Harmony Kitchen

As winter settles in around us, we found ourselves craving some hearty comfort food. Shepherd’s pie came to mind.

Most shepherd’s pie that I have eaten contains both corn and peas. As I thought about this, I realized these were things that would never naturally be available at the same point in time. Peas are an early season crop that will start growing even before the ground is fully thawed. Corn is a long season crop, one that we plant early and hope to be able to harvest before it is devastated by frost.

With a locavore mentality, I set about with experimenting with what we have available and abundant right now.

We were really happy with the results! So happy that I think it is safe to categorize this as a “base recipe”; ie a recipe that can be updated with whatever you happen to have available at the moment.

Ingredients

• *two pounds ground pork
• *one bunch of parsnip
• *1 bag of carrots
• * 2 lbs potatoes, cauliflower, sweet potato, squash or any combination of “mashables”
• *2 cloves of garlic
• * 2 tbsp fermented garlic scape paste
• *500 g tomato sauce
• *grated hard cheese such as Nauvoo aged cheddar or Biemond Pinconning ~1 cup
• From your pantry: salt, pepper, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, heavy cream or creme fraiche (1/2-1 cup), extra virgin olive oil, butter (2-4tbsp, optional), 500 ml broth (chicken/beef/veggie or mushroom), rosemary, thyme

*Harmony Farm products

Equipment

• Cutting board
• Chef’s knife
• Large dutch oven (or pot for stove top and casserole dish for oven)
• Spoon or spatula for stirring on the stove top
• Food processor (or use a mixer or potato masher to make mashed topping)
• Cheese grater

Method

Start by thawing your pork, tomato sauce and broth (if frozen)

This dish takes some time to cook so think about making extra and freezing it.

Preheat the oven to 450.

Each ingredient will taste infinitely better if you give it time to slowly cook and caramelize. A good way to do this is to cook as you chop, starting with the ingredients that need to cook the longest.

Start by coating the bottom of a large dutch oven with extra virgin olive oil. If you love butter, you can add a little bit to the olive oil for extra flavour. Allow this to warm up at low-medium heat while you start dicing up veggies. Add the veggies as you chop them, along with a pinch of salt and pepper with each addition. Stir them occasionally but also allow them to sit undisturbed some of the time so that they can start to pick up some gorgeous caramel colour and flavour.

For today’s veggies, I added them in this order:

• Onions (I always add these first as they become so sweet with longer cooking)
• Parsnip
• Carrot
• Garlic (try finely slicing this instead of grating or mashing and add it last so that it doesn’t burn and become bitter)
• Once the veggies are soft and have picked up a bit of colour (this won’t take much longer than it does to chop the veggies), add herbs (~2tbsp total of chopped fresh rosemary and thyme or 2 tsp of dried) and stir to incorporate
• Next, add ground meat with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook until it is cooked through.
• Add Worcestershire sauce and ~2tbsp garlic scape paste and allow the meat to gently brown on the bottom to add extra flavour (about 10 minutes with occasional stirring)

• Add tomato sauce and broth. Bring to a simmer and cook down, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is very thick (when you stir the bottom, you will see a trail behind your spoon). This will take about 30 minutes.
• While this is cooking, prepare your mashed topping.
• Boil potatoes (in well salted water) or steam cauliflower until they are very soft.
• Grate about 1 cup of cheese
• Once the mash veggies are soft, place them (and any other back-of-the-fridge left over mashables) in a food processor and process with butter and cream (to taste) until very smooth. Add salt and pepper, ~1/2 cup grated cheese and~1/4 tsp nutmeg. Taste it and adjust the amount of butter, cream and seasoning as needed.
• Once your meat base is thick enough, smooth the top and cover with your mashed topping. Leave some texture on the top to help with browning then sprinkle with the remaining cheese.

• Place in the oven, uncovered, for ~25-30 minutes until it is golden and bubbling. Leave it to set for ~15 minutes before serving (if you can!)

Time Savers, Storage Tips and Spin off Recipes

• This recipe makes 8 large servings. You can make it all at once and then portion leftovers for great lunches OR you can divide it and have half now and save half for another night. Better yet, double the recipe and have 3 extra meals for very little extra work.
• Frozen pies should be topped with parchment in an oven proof dish with a tightly fitting lid.
• On Freezer-pie night, pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. Bake from frozen, 20 minutes covered with parchment and 20 minutes uncovered. Remove and allow to set once it is golden, bubbling at the edges and warm in the center.
• Don’t have the veggies specified in this post? No worries. Experiment with replacing the base and mash veggies with what you have on hand. Think of sweet and firm veggies for the base and anything with a mashable texture for the topping.
• Do you have leftover cream? Consider making creme fraiche. This tastes like sour cream (but better), is fermented (thus very good for you!) lasts longer than cream (because of the fermentation) and freezes really well (portion it, keep it in the freezer and pull it out to top tacos, soup or nachos).
• Creme fraiche is easy to make. Add one tbsp of natural yogurt (no additives or flavours) per cup of cream. Stir it together, cover it with a cloth, secured with an elastic and leave it on the counter until it starts to thicken. This will take 12-36 hours. It will keep for ~2wks in the fridge or months in the freezer.

Did you Know?

Adding creme fraiche and fermented garlic scape paste will provide you with two daily servings of fermented foods

Fermented foods provide many health benefits including:

• Increasing “good” gut microbes
• Lowers inflammatory markers
• One recent study has shown that adding fermented foods improves mood, energy, bloating and hunger
• Influences gut microbes that help with insulin and blood sugar control
• Rich in nutrients including fiber, vitamins ABCK as well as calcium and iron
• Enhance nutrient absorption

Top experts recommend three portions daily for optimal health benefits

This Recipe’s Plant Count: 12 plus any back-of-the fridge additions!

Time required: 90 minutes from start to finish

# Servings: 8 large servings