipe, shrimp, wild rice

Tags: eggs, Food, healthy, kale, recipe, shrimp, wild rice

Spicy Pasta Sauce

January 25, 2012 in Food, recipe by traveleatlove | 9 comments

Winter comfort food to me is generally hot and spicy. True, I love a good baked mac and cheese as much as the next person, but eating too much hearty, cheesy food bores my palate, leads me to overeat, and just doesn’t excite me.

My husband, on the other hand, grew up in Ireland, where as he says, ketchup is considered spicy. Over the years, he has built up not just an impressive tolerance for spice, but a love for it. Just last Friday, he was calling me weak when our takeaway Vindaloo made me sweat.

Marathon training has me craving comfort food in the form of carbs as well as satisfying protein, so I recently whipped up a super simple meat sauce to coat ribbons of fettuccini.

I started with my veggies:

2 cups of small, sweet peppers

1 yellow onion

6 cloves of garlic

Instead of chopping these by hand, I pureed them. I really wanted them to kind of disappear into the sauce rather than being chunks of veggies. I was all about the meat in this dish, but I know I need my veggies too.

For this meat sauce, I used a package of hot Italian turkey sausage, removed from the casing and broken up, cooked in a little bit of olive oil and crushed red pepper to add more heat.

It smelled amazing.

Once the sausage was cooked, I poured in a can of crushed tomatoes and added a sprinkle of salt, a few pinches of dried basil, a dash of garlic powder and a pinch of oregano. I also added a splash of red wine from an open bottle, stirred it all up, and let it bubble away on the lowest heat while I worked.

I checked on the sauce over the course of about two hours, dipping pieces of bread in for a taste. When we were little, if my mom was making her amazing homemade sauce, she would always cut up bread for us and give us little bowls of sauce after school. I can still taste it, and it is still one of my favorite ways to eat sauce.

I couldn’t even wait for my husband to get for dinner to eat. I had one bowl before he got home and another with him. This sauce was easy, incredibly flavorful, and made for a pretty balanced meal.

I am always looking for easy, hearty meals to make for after training runs when I am ravenous and craving comfort. What are your favorites? Feel free to share links!

Technorati Tags: dinner, Food, pasta, recipe, sauce, turkey