Day Six: Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

On the sixth day of No Cost Food Week I had run out of milk and all-purpose flour. I don’t need any milk myself, but the kids do. And I don’t need all-purpose flour either - but my sourdough would die without it! So I decided to cheat a bit and buy these two things.

For lunch we had leftovers from Pasta 007. For dinner I didn’t have much choice anymore: I had lentils (brown, black, and red), a couple of carrots and onions, a bit of Savoy cabbage, one butternut squash, a bit of celeriac, potatoes, a bit of butter, frozen peas and spinach, a bit of cheese, and that’s about it.

I decided to cook a vegetarian shepherd’s pie. Normally I’d use a variety of veggies and mushrooms, but now I had no choice. I used half of the butternut squash, one onion, the rest of the cabbage, and red lentils. Surprisingly enough, this combination was much tastier than the one I normally do!

This is what you need for 4 portions:

• 1 onion


• ½ butternut squash (large-ish)


• 200g Savoy cabbage (even more if you’ve got :) )


• 100g red lentils


• 2-3 garlic cloves


• 2 Tbsp olive oil


• 800g potatoes


• 30g butter (optional)


• salt and pepper to taste

First, peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes. Boil them in salted water until tender, or about 15-20 minutes.

In the meantime, chop the onion, crush the garlic cloves, peel the squash and cut it into cubes, and wash and drain the lentils. Heat oil in a large pan. Sauté the onions until they are translucent , then add garlic and cabbage and sauté five more minutes. Then add squash, lentils, water, and salt and pepper, and let simmer over a low heat until the vegetables are tender.

Now return to the potatoes: leave enough water to mash the potatoes (or use milk instead: I didn’t have any to spare at this point..!). Add the butter (if using) and stir until it melts.

Place the veggies-lentil-mixture on the bottom of an oven pan (a Pyrex or a lasagne form is perfect). Top with mashed potatoes and cook in a preheated oven (200 C) until golden brown spots start to appear on the surface.

If I’d have to choose one dish so far from the ones I’ve cooked this week, this would probably be it! Oh wait, it would be the meat stew. But you get the point: it’s delicious!

Pelmeni Filled with Potatoes and Porcini Mushrooms

Poor old Silvio. First he insults the Finnish food, then some Finns, as a revenge, go and win the America’s Plate Pizza Contest in 2008 with their Pizza Berlusconi (read the whole story here). And as if that wasn’t enough, it turns out that tortellini, yet another Italian national pride, were not invented by Italians, but somewhere far, far away in Russia by the Komi people - whose cuisine most likely wouldn’t please the delicate taste buds of dear old uncle Silvio either. It’s the finno-ugric Komi language that gave the name for these small dumplings - they call them pel’nyan, or "ear bread/dough".

Pelmeni are are traditionally filled with meat, but I’d say these veggie pelmeni would beat any meat version. They are filled with potatoes and porcini mushrooms - but a very low-budget amount. Only 15g are needed :)

Normally I have no idea how long exactly it takes to cook a specific dish. With pelmeni I do. To make this portion of about 60 pelmeni, it takes exactly one Total Balalaika Show. If you’re able to resist a primitive urge to grab the nearest vodka bottle and to start dancing hopak instead of making pelmeni, that is.

For about 60 pelmeni you need:

For the dough:

• 300g all-purpose flour


• 50g rye flour


• 125ml water


• 4g salt


• 1 egg

For the filling:

• 340g potatoes, peeled and cubed


• 1 medium-sized onion


• 2 Tbsp oil and 20g butter for frying


• 15g porcini mushrooms


• 250ml hot water


• salt and pepper to taste

 

For cooking:

• about 3 liters vegetable broth

To serve:

• smetana/sour cream


• parsley


• grated (parmesan) cheese


• black pepper


• Russian-style pickled cucumbers

First, make the dough. Measure the flour in a baking bowl, add salt, then water and egg. Work the dough until it feels elastic. Add a bit more water if needed. Then cover and let stand in room temperature until your filling is ready.

For the filling: first boil 250ml water. Place dried mushrooms in a small bowl or a cup and pour the hot water on the mushrooms. Let stand 15 minutes or so. Chop the mushrooms with scissors - and keep the water.

In the meantime, chop the onions and garlic. Heat oil and butter in a large pan, sauté the onions for a few minutes, then add potato cubes and continue frying over a low heat. Stir regularly so that the potatoes don’t stick to the pan. After 10 minutes or so, add garlic, mushrooms, mushroom water, salt (I used a heaped 1 tsp fleur de sel), and pepper. Cover and let boil until the water has been absorbed and the potatoes are tender.

Place the filling in a bowl and let cool until you roll and cut the dough.

Now, take half of the dough and roll it out on a floured working surface as thin as you can. I’m still a novice to pelmeni making and mine were not as thin as they should be - but the pelmenis tasted great even so.

Use a glass (mine had a diameter of 7 cm) to cut out circles out of the dough. Repeat until you’ve used all of the dough. Then place about 1 tsp of filling on each circle. Wet the edges and close the circles so that the result looks like half moons. Press the edges well together with your fingers.

Then it’s time to cook your pelmeni. Bring the vegetable broth to the boil and cook about 10 pelmeni at a time in it. They are ready when they come back to the surface - this takes about 2-4 minutes. Remove pelmeni with a skimmer and place on a plate. Repeat until all pelmeni are cooked.

Place the desired amount of pelmeni on each plate - I’d say about four if you serve them as an appetizer, about ten if it’s a main course. Serve with a dollop of smetana and decorate the whole with chopped parsley, black pepper, grated cheese, a pickle wedge or two, and rye bread. And, obviously, with sto gramm vodka to go with!

Oven-baked Zucchini and Potatoes

Has it ever happened to you that you spend time and effort to prepare a dish you love, but when you proudly bring it to the table, the little ones suddenly lose their appetite - or worse, start crying in despair? Well, this happens to me a lot. Especially when it comes to vegetarian food. But it used to be worse - I came up with a couple of strategies to fool them into eating at least some of the things they officially hate. Four strategies, to be precise (well, five, if you count bribing): Hide it. Puree it. Decorate it. Or make the kids cook it themselves. (The two first ones work for adults as well ;) )

Today, I’ll share with you a recipe containing zucchini, the number one enemy of my kids. But surprisingly enough, when they get to slice the vegetables for this dish themselves, they somehow forget to complain about it. A small miracle..

For four portions, you need

• 600g potatoes


• 2 medium-sized zucchini


• ½ red pepper


• 500g fresh tomatoes, peeled


• 1 onion


• 3 garlic cloves


• 50ml hot water


• 1 tsp salt


• black pepper to taste


• 50ml olive oil


• fresh parsley


• dried oregano

Set your oven to 225 degrees Celsius. Slice (unpeeled) potatoes and zucchini into thin slices. Set them in an oven-proof baking dish. Chop onion, red pepper, and garlic and sprinkle over the potatoes and zucchini. Cut tomatoes into cubes and place on top, and add pepper and herbs (if using). Combine salt with hot water so that it dissolves, then add oil, and pour evenly on the vegetables. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, then reduce heat to 175 degrees, and bake 30 minutes more, or until the vegetables are tender. You may have to add some water in the meantime - check every once in a while!

Even small kids can do most of the slicing and chopping, and it’s fun! Except for the onion - that might be a bit trickier.

P.S. This blog already proved its usefulness: while I was having fun in Zurich, my hubby and 8-year-old son had done sushi themselves - they had looked up the recipe in my blog!