3/24 Shepherd's Pie

So what happens when you cook a 5lb+ leg of lamb for 3 people? Well you have leftovers of course! And what do you do with slow cooked leg of lamb?!? Well, you already read the title above, so yes, you make shepherd's pie.

Now, I'm pretty sure a lot of you have already heard my rant about shepherd's pie. If not, here it goes: IF A RESTAURANT TRIES TO SELL YOU SHEPHERD'S PIE COOKED WITH BEEF, RUN AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE TOWARDS THE NEAREST EXIT. It's really quite simple... Shepherds care for sheep. Sheep in turn provide wool, milk and meat among other things. Cowherds care for cows. Cows and sheep are different. If you want a Cowherd's Pie, by all means order one, I'm sure they're tasty. But if you order a shepherd's pie - at the very least, you should expect to be eating lamb soon thereafter...

So anyway, I cooked the lamb with diced onion, chopped garlic, quartered cremini mushrooms, frozen peas, white wine, tomato sauce, fresh thyme and salt/pepper while I prepared some mashed potatoes (2 russets did the trick). Once both were done, I topped the lamb ragu with mashed potatoes and cheese and baked the whole thing in the oven for 25 minutes at 400 degrees. Now I used Gruyeres instead of some sort of lame British cheese and I used homemade tomato sauce in my "ragu" whereas traditionally you would just use stock... Thus my pie is not quite a real shepherd's pie, but at least I DIDN'T USE BEEF DAMN IT!!

So there you go. This wasn't as good as yesterday's lamb & flageolets dinner, but it wasn't far off and it's a great example of how you can turn leftovers into something quite tasty.

Oh, one last thing. If, for some dumb reason, you drop your chef knife -- don't try to catch it with your leg. The results will tend to fall somewhere between less-than-ideal and horrific. Additionally, this can, and probably will, delay the enjoyment of your dinner.

Blog Action Day: Food and Sustainability

It's blog action day - and I would be greatly amiss in not taking the opportunity to participate in the discussion, especially since my food ethics are so bound up in my environmental and community ethics. As a reminder, I'm not just an amateur home food experimenter. Food - where and how its grown, how it gets into salsas and bread and plastic wrappers, and how people find and purchase it is something I spend a lot of time thinking about professionally. In particular, since my graduate school days (while not quite salad days), I've been exploring how food impacts community sustainability, health, and economic vitality. The farm bill, which has been a new target of activist attention (especially those concerned with conservation and community food security) can be seen as a major piece of environmental legislation, since it sets the rules of the game (i.e., programs and subsidies) for what gets grown and what gets eaten in the U.S. If we want to see the preservation of family farms, programs that encourage farmers to go organic, and funding for farmers to practice landscape stewardship by creating biodiverse farms that support native species and habitats, we need a better farm bill. And if we want consumers to have better, cheaper access to fresh, local produce, we need a better farm bill. I'll just make passing mention to great sources on the farm bill: anything Michael Pollan has written this year, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's fact sheets on understanding the farm bill are both excellent places to start. Yes, this is a blog about a very small subject: what I (and my esteemed colleague) cook. But I try to remember that what I cook is also about the environment...and that without a substantial redirection of the farm and food policy in this country, buying from the farmers' market and the CSA (while something I'm thrilled to support) won't cut it in the long run.