Rutabaga Turkey Shepherd's Pie

It seems for many people Shepherd's Pie is a classic comfort food. Personally I was never a huge fan, probably because it always has peas and carrots and I hate peas (it's right up there with bananas for me) and cooked carrots blech. Then there's the fact that dairy laden mashed potatoes cover over meat and it just seemed there was no hope for me to ever enjoy the joy of Shepherd's Pie.

But, my husband he likes a Shepherd's Pie (he doesn't worry to much about mixing meat and dairy) so I was determined to come up with a recipe we could both enjoy and wasn't a complete caloric nightmare. Here's what I came up with.

Non-Dairy Rutabega Mash

1 lb Rutabega
1/2 cup water, divided
1/2 cup almond milk
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp corn starch

Meat Filling
1 tbls cooking oil of choice
1 large onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 zuchhini, diced
3 cloves garlic, mincd
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1.5 lb 99% lean Ground Turkey
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine
tbls flour
2 tsp thyme
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions for Rutabega Mash:
Peel and dice rutabaga and place in pot and just cover with water. Add salt. Bring to boil. Boil Rutabega until it's fork tender
Once Rutabega is done drain and either using a food mill, ricer, or masher mash rutabaga

In a small sauce pan add minced garlic, 1/4 cup water and almond milk and bring to boil.
Add cornstarch to remaining water and stir to make slurry
Once liquid is boiling add in slurry and stir until thickened.
Add flavor sauce to mashed potatoes and mix. Taste mash. Add salt and pepper to taste

Directions for meat:
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees
Season turkey
In large pan heat oil. Add in vegetables and garlic to pan adding 1 tbls of broth and sauté vegetables until onions are translucent.
Add turkey and cook through. Once turkey is cooked though transfer turkey and vegetables to baking dish. Best to use slotted spoon as you want to save as much liquid and drippings as possible
Place flour in remaining stock to create slurry. Add it and wine to pan to make gravy.
Season with salt and pepper to taste and add thyme.

Finishing it off:
Pour gravy over meat mixture. Top with rutabaga mash being sure to seal edges. Place in oven and cook for 10 - 15 minutes until rutabaga is heated.

Serves: 6 (around 8 oz per serving)
Calories: 240
Fat: 6 grams
Carbs: 14 grams
Protein: 30.5 grams

RESULTS:

Pretty good recipe. I think next time I would add some Worcestershire Sauce to meat mixture to deepen the flavors. But, I really liked the rutabaga mash which I found had more flavor that potatoes. Husband really liked it, and best of all filled with veggies and nutritions I like.

The Quiche for Less: Part Duex

So, I shredded my potatos and whisked my eggs and have to say I was really pleased with the quiche. My overall notes

The crust:

Yes potato and egg do go well together. The taste was not the same as having a pastry crust, no surprise there. And there texture was not the same flaky goodness as a traditional crust -- again no surprise. But, it was still very satisfying.

Problems? The bottom was a bit mushy. I didn't crisp the bottom of the crust as much as I should have. Thinking about it now I'm guessing I should do what I would do with a regular crust and protect the edges of the potato from cripsing too much with tin foil and keep the crust in the oven longer to get a crisper crust.

Also, the egg mixture did leak through the bottom when I poured it in. I don't think there is much that can be done with this except try to use more grated potato.

Speaking of which that is the big lesson I learned in doing this recipe -- do not be skimpy with the shredded potato. I forgot that the potato would shrink as moisture is lost during baking. In the future I would err on the side of over filling the pie pan.

The Egg Mixture:

Pretty good. The first serving I felt the egg mixture was a little plain and the parmesan seemed lost. However, on further reheatings the cheese flavor became more apparent. Was my first serving still too warm? I think so. Really need to let he quiche cool to room temp to get all the flavors to come out, me thinks.

Would I do this again?

Absolutely. Good nutritionals. Good taste. Fewer calories. What more could I ask for? Next time I would try a second cheese with the parmesan. I think a small amount of a strong flavored cheese wouldn't add too much to the calories. Overall this was a very good recipe that would be great for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner.

