Dark Side of the Fridge

Of course they do.  So a Greek-inspired shepherd’s pie isn’t completely unreasonable, is it? 

Actually, I’ve seen recipes for “Greek Shepherd’s Pie,” but they all involve eggplant.

I’m the only one in the house (with the possible exception of the dog) who actually likes eggplant.

So no eggplant. 

So what do we need for a Greek-style shepherd’s pie?  I’m kind of flying by the seat of my pants here – no recipe, just throwing together.  The most fun – but riskiest – way to cook, in my opinion. 

Well, the first thing we’re gonna want, I think, is some lamb.  And I found a package of lamb shoulder steaks in the freezer last weekend while I was cleaning it out.  We’re in business.

Perfect. 

Peeps made short work of cutting about a pound of lamb into “soup-sized” pieces.

And we’re gonna need some spinach.  In my mind, for some reason, spinach seems to be nearly synonymous with Greek food.

Except, of course, baklava. 

But savory foods?  Bring on the spinach!  Here, we drained, then squeezed dry, a 16-oz bag of frozen spinach.  Make sure, whatever you do, that you squeeze the daylights out of the spinach – what starts out being a reasonably good-sized bag becomes a couple of handfuls. 

We’re also going to need some aromatics – a couple of onions, and several cloves of garlic.  They’re going to get peeled (of course!), and chopped.  I just smash the garlic and coarsely chop it – nothing fancy.  I actually like to leave the garlic kind of big in stuff like this – it’s going to get cooked, and I love the nice bit of garlic you get when you bite into a biggish chunk.  But maybe that’s just me – chop your garlic as big or as small as you’re comfortable with. 

Once we start browning the lamb in pan with a little olive oil, we added the onions, then the garlic.

Lamb + Onions +Garlic = Lots and lots of flavor.

I let that cook until the lamb (in teeny tiny chunks) was just cooked through, then we added about a quarter of a cup of flour.  (Bear with me – we’re going to want to thicken this later.)

Then I drained and added 1 pint of diced tomatoes.  If your tomatoes don’t come in pints and quarts, a drained 14.5-oz. can of diced tomatoes would probably work just as well.

Stir the tomatoes into the meat mixture, along with whatever seasonings you deem appropriate – we went with lots of Mediterranean oregano and plenty of black pepper.  You can’t go wrong with that combination, right?

To the mixture, we’re going to add about a pint of lamb stock (or beef broth) (or even chicken broth) and a can of chick peas (also known as garbanzo beans).

We kind of have mixed opinions about chick peas.  On the one hand, they’re “authentic” when it comes to Mediterranean or middle eastern cuisine.  But on the other hand, they have a weird texture actually “in” stuff.  They taste like they’re “almost cooked” if you know what I mean.  Like they could have used another 10 minutes on the heat. 

However, in this case, since we’ve been trying to concentrate on “using up old stuff we have lying around,” and, well, the viable options that we had lying around were chick peas and canellini beans, we went with the chick peas rather than make a special trip to the store for something else. . .

The we stirred in the spinach.  Now that is starting to look like something worth eating, isn’t it? 

We just let that cook gently over a very low heat until the existing liquid started to thicken up.  (Remember the flour we added a while back?  Yeah, I told you to trust me.)

And yes, we certainly could have added some kalamata olives here, but we didn’t have any lying around. . .

If you were so inclined, you could, at this point, put the “pie filling” into a covered bowl and let it sit in the fridge for a day or two for the lamb + spinach + seasonings to meld together and get that “made ahead of time” flavor.

You know, if it was, say, Sunday afternoon and you knew that you were planning to have shepherd’s pie on, say, a Tuesday, and you knew you wouldn’t feel like dicking around with it that much on a Tuesday.

I’m just saying. . . you could make it ahead to this point if you felt like it. 

Anyay, Peeps started some mashed potatoes.  Just your basic mashed potatoes, russet potatoes, boiled, then mashed.  With lots of black pepper.  And feta cheese.  After all, the one other thing that shouts “Greek-inspired” is feta cheese – you didn’t think we forgot the feta, did you?

However, I want to be sure we taste the feta – potatoes do tend to have a numbing effect on the senses, at least around here. 

So while he was mashing, I sprinkled a couple of ounces of feta on top of the filling.  Um, that would be the thickened filling that has been spread into the bottom of a casserole dish.  

And, since it is a shepherd’s pie, Greek-ness notwithstanding, the mashed potatoes get spread on top of the filling, then the whole mess goes into a moderate oven for about 30-40 minutes, until everything is completely heated and the potatoes are browned.

Yum.

So, while I’m reasonably certain that this was not quite what The Boy had in mind when he requested “shepherd’s pie” for dinner one night this week, I’m also fairly confident that he wasn’t disappointed.

Neither were the rest of us, to be honest.