Saturday, May 23, 2020

Weekend Cooking: Allotment Cottage Pie

    We are currently trying to do one meat free dinner every week. We are also watching Jamie Oliver's Keep Cooking and Carry On series which is on at the moment. The idea is that he gives satisfying meal recipes but also along the way gives lots of tips about how you can swap ingredients based on what is available in your pantry (or in the shops back when we were seeing shortages).  For example, in the recipe below, we swapped out dried porcini mushrooms for brown mushrooms and we used Vegemite instead of Marmite. We are, however, such bad Australians that we didn't even have any Vegemite in the cupboard (because it is horrible, horrible stuff) so we had to go and buy some just for this recipe. Oh, and we used dried lentils instead of a can. A lot of the series is actually filmed by his wife in their house rather than the usual slick production values he would have

    So this week's recipe is a meat free cottage pie (link to recipe). It has been quite cool here, so a hearty cottage pie was perfect for a Monday night dinner.

    We have also tried a cauliflower macaroni cheese recipe from the TV show but I don't think that we will make that one again. It was a bit underwhelming. I am earmarking meat free recipes all over the place, but it was only after a few weeks that we realise that one of the favourite recipes we make regularly (Baked Zucchini, Tomato and Parmesan Risotto) is already meat free!

    One of the funny things about this recipe happened a couple of weeks after we first cooked it. My sister and her family came around last weekend and we were talking about the things that we were doing differently food wise during this period of social isolation, and we mentioned making this recipe. My son pipes up and says "oooh that's why it tasted a bit different! " He never realised that there wasn't any meat in it!

    Allotment Cottage Pie


    10 g dried porcini mushrooms
    2 large leeks
    3 carrots
    500 g swede
    500 g celeriac
    olive oil
    3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
    1 teaspoon cumin seeds
    2 kg potatoes
    40 g unsalted butter
    1 splash of semi-skimmed milk
    1 onion
    1 teaspoon Marmite
    3 tablespoons tomato purée
    1 x 400 g tin of green lentils


    In a blender, cover the porcini with 600ml of boiling water.
    Trim, wash and slice the leeks 2cm thick, then scrub the carrots, swede and celeriac and chop to roughly the same size.
    Drizzle 2 tablespoons of oil into a large casserole pan on a medium heat, strip in the rosemary, fry for 
    1 minute to crisp up, then remove to a plate with a slotted spoon.
    Add the cumin seeds and prepped veg to the flavoured oil, season with sea salt and black pepper, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring regularly.
    Meanwhile, peel and roughly chop the potatoes, cook in a pan of boiling salted water for 15 minutes, or until tender, then drain well. Mash with the butter and milk, and season to taste.
    Preheat the oven to 190ºC/375ºF/gas 5.
    Quarter the onion, add to the porcini in the blender along with the Marmite and tomato purée and whiz until smooth.
    Pour into the veg pan and cook for 20 minutes, or until dark and caramelised, stirring regularly and scraping up any sticky bits from the bottom of the pan.
    Tip the lentils (juices and all) into the veg pan, bring to the boil, then season to taste.
    Spoon over the mash, place on a tray, bake for 30 minutes, or until lightly golden and bubbling at the edges, then sprinkle over the crispy rosemary.
    Serve with simple steamed seasonal greens !






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    Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

36 comments:

  1. I thought Jamie's lockdown series was excellent. I like him anyway but it was nice to see him being so flexible and 'back to basics' sort of thing. The kids were great.

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    1. We've tried a couple of things so far and plan to try a couple more soon Cath.

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  2. Loved your story, and confession of being "such bad Australians"! But I am curious, what is a Swede?

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    1. Melynda, if you type "what is a swede?" into Google, the search results will not only tell you what its other names are, but also show you a picture.

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    2. One of the tips for the recipe is that you can cook this with any root vegetable you have.

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    3. Actually, a swede and a rutabaga are the same thing. A turnip is related to the rutabaga but is not the same plant.

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    4. I knew I had heard that phrase before, and once I googled "swede" and saw it was a rutabaga (my favorite, I love them!) I remembered it was from a British show. They threw sweded at each other.

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    5. Getting hit by a swede would hurt!

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  3. We have also been reducing our meat consumption quite a bit recently. My experiments have mainly been with Southeast Asian spice profiles. I've seen a few blog posts about vegan shepherd's pie.

    To Melynda: swedes, turnips, and rutabagas are all tubers from the same plant, and differ by how large and they are and how long they've been kept. The turnips are the smallest. I believe that all these terms are used in America as well as in England and Australia.

    be well... mae at maefood.blogspot.com

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    1. I had to google rutabaga last week when someone posted about it Mae!

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  4. Well, I'm no tradie, but it seems to me that it's a thermostat problem. It cuts out because it's registered that the place is hot enough. It could be something simple like one of the rooms being much hotter than the other, triggering the thermostat to shut it down, or it could be that your thermostat is crook.

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    1. Nope Lisa. If anything it might be a new motherboard required.

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  5. I linked over to your risotto recipe because somehow I missed it before and we love risotto. I never thought of adding stuff like "courgettes" (what could be better than Australian words?!!!) and will be trying it soon. Thanks for that one and the cottage pie (which I would try without the marmite! Even if I could find it, I think I would skip it, being totally prejudiced as I have never actually tried it!)

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    1. I hope you do try it. It is one of our favourite go to recipes! So delicious!

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  6. Oh this looks good -- we love lentils. But I'm not a Vegemite fan either. I've like Jamie Oliver ... I wonder if we can get that show over here.

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    1. I think the marmite is just in there for an additional depth of flavour so you could substitute something else I am sure.

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  7. Glad someone asked about swede. And I'm thinking someone just told me in a letter that they recently tried their first rutabaga... I would love to see a picture - interested in which pans and tray sizes you used. (I'll figure it out - my husband only uses recipes as suggestions anyway.)

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    1. Unfortunately Care we had eaten before any photos could be taken!

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  8. What a great idea. We try and have at least one meatless meal each week. Recently made a cottage pie but used beef that was in the freezer. Allotment Cottage Pie made me smile as I am deep into Rosamunde Pilcher's book The Shell Seekers. I'm reading about the war time period now and how a can or tin of peaches is a goldmine of a present. The allotment gardens are mentioned.

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    Replies
    1. Cottage pie is normally made with beef. Shephere's pie is similar but made with lamb.

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  9. Love the idea of the cottage pie, especially the rosemary and the lentils. Sounds delicious! I don't recognize all of the ingredients (maybe we have a different name) but I'll look them up! Have a great week!

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    1. English is a funny language isn't it Judee! Same language but yet different.

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  10. Somehow my post showed twice (again) - not sure what I'm doing wrong. Anyway, can you remove #5- thanks

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    1. Hi Judee. Your original link came back to my blog so I added a second one to link to yours.

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  11. Sounds delicious! Though it's getting really hot in this hemisphere, so I better bookmark this one for later!

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    1. We are heading into soup and pie weather now whereas you are all headed into salad weather.

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  12. Getting warmer here.
    Still isolating kinda.
    I'll have to look for that Oliver show. I'm addicted to cooking shows.

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    1. It's easy to get addicted to cooking shows Jackie!

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  13. Looks like a great recipe! I need to see if I can find that show to stream.

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  14. I had to look up both Vegemite and Marmite...and...yeast? Really? Interesting.

    I had to look up a cottage pie next. Oh my. My grandma used to make a dish that sounds like cottage pie.

    Thank you for these sweet memories.

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    1. Really. Glad that you had some good memories to recall Deb!

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  15. I love lentils! We are finally heading into warm weather this week, though. I love vegetarian meals but they usually involve a lot of chopping!

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    1. I tend to cheat a bit and get my husband to do the chopping Laurie! He's good like that.

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  16. i've seen a few recipes with Marmite lately. Well, we have Vegemite here in Aus, so I would use that. it is definitely good in recipes for a umami hit.

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