RECIPE:
EQUIPMENT
Food processor (or use grator)
Grator
9 inch pie plate
Mixing bowl
Whisk
Knife
Cutting Board

Ingrediants:

Crust:
2 medium potato, grated (Want 2 cups packed. Do not be shy with your shredded potoato. Really pack it in)
Non Stick Spray
1 eggs

Filling
1 cup 2% milk
2 eggs
1 pinch nutmeg
7 oz frozen spinach
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
Salt and pepper to taste


Method:

Crust:
Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Spray pie plate with non-stick

Shred potatos, with food processor. You can use grator if you don't have or don't want to pull out the food processor. Place shredded potato in colander and add pinch of kosher salt. The kosher salt will help draw out water. Let sit 10 minutes and then squeeze out as much water as possible. Mix in egg. Pile shredded potato into pie plate building up the sides.

Place pie plate in oven and bake about 40 minutes or until golden brown. If the bottom needs more crisping, but the edges are done cover edges with aluminum foil.

When done remove from oven and put aside. Adjust oven to 350 degrees

Quiche:
Grate cheese
Chop onions
Place cheese, spinach and onion into crust
In mixing bowl whisk egg, milk and nutmeg. Pour into crust until it's about 1/4 inch from the top.
Place in oven and bake for 40 - 45 minutes until the edges are set and the middle is still jiggly.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temp.

The Quiche for Less

I love quiche, and I don't love the calories. But, a few years ago I read a recipe that suggested using a potato crust in place of a pastry crust. Hmmm can you really go wrong mixing eggs, dairy and potatos? I think not. Plus this would be a kosher for passover meal. (Have I mentioned I'm Jewish? I am, so I love any cooking concepts that help with kashrut.) I'm not the first to do this, but it is the first time I will be attempting to make a quiche with a potato crust. But, there is one question which type of potato crust to choose?

There are three types of potato crusts that I've seen on the internet: shredded, mashed, and thinly sliced. Mashed sounds yummy, however what I've seen calls for butter. I'm not concerned with dairy, but i don't want the added fat and calorie of butter. I think, calorically and nutritionally, I can do better.

Sliced crust. This would be the least amount of calories and no added fat: no extra butter, no extra shortening, and no extra eggs. But, I worry that the liquid mixture penetrating the spaces between the layered slices, no matter how much I overlapped the potatos, so not my favorite option.

Which leads me to shredded. Yes, it adds an egg to the recipe, but one extra won't up the calories that much. So, let's see how it goes. Below is the recipe I plan to follow. I'll report back on the results.

Ingrediants:

Crust:
2 medium potato, grated (Want about 2 cups packed)
1 tsp canola oil
1 eggs

Filling
1 cup 2% milk
2 eggs
1 pinch nutmeg
7 oz frozen spinach
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
Salt and pepper to taste

Equipment:
Food processor (or use grator)
Grator
9 inch pie plate
Mixing bowl
Whisk
Knife
Cutting Board


Method:

Crust:
Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Shred potatos, place in colander and add pinch of kosher salt. The kosher salt will help draw out water. Let sit 10 minutes and then squeeze out as much water as possible. Mix in egg. Pile shredded potato into pie plate building up the sides.

Place pie tin in oven and bake about 40 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from oven and put aside. Adjust oven to 350 degrees

Quiche:
Grate cheese
Chop onions
Place cheese, spinach and onion into crust
In mixing bowl whisk egg, milk and nutmeg. Pour into crust until it's about 1/4 inch from the top.
Place in oven and bake for 40 - 45 minutes until the edges are set and the middle is still jiggly.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temp.

Return of the Scone: We Can Rebuild It

Okay, it was time to start rebuilding my scone recipe from scratch -- pun completely intended. I had to two tricks up my sleeve to control the gluten and get a better tasting, scone like texture 1) use corn meal in addition to flour 2) replace some of the butter with Laughing Cow Cheese Original Swiss.

The first time I tried this recipe I used applesauce to replace the butter and I think that made the dough more of a batter. Still, with nothing more than instinct to go on I still felt the mashed up fruit had its part to play. I decided I would still use some of it, but far less than my first attempt at creating the scone.

There was also a flavor issue. My first recipe was bland, bland, bland. I completely understood why the texture was all wrong, but why so little taste? I used splenda in place of sugar so there should have been no issue in terms of sweetness. Now, there are two things that I believe to always be true in the kitchen. When cooking you can't go wrong with garlic, oil or basil. When baking you can't go wrong adding vanilla. (I don't think I'm the first or only person to come to these conclusions. But, sometimes you just have to say it.) Obviously garlic, oil and basil were not going into my sweet scone recipe. That left vanilla.

