Day 21 – What About the Food???

When you are cooking at sea, leftovers are critical. When you are at sea for over sixty days, one must be the queen, or king, of leftovers and a master at clever shortcuts. Leftover royalty means you can take all of those tasty bits from previous meals and add a gourmet twist to please a palate all over again. One of my new favorite product lines is from More Than Gourmet. Spend time on their website learning about everything they do and make sure to check out their collection of recipes…and, have your credit card handy.

More Than Gourmet has an awesome line of concentrated stocks and sauces with taste straight out of a classic, French kitchen. One of my favorite stocks is a blend of chicken and duck stock, which I mix with their seafood stock to make a killer batch of jambalaya. Another great, masterful shortcut is their new red wine demi-glace and white wine sauce. These sauces have a never-ending list of applications. The red wine sauce was a key ingredient to making the ultimate leftover creation….Gourmet Shepard’s Pie!

For this dish, I used lamb stew meat instead of ground beef or ground lamb. Plan to make this on a week that you make a batch of mashed potatoes for another meal. For the veggies, I had leftover fresh, sauteed sugar snap peas and carrots, which I added a bag of frozen mixed veggies to in order to fill out the pie. The best part of this dish is you can use whatever you have in the fridge. The finishing touch is the gravy a la More Than Gourmet.

Brown 2-3 lbs of lamb stew meat in a touch of vegetable oil, after dusting the meat with a bit of flour and seasoning of your choice.
De-glaze the pan with 1 cup of red wine and cook down until the wine is almost gone.
Add enough stock to cover the meat by about an inch. I used equal parts of lamb stock and beef stock from MTG and it was about a quart and a
half. Simmer for 2 hours or until desired tenderness.
Saute 1 large, sliced onion, 1 T. of minced garlic and 1 lb. of sliced mushrooms with one tablespoon each, oil and butter.

To build the pie, strain the meat, reserve the stock and place it as your first layer on the bottom of a pan-coated baking dish.
Top with the sauteed mushrooms and onions, next the vegetables. Pour some of the stock over the layers just to moisten them, about a cup.
Finish the top of the pie with a hefty layer of mashed potatoes. Pop the pie into a 350-375 degree oven, uncovered and cook until the potatoes brown on top. (Hint: I heat the potatoes and veggies so the whole pie is fairly hot before going in the oven. This reduces bake time and does not overcook the ingredients.)

To make the final gravy, uhhh, I mean gourmet finishing sauce, mix one container of the red wine demi-glace from MTG with an equal measure of the reserved stock. Bring to a simmer and let cook down for 10 minutes or so, just long enough to make a salad and warm some bread to go with the meal.

Tagged as: Cooking at Sea, demi-glace, Lamb, More Than Gourmet, Shepard's Pie