Shepherd's Celery Root Pie

The recipe of the month is, again, a good low calorie dish. But it doesn't look low calorie and it definitely doesn't taste low calorie. You can make this for anyone really and just not tell them that it's "diet," and if they like this casserole type of dish, I promise they will eat it. 

I personally can't eat stupid "diet" food that personal trainers are always telling you to eat, like plain steamed vegetables with poached fish; I'd almost rather just be fat and die young. Get a registered dietitian if you want food advice, gym rats are not famous for their love of fine dining. Anyone who would drink a protein shake more than once is unqualified to tell you how to eat healthy food that is also delicious.

We could all use some extra comfort, especially when trying to lose fat/weight, and this works for me. The reason I am using celery root here instead of traditional potatoes is not just because it's only 8 calories per ounce mashed, it's because it stays moister and therefore needs hardly any added butter in order to actually taste buttery. (You know how you can put a ton of butter into potatoes and they can still have a dry texture? That won't happen here.) By the way, if you're not sure what a celery root looks like, I have a picture on this recipe: Cream Baked Eggs and Fried Celery Root

Ingredients:

1 pound of lean ground beef, 93% lean or better (please don't use turkey, we are already substituting for potatoes, and if you take out the red meat too, well it's just not Shepherd's pie anymore)
1 large carrot, grated
1 small package of mushrooms, quartered, your favorite kind (if you hate mushrooms, substitute with a grated summer squash, but squeeze the juice out of the gratings.) 
1/2 small onion, chopped finely
2 teaspoons salt 
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon savory
1or 2 tablespoons steak sauce like A-1 or HP
1 large or two small celery roots (also called celeriac) peeled (like you would peel a pineapple) and cubed
2 teaspoons of butter (yes, only teaspoons)
splash of milk (about 1/8 cup)  
1 ounce grated cheese, any kind- I went trashy and used strips of one and 3/4 slices of Kraft Cheddar)

Put the peeled and cubed celery root pieces into a pot of simmering salted water and cook for about 15 minutes, or until the cubes are soft. Drain the celery root and mash up with the butter, the splash of low fat milk and some of the salt. You want about 20 ounces of this mash for your pie. Don't be cheap with the salt unless your doctor ordered you too. Dieting is not the time to cut everything out, it makes you too sad.

Saute the ground beef and onions on high heat for about five minutes until the  meat is all browned.  Add a teaspoon of salt, the pepper and other spices, the steak sauce, and the grated carrot and chopped mushrooms, and continue to stir and cook for a another five minutes, until everything looks heated through.

Pour the meat mixture first into a casserole dish, mine is about 11" x 8"

 Top this with the celery root mash, spread it out evenly and then sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes, until the edges are brown and the cheese is melted. This makes six servings of about 175 calories each, or four very generous servings for about 265 calories per serving. With calories this low you can afford a 140 calorie bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale with it. (I'm just saying.)

 You could be fancy and put fresh herbs on top, but frankly that takes away from the home-style feel in my opinion. If you go that route, I recommend dill or very finely chopped flat parsley.

Many Thanks To Cornwall for the Pasty

Whatever the true origin of the Pasty, they are nice looking and even nicer to eat. They were popular Cornish miner lunches back in the day, and are traditionally stuffed with meat cubes and rutabaga or turnip. They are also a fantastic make-ahead camping food. Wrap them in foil and heat them up near (but not too near) the coals and you will be a happy camper. My version is a bit different and is created like so:

Ingredients for the filling:

1 1/2 lbs beef chuck, cubed
1/3 cup flour
1 large potato, cubed
1 medium carrot or parsnip, diced
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil or clarified butter
2 teaspoons celery salt (or more to your taste)
2 tablespoons dried thyme
1 tablespoon black pepper (let's not be stingy)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Enough water or chicken stock to not-quite cover the ingredients, this will depend on the size of your pan.

Heat the oil in a pot over high heat, then add the cubed beef that you have