I made one more change. Instead of splenda I was going to use honey. There was no real reason to do this other than I wanted to.

So, here is my basic list of ingredients:
Whole Wheat Flour (again I decided to use whole wheat instead of white just because)
Corn Meal
Baking Powder
Salt
Laughing Cow Cheese
Egg, separated
Honey
applesauce
Milk (I didn't have buttermilk on hand so I just went with milk)
vanilla

Great I have a recipe list, but what to do with all of it? This is where the difference between baking and cooking comes in. There are techniques that certainly should be applied in cooking (don't crowd the pan; brown your meat before braising or putting it in a slow cooker; let your meat rest before slicing into; oil, garlic and basil are universally a good thing.) But, with cooking you can improvise a lot. In baking you have to get the ingredients in the right proportion or instead of dough you have batter. (Hence the scone failure of October 2009.)

So, I did some research and learned that the average scone recipe has a dry to wet ratio of 3:1. So, I pulled out my scale and started adding my dry ingredients in until all together they weight about 215 grams. Using the scone ratio my goal was to hit 71 grams of wet ingredients. started measuring out my wet ingredients on the scale starting with the egg yolk because that weights what it's gong to weight. As a complete guess I added a 1/4 cup of honey, 1 tsp of vanilla, 4 tbls of applesauce and 1/4 cup of milk. This came out to way more than 71 grams of wet ingredients. It was more like 174 grams. To get back to the proper ratio I added more flour.

And now it was before me. The moment where last time everything went so wrong: mixing the wet and dry ingredients together. I'll admit I was a little nervous about this. What if everything was a batter-like mess again. Or what if there was not enough liquid? Did I have the guts to add a little bit more incrementally to get to the right place? And If by adding extra liquid would I overwork the dough creating too much gluten again. Still, if I was going to do this, it would have to be done. I would have to mix my wet and dry ingredients together. I took a deep breath and with a small pause started to tip my bowl of wet in order to pour its contents into my flour/corn meal mixture.

And then I stopped remembering I had left out an important part of the experiment. I had yet to cut in the laughing cow cheese! Thankfully I remembered before any of the wet concoction mixed with the dry. Treating the laughing cow like butter I cut it into the flour mixture. Once I had a good large crumb formed, I added the wet ingrediants and mixed. And by the end I had a good, scone like dough. Yay!

I formed the dough into a nice round and sliced into triangles. I moved the slices apart slightly so I could have a crisper edge. Baked at 375 degrees for 25 minutes.

The results: Yummy. Tasted like a scone and was the right texture. Overall I was happy with this attempt. BUT still haven't gotten the recipe under 200 calories and I'm thinking I'd like to make it dairy free. So, will have to play with this a bit more. Below is the recipe.

Ingredients
327 grams whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup corn meal
1/4 tsp salt
18 grams egg yolk
3 grams vanilla
53 grams honey
75 grams applesauce
25 grams 2% milk
1/2 tsp water
4 wedges laughing cow cheese

Return of the Scone: The Baker fights back

Okay, so after a short break, a little research and a dash of thought I decided to once again tackle the challenge of making the better for me scone. (I'm dropping the lower fat, lower calorie, better for me because it's a lot to type. But, don't worry, the goal is still to be all of those things.)

So, after the first round I can honestly say that what I made was nothing like a scone. It seemed the traditional full butter recipe had won the battle. But, I was not about to retreat. I want it all: good tasting, passes for scone but doesn't kill my daily calorie count scone. I knew the major problem with my first attempt was too many wet ingredients. That was really an easy fix, don't use as much buttermilk (or milk but more on that later.) The other issue was controlling the gluten and this is where watching Good Eats with Alton Brown came in handy.

Mr Brown, masterful chef that he is, did an episode on pie crust. In it he suggested using corn meal to help give the crust more crunch and keep a nice balance between flaky and tender. Hmmm this sounded promising. I also remember an episode where he talked about using corn meal as a means of controlling gluten. So, I decided that I would substitute some of my flour for corn meal.

This all seemed very promising, but I had a bigger problem at hand: replacing the butter. Last time I attempted to use applesauce and the results were flavorful. But, I wondered if just using an item that is so different from butter was ever going to create the right texture. I considered using oil but fat wise that hardly seemed better than butter. And then, like so many creative endeavors, while letting my mind wander one night it hit me. There was something that I often used as a spread, much like butter, that was low calorie, low fat and diet friendly: Laughing Cow Cheese.

