Shepherd's Pie

EDIT 15 Nov, 2015: I think I found a version that the family likes better. Just little things can make a big difference it seems. I tried pork instead of beef, omitted the garlic, celery, and carrots, and substituted regular frozen corn and frozen peas. A bit of beef broth keeps it moist, and maybe a tad less Worcestershire. I added this as version #2 below.

Shepherd's Pie - version 2

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This is probably one of my all-time fav dishes, probably top 3 ever. When you look up "comfort food" in the dictionary, there's a picture of Shepherd's Pie.  There are as many variations as there are people who make this I think. My fav is close to "traditional", except I don't use lamb. This is also one of those dishes that is almost better the next day. Yea, hot lunches for work!

Beef, carrot, onion, & celery mixture.

The one big difference is cream style corn. That is the secret ingredient. Gives it a nice creamy texture, and prevents the dish from being too dry. I'm not one for gravy or stock in the beef layer, and I don't like the potatoes to be too smooth. Normally cheese on anything is awesome, but I don't like cheese in or on this. In my opinion it ruins the rustic and simple nature of the dish So a straight-forward ground-beef layer, a moist corn layer, and a rough-mashed potato layer. Perfect.


Next Time: sometimes SO likes peas mixed in the middle, but I prefer not.

Me: 10/10
SO: 8/10  update: version #2 is 10/10
SSO: 7/10 (with cheese on the side and little to no middle layer)

Almost Vegan Black Bean Soup

Another great supper made by SO, who had a craving for black beans lately. Delicious, not too thin, warming on a cool night. The almost vegan part is because of the late addition of crushed Doritos for some crunch and a blob of sour cream. You'd have to pick vegetable broth over chicken broth obviously. That is about as close to a vegan dish as you'll find on this blog, except for salads I suppose. And salsas. And granola bars. Never mind.

(almost vegan) Black Bean Soup

I would normally not crunch up Doritos in a soup, but we had dozens of those little tiny 16g bags left over from Halloween. Hate to waste. Other then that, I think the fresh cilantro and a bit of hot sauce made the dish.

Next Time: a different ingredient for the crunch

Me: 9/10
SO: 10/10
SSO: n/a

Grilled Shark with bok choy and skillet potatoes

There isn't really a recipe for this, I just wanted to remember the meal since it was so tasty. And unusual, I suppose. On Saturday, SO went out downtown with a friend and ended up browsing Whole Foods. It's a pretty cool place to look around, if not actually buy anything since it is so expensive. But you can get some products that are hard to find, and arguably the price is worth it to get whole grain, organic, no pesticides, free-range blah blah blah products.  That's how we ended up with two gigantic shark steaks.

Grilled shark with bok choy and skillet potatoes

We've been killing it lately with the cast iron skillet, it's just great for so many things. But potatoes it especially excels at. Golden brown, just plain yummy.  The shark and bok choy we both did on the bbq. The fish was oiled up just a tiny bit and lots of freshly ground salt and pepper. The bok choy was tossed with a bit of oil and I sprinkled a random Epicure spice on it. One of those spice blends with a strange name - maybe it was "Canadian" or something like that. Then it was into a cooking basket. The shark was done slightly more than medium, and the veggies were grilled al dente with a bit of char.  The steaks were so huge, we both only ate half of our portion, so the rest we ended up putting in a fish soup the next day.  That was also just great!

Next time: maybe try a different veggie, and go with smaller portions of fish

Me: 9/10
SO: 10/10
SSO: n/a