Shepherd's Pie

I was watching last Wednesday's Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay who every week tries to diagnose and treat an ailing restaurant. The restaurant featured serves Irish food and is owned and operated by a father, his 2 sons, and a daughter-in-law. The chef is the younger son with a sous chef from hell. He picked up a chicken wing that fell on the floor and promptly put it in the fryer right in front of Ramsay and the camera saying all the germs it picked up from the floor will die from deep frying anyway, eww. The dishes they serve are less than below average. The clients complained of cold, dry, and simply tasteless dishes most specially the Shepherd's Pie, a very typical British dish. During the make-over period, Ramsay prepared a pie that he says is his own mother's recipe and after tasting his pie the restaurant owners and crew oohed and aahed. He then made them taste the son's pie and they all made faces indicating it is yucky. That hurt the chef, you could see it from his face and he did not show up in the restaurant for 5 days.

The reject pie brought me back to the day my son came home from school with a plate of shepherd's pie he made in school as a project when he was a student in a British School in Hong Kong. He proudly presented us the pie saying he made it all by himself, of course with the teacher's recipe and guidance. One bite of the pie and we nearly gagged, it was the most horrible food I have ever tasted in my life. The onions were raw and crunchy, the meat was dry and under seasoned with just salt, pepper, and nothing else. And the mashed potatoes was equally forgettable. But we couldn't tell him because we didn't want to hurt his feelings. We took a few more bites of the dreadful pie and I threw the rest while he was at school the next day. I can't remember if we ever told him that the pie was awful.

Well, anyway, back to the reality show. Ramsay was able to "save" the restaurant and the Shepherd's pie became its signature dish that everybody seems to love. I looked for his recipe online and prepared it today using beef in place of lamb. I don't know if this is the same recipe he gave to the restaurant but I don't really care because this pie is very very good.

Adapted from Gordon Ramsay's Shepherd's Pie
2 pounds lamb or very lean ground beef
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, grated
1 large carrot, grated
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon chopped rosemary
1 cup red wine
1 cup chicken broth
2 tsp salt, or to taste
3 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese for mashed potato

• Prepare the mashed potato, recipe here. Add 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese. Cover, set aside, keep warm while preparing beef.
• In a large skillet, heat olive oil, stir fry beef until no longer pink. Drain off excess grease. Add onion, garlic, and carrot and stir fry for 3 minutes. Add wooster sauce, tomato paste, thyme and rosemary, cook for 1 minute. Add wine and simmer until wine has almost evaporated. Add the broth and simmer for 5 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Taste and adjust seasoning.
• Transfer beef to a deep dish. Spoon mashed potato on top of beef. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese. Fluff with a fork to create peaks. Bake in a 400° F oven for 20 minutes or broil until top is golden brown.

Click here for Gordon Ramsay's recipe.

Polvorones

One of the many many sweets and snacks that Filipinos inherited (and made a better version of) from the Spanish is polvorones. The Spanish polvorones are baked after shaping by hand, they're not quite cookies nor shortbread, somewhere in between. The candy-like Filipino polvoron is never baked but the flour is also toasted before mixing with sugar, powdered milk and butter, then shaped using either a round or oval mold that are made in the Philippines and nowhere else (they can be purchased from Filipino groceries or eBay). I grew up eating plain polvorones and sometimes the ones with crushed peanuts or toasted sesame seeds but recently various flavors and add-ins have been popping up in the Filipino grocery: the ubiquitous buco-pandan, ube, langka, crispy rice or pinipig, crushed oreo cookies, and the latest, graham crackers. Well, why not join the crowd and here is my contribution: raw cacao nibs. They are so addicting! What's not to love: sugar, butter, milk, and raw crunchy bitter chocolate. Mmmmmm.

Peruvian raw organic cacao nibs

The package says they are nutritious and I think these are highly recommended by vegans who advocate eating raw food. I bought the cacao nibs to add to candies, baked goods, and to eat with cereals but I also love munching on them like peanuts. They are a teeny bit bitter, they are pure chocolate after all, but I love extremely dark chocolate anyway. Cacao nibs, a guilt-free and healthy super yummy snack.

Polvorones

4 cups flour

3/4 cup powdered milk

1½ cups super-fine sugar

1 cup very soft butter

• Toast flour in a skillet or in a 300°F oven for about 10 minutes until light brown.
• Into a bowl, sift toasted flour, milk, and sugar. Add the butter and mix thoroughly.
• Fill mold and press lightly, unmold onto individual pieces of rectangular or square (depending on the mold) multi-colored or white tissue paper, twist ends of paper.
• Tip: To prevent crumbling, refrigerate unwrapped molded polvoron for a few minutes or until set.

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with cacao nibs, graham crackers, buco-pandan, and toasted sesame seeds

Caramel Apples

pumpkin pie granny smith, simple caramel crab apple, mint chips and milk chocolate chips fuji This is one treat during Halloween and/or Thanksgiving weekend that has never appealed to me *psst, because you're old*. I prefer to eat apples as a snack, not candy, with sliced Manchego cheese as dessert, or in grilled cheese sandwich. I am not so sure why these jaw and teeth breaking caramel apples are so popular here in the US and of all places in the Philippines. And why in the world would you coat the apples with so much chocolate, why???

Anyway, I have some leftover caramel and coated 3 apples to see what the attraction is and also to add the pictures to my flickr photos, heheh. I actually like the pumpkin pie coating which is a mixture of ground graham crackers, raw sugar, and pumpkin pie spice but is still not as appealing as, say, caramel enrobed in bittersweet chocolate. Anybody in my house is welcome to eat them, but I doubt if they will. I bet the apples will stay on the counter forever and ever.:D

coated with a mixture of graham crackers, coarse raw sugar, and pumpkin pie spice

You can use caramel candies available from the groceries, I think it won't make any difference in taste and go wild with your coatings: rice crispies and peanuts, mini marshmallows and chopped almonds then drizzled with melted chocolate, chopped butterfingers, white chocolate and butterscotch chips but don't make them look so gaudy. But then, maybe the gaudy ones on display shelves or on the dinner table are more attractive specially to children.:D

Pinakbet

I usually make this vegetable dish when I have leftover crispy fried pork belly. The pinakbet I made today is similar to the Ilocos style of layering the vegetables and cooking it just until the vegetables are al dente. I used half of a medium size bitter melon (ampalaya). I don't recommend the very small Indian variety because they are super bitter unless you love bitter things. To prepare bitter melon, cut in half lengthwise, scrape the seeds and the white soft innards until you can see the light green meat, slice into 1 inch pieces, blanch in salted water, rinse with cold water 2 or 3 times. This process is supposed to remove some of the bitterness but I'm not sure if this really works, though.

Pinakbet

1 cup diced bagnet/lechon kawali (pork belly confit)
a 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup yard long beans (sitaw), cut into 1 inch pieces
1 Asian eggplant, halved and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 large tomato, sliced
2 tablespoons sliced shallots
10 pieces okra
1 cup kabocha squash, cut into ½ inch pieces
½ bitter melon, prepared as above
¼ cup bagoong alamang (salted shrimp paste) mixed with ¼ cup water or ½ cup fish bagoong (may substitute 2 tins anchovy filet mashed in ¼ cup water and strained)

• In a medium pot, arrange the pork evenly at the bottom, add the ginger on top of the pork spreading it evenly. Layer the vegetables, with the bitter melon either on the very top or if you want some bitter taste, in the middle. Pour the alamang mixture all over the vegetables. Cover the pot.
• Over high heat, boil rapidly for 10 minutes. Do not mix while boiling. Serve with steamed rice or as a side dish.

Bagnet
2 ½ pounds boneless pork belly
1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise
2 bay leaves
1 ½ tablespoons sea salt
water
vegetable oil

• Put pork in a large pot. Add bay leaves, garlic, and salt. Add water to cover pork. Boil for 1 hour. Remove pork, drain well, dry with paper towels.
• Transfer to another pot. Add enough oil to cover pork, fry over very low heat for 1 hour to remove excess moisture. Remove pork and transfer to a large plate to cool completely.
• When cooled, reheat the same oil over high heat and fry the pork belly until skin is golden in color and very crisp.

For flexi-vegetarian pinakbet omit pork.
For vegan pinakbet, omit pork and substitute 4 tablespoons soy sauce for the shrimp paste. Adjust seasoning with sea salt to taste.