Feb 14 2005
Sunday cooking
All last week I struggled with a chest cold that turned into a sinus cold. The main symptoms, aside from gallons of phlegm, were a constant headache and un-ending lethargy.
Regardless, I spent Sunday afternoon making three lasagnas and two shepherd’s pies — meals to put in the freezer so I don’t have to do so much cooking during the week. Going into it, I didn’t know if I could muster the ambition, but since I had planned this marathon before I got sick and I had all the ingredients on hand, I pulled up the old bootstraps and plunged in. It went something like this:
• Cut up zucchini, baby eggplant, and a bit of red onion. Roll in olive oil. Place on a roasting rack along with a couple of red peppers. Put under the broiler.
• While keeping one eye on the roasting veggies, chop an onion, six shallots, and five cloves of garlic.
• Open a monster-size (2.84 litre) can of tomatoes and coarsely chop them up.
• Peel and cut four big potatoes, put in salted water and put it on the stove, on high.
• Sauté the shallots and garlic for a couple of minutes. Check on the roasting veggies.
• Add a triple-pinch of dried chilies to the shallots. Stir for a minute, then dump in the monster can of tomatoes.
• Throw a pound of lean ground beef into a skillet and start to brown it while chopping up some mushrooms on the side.
• Take the browned beef out of the pan and put in a bowl. Add the mushrooms to the greasy pan. Stir-fry.
• Take the roasted veggies out of the oven. Put the peppers in a paper bag to cool/de-skin.
• Stir the mushrooms, add onions. Keep stirring.
• Add garlic, stir, then add the beef back to the pan. Take the now-cooked potatoes off the heat and drain.
• Use the hand-blender to grind up the tomatoes in the pot of tomato sauce. Toss in a bunch of herbs.
• Take some of the beef mix out of the pan. Set aside.
• Drizzle some red wine into the pan of beef/mushrooms/onions. Put in a bit of Bovril and water. Raise the heat.
• Mash the potatoes with butter, milk, and chicken stock.
• Sprinkle a bit of flour onto the beef to thicken the sauce. Keep mashing potatoes.
• Take the tomato sauce off the heat. Set aside. Take the beef off the heat. Get frozen corn nibblets out of freezer.
• Assemble two shepherd’s pies (beef mix, corn, mashed potatoes). Cover, label, stick in the freezer.
• Put pot of water on to boil (for lasagna noodles).
• Cut up roasted veggies. Skin and de-seed peppers.
• Put noodles in water. Put steamer full of spinach on the stove.
• Grate mozzarella cheese while monitoring noodles and spinach.
• Drain and rinse noodles. Take spinach out of steamer to cool.
• Whip up a small batch of bechamel sauce (from scratch).
• Squeeze (barely) cooled spinach in hand to remove excess water. Mix spinach with ricotta cheese.
• Stir some of the tomato sauce into the beef mixture that was set aside earlier.
• Assemble two lasagnas, as follows: (1) Tomato sauce, noodles, meat sauce, moz cheese, noodles, spinach/ricotta, noodles, tomato sauce, cheese. (2) Tomato sauce, noodles, roasted veggies, bechamel sauce, noodles, spinach/ricotta, noodles, tomato sauce, cheese.
• Cover, label, stick in the freezer.
• Pour a cup of tomato sauce into each of two freezer bags. Zip closed,
and put in freezer with lasagnas. (It’s always nice to have an extra
bit of sauce.)
• Assess leftovers (for final lasagna). Assemble Franken-lasagna as follows: Tomato sauce, noodles, meat sauce, pepperoni, cheese, noodles, roasted veggies, tiny bit of bechamel, ricotta, noodles, tomato sauce, cheese. Put in the oven for tonight’s dinner.
That took exactly three hours. Normally I clean up as I go, but I was in a big hurry because I had started late. If you’ve had the stamina to read this far then maybe you can pitch in and help me with this:
13 Comments on “Sunday cooking”
Sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine…
Shepherd’s Pie is made from lamb or mutton, because shepherds herd sheep.
The same thing made with beef is called Cottage Pie. I have no idea why.
All that food sounds very tasty though, I love having a freezer full of stuff like that.
For extra special cottage/shepherd’s pie, try cooking some leeks in butter and mixing them with the mashed potato.
That’s my Valentine! He did all this while I was trying to finish the screenplay.
It’s not Shepherd’s Pie or Cottage Pie anyway, it’s pâté chinois!
One similar Saturday, Laurie didn’t feel like boiling the reg. noodles so she didn’t. As she had made the lasagna at least 3 hours ahead of time, it sat on the counter, covered, and then when she baked it, it came out perfect…….so…..she has never boiled them since………it’s always something that she makes made ahead of time.
speaking of pâté chinois… what’s up with that name? there’s nothing chinese about the dish. it’s sort of like calling pain doré ‘french toast’ or back bacon ‘canadian bacon’.
No kidding! The odd thing is, I called these pâté chinois when speaking, but shepherd’s pie when writing. (Didn’t want to go hunting for the accents I suppose.)
Lambic, thanks for the tip re: shepherd’s vs. cottage pies. I wasn’t really sure what the difference was. Where I grew up we didn’t differentiate.
Harry, I might try that next time. I’ve also used noodles that were specifically marked as not needing to be boiled and they worked fine.
Can I just come over and eat at your house? So I don’t have to cook this week either?
Pate chinois = hachis parmentier.
Big cookup sessions like that remind me of when my little boy was a baby and friends would come round for a baby food party (a butternut squash goes a long way when pureed so it’s the only way to get variety). The only difference there is a lot more people around to do the dishes afterwards.
I think it’s a North American vs. British thing, this whole shepherd’s pie/cottage pie distinction. I’d never heard of cottage pie until I moved here and in addition, it doesn’t usually contain tomato or a tomato-based sauce. It just proves my point that Brits are weird. Not like us Canadians – we’re lovely.
Incidentally, I am also planning on attempting a similar task of filling my freezer (with lasagna, chilli, beef stew, spaghetti sauce, and hamburger patties) before the baby comes. Since I’ve been a bit tired lately, do you mind coming over and doing this for me? Martine can come too and we can provide wine. Thank you.
According to this entry on Pâté Chinois, the name has its origins among French-Canadians who worked alongside the Chinese labourers who built the railways in the 1800′s. Pâté Chinois is, specifically, minced beef, corn niblets (or creamed), with mashed potatoes on top. It’s what we normally eat at home.
For me, Shepherd’s Pie is pretty much any other variation of the concept of meat/vegetables/potatoes baked in an oven. I didn’t know about its direct British origin.
Lisa, we’ll arrive as soon as I’m done doing the dishes…
We tried the leeks in mashed potatoes idea tonight, as a side dish with veal escalopes in a mushroom&cream sauce. Delightful!
Yay Martine! Meet you at Heathrow! ;)
“Shepherd’s Pie is made from lamb or mutton, because shepherds herd sheep.”
According to merriam-webster, a shepherd is “one who tends sheep”. So wouldn’t the idea of eating lamb would be quite unsettling? I find it a little eery to make the connection…