At 35 calories per wedge laughing cow is a dieters best friend. Now, I wasn't so naive (or foolish?) to think that laughing cow alone would take the place of butter. I'm sure there are all sorts of molecular differences between butter and processed cheese. But, still something told me that this may just be the thing to make my scones.

Next time: how I built the recipe

I like soup

I like soup. No, I love soup. Soup is easy. Saute some onion, throw in some vegetables, add some spice simmer in some broth, puree and you have warm, creamy goodness. I can do soup. In fact I've started making some kind of soup once a week for my lunches. And to quote a famous ad, hmm hmm good. So, this week's soup creation was garbanzo and spinach. When I did below.

Creamy Garbanzo soup

1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 red or orange pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbls olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 can garbanzo beans
Juice one lemon
zest 1/2 lemon
2 cups chicken broth, low sodium (If you want to make this vegetarian you can always use vegetable broth. I always go with chicken because I find it to be more neutral tasting than vegetable. But, to each his/her own.)
1 cup water
1/2 bunch spinach
And the usual suspects of seasoning salt, pepper and whatever else you think will be good. I used thyme and parsley.

Directions:
1) In a large pot heat 1 tbls olive oil. Watch the heat with olive oil. It has a low burn point and if the oil starts smoking it's done for so patience my reading friends. patience. Or you can always substitute vegetable oil. :)

2) saute onion, peppers and garlic in olive oil over medium heat for about 10 minutes.

3) Add everything else except liquid and spinach. Season to taste and I let it cook for about five minutes to eat everything up

4) Add broth and water bring to a simmer. I usually add another round of seasoning here. But, I like my soup really seasoned

5)Cover and simmer on low for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally. (Can someone please tell me why you stir here. I mean I always read it in other recipes, so I do it. And I always guess it helps blend flavors or makes sure everything cooks evenly or something. But, unlike the olive oil I don't know the real reason why. Thanks)

6) Once vegetables are tender it's time to puree. I use a hand blender and puree right in the pot. So much easier than the let the soup cool and then transfer to a blender, and all that. But, I guess whatever works for you will work fine.

7) Once pureed bring to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for about 5 - 10 minutes or until heated through

8) Add fresh spinach and stir in until just wilted.

Servings: 5 (1/2 cup) Calories: 155 (according to calorie count recipe analyzer)

Loved this soup. It has a strong punch of lemon and cilantro which I really enjoy. I think the Garbanzo beans are somewhat mild in flavor, but the texture is creamy and hearty. I think if I did this again though I would add the sesame oil later at the end and maybe a touch more. I don't really taste it in the soup.

Scones failure: the aftermath

When I first started this, and decided that scones would be my first attempt at creating my own lower calorie, lower fat, better for me recipe I wrote "baking is a science." Well one thing about science it involves experiments and experiments involve reports. So, I'm going to dig through my memories to HS chemistry and do a science report on my experiment. Maybe I'll learn.


Objective: Okay if you don't know this by now please go back and read my earlier posts. It will make this so much easier on both of us.

Method: Swap the following items for healthier ingredients:

1) Butter - replace with applesauce
2) Milk - replace with buttermilk


Also, add cornstarch to attempt to control gluten.

Result: Well it wasn't scones.
Texture: chewy and moist.
Taste: Bland

Any mistakes?: Funny you should ask. The original called for one egg, separated. I forgot to separate my egg. I was supposed to only add one yolk to the dough and save the egg white for an egg wash at the end. I think this may be a contributing factor to the very un-dough like result.

Conclusion: It became clear as soon as I mixed the dry and wet ingredients that there was way too much liquid involved. Upon further research I learned that a good dry to wet ratio for scones is 3:1. Maybe I should have done that research a little sooner? (Look this is science it's about learning and improving from past mistakes)

So, I don't have scones, but I do have a good start for some healthy cookies or muffins. So, this was not an utter failure. Still, I'm not giving up on my scones. I've got some ideas on what I can do to make this work. The obvious correction is to decrease the amount of wet ingredients. But, I've got another idea of something that may work. Oh I'm not saying what, yet. But, if it works I'm a genius. And if not well....