Inspired by Fall Harvest and aging apples and tomatoes. This menu features a breakfast for dinner with a biscuit bar!
Dinners Feature Shepherds' Pie, Spaghetti and Meatballs, and Chicken Piccata. Belly-filling delicious for the end of a hard day!
Squash Soup and a Breakfast Burrito for lunch. For that hectic day, an easy prepped pasta bake we made last week.
Today's discussion focuses on how to plan ahead to save time by preparing ingredients we'll use more than once, like mirepoix, mashed potatoes, and pasta. We can make meatballs while we brown beef and lamb for our Shepherds' Pie. Toast croutons and crostini whenever the oven is on. Share your time savers below!
Mirepoix
The nutty, almost sweet foundation of many soups, sauces, and casseroles. This week we use the delicious base in our meatballs, Shepherds' Pie, and Squash Soup.
Other versions include the trinity which replaces carrots with green peppers, the sofrito with tomato, and the suppengrun of carrots, leeks and celery root. Use ginger for an asian flair!
These aromatics are gently heated in a fat, like bacon grease or olive oil with a bit of salt and a bay leaf. The idea is to keep the temperature low enough to not cause browning, but to slowly render the onions translucent. The vegetables can be diced, minced, or even shredded, depending on the application.
Mashed Potatoes
Which potato... Red, Russet, or Yukon?
Cooking Method... Roasted or Boiled?
Cream or Cheese... or Butter?
Salt, Pepper, Garlic.
Which method? Bake or boil? Mixer or ricer? How fast is liquid added?
What should be added?
For me, it all depends on what I’m using them for. And I’m not reproducing a specific recipe, so it doesn’t have to be perfect. Sure… lumpy or glue-y mashed potatoes border on sacrilege. I am not talking about those failures. But sometimes a textured, salty skinned potato side dish works with a juicy chicken breast, topped in a lemon-butter caper sauce. I like that particular dish, Chicken Piccata, with rosemary-roasted red-skinned potatoes, slow cooked so they don’t get too crispy; just a little bit.
I recommend a ricer, as it offers a precision other tools don’t offer. Add the liquid slowly. I use cream but I have heard yogurt works better. If anyone has tried this, please LMK! Give the potatoes time to absorb the liquid. Fail here? Glue-y masheds. We’ll add smoked cheddar to the Shepherds’ Pie Potatoes and roasted garlic to the Piccata Potatoes.
Left Over List
Here are the things we should have left over from last week's menu. We'll use some things up others will go into the pantry, if any is left.
Using these
- Cooked Rice/Pasta
- Cooked Bacon and Ham
- Bread, croutons, crostini, crumbs
- Chicken Thighs
- Chevre / Parmesan Cheeses
- Sauteed mushrooms, primavera veggies
- Strawberries
- Vegetable trimmings for stock
Adding these to pantry
- Walnuts
- Noori
- Pickled Squash
- Tortillas / Tortilla Chips
Shopping List
- Smoked sausage
- Eggs
- Onion
- Peppers (Green, Red, Yellow) 2 each for 2 meals
- Beans and Rice to replenish pantry
- Pasta
- Baguette
- Found aging tomatoes and apples on sale (slow cooked into jams)
Prep List
- Cut peppers – frittata/burrito/hoagie/jambalaya
- Slow cook tomatoes and apples til pasty/buttery
- Slow cook chicken thighs from last week’s bird
- Cut and spread sandwich slices and garlic breadÂ