Whenever I look in my refrigerator and find a plethora of vegetables, I know it is time to make a vegetable pot pie. Use your favorite savory pie crust recipe. I use my recipe I learned in Paris. It is one I teach in my cooking classes because it is hard to describe the process to make it on paper. Making pastry is truly getting the feel for it. This recipe for Pot Pie is a little unusual because I add saffron to the sauce. It adds a little gourmet touch over the basic white sauce found in most pot pies. The other night, I experimented with throwing in some of the cooked vegetables from a Moroccan stew and they add a whole new dimension of flavor. Also, I did not have any fresh mushrooms so I soaked some dried shiitake and sliced them. I added some of the soaking mushroom broth to the sauce instead in addition to vegetable stock and omitted the cream. So the moral of the story is to experiment when making a pot pie. Any filling goes so look in your pantry and refrigerator and see what you can come up with. Please report back if you have a great success story.
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Vegetable Pot Pie
17 03 2010Whenever I look in my refrigerator and find a plethora of vegetables, I know it is time to make a vegetable pot pie. Use your favorite savory pie crust recipe. I use my recipe I learned in Paris. It is one I teach in my cooking classes because it is hard to describe the process to make it on paper. Making pastry is truly getting the feel for it. This recipe for Pot Pie is a little unusual because I add saffron to the sauce. It adds a little gourmet touch over the basic white sauce found in most pot pies. The other night, I experimented with throwing in some of the cooked vegetables from a Moroccan stew and they add a whole new dimension of flavor. Also, I did not have any fresh mushrooms so I soaked some dried shiitake and sliced them. I added some of the soaking mushroom broth to the sauce instead in addition to vegetable stock and omitted the cream. So the moral of the story is to experiment when making a pot pie. Any filling goes so look in your pantry and refrigerator and see what you can come up with. Please report back if you have a great success story.
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Tags: broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, Potatoes, squash, zucchini
Categories : Main Dish
Vegetable Stock
1 03 2010
In order to make the risotto we did in class or any great vegetable soup or stew, you need to begin with a good vegetable stock. I think homemade stock is far superior to any stock you buy in the store. Making stock is a great way to use up vegetables in your refrigerator that may go bad. What’s even better is that you can customize it to your recipe. So if you are making a Mushroom risotto, add more mushrooms to the stock, or if you are making a soup that would go nicely with fennel, add fennel to the stock. The options are endless. This is only an example of a stock. Of course some of the ingredients are optional, but you will need to add at least carrots, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme and salt if nothing else. If you want a slightly thicker stock, then add potatoes. Don’t use too many cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli or kale because their flavor is too strong.
Remember, when making a stock, begin with cold water then add all the vegetables and bring it to a boil. By starting with cold water, you will extract all the flavor from the vegetables into the stock. This is different from just boiling up some carrots to eat where you want the flavor to remain in the carrot.
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Tags: carrots, celery, garlic, onions, Potatoes, tomatoes
Categories : Soup
Types of Potatoes
25 02 2010I was looking at a recipe that I used for gnocchi and it called for baking potatoes. Now I know that Russet potatoes are good for baking but I was wondering what is technically the difference between baking potatoes and boiling potatoes. So I did a little research on the internet and found this article which explains it well. This should eliminate confusion as to what type of potato to use in your recipes.
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Tags: Potatoes
Categories : Uncategorized
Incan Corn, Potato, Quinoa Risotto (sort of)
13 01 2010Serves 4 – 5
This is a delicious variation of a risotto. It is a one dish meal eaten in a bowl. The quinoa is a very different texture to the creamy, starchy rice normally found in risotto. Quinoa is extremely nutritious and gluten free. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: corn, Potatoes, quinoa
Categories : grains, Main Dish, Potatoes
Rumpledethumps
13 01 2010Okay you all are probably thinking, what the heck is Rumpledethumps. It is my red-haired Irish son’s favorite dinner. This is a good old-fashioned Irish colcannon, a potato and cabbage dish, traditionally served on Lugnasa, the harvest festival. It is basically good old peasant food with the addition of my new favorite secret ingredient, mace. Mace is found on the outer shell of the nutmeg, think of savory nutmeg spice. It is fantastic with potatoes.
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Tags: broccoli, cabbage, Irish, leeks, Potatoes
Categories : Main Dish, Potatoes
Katherine
vegoutgourmet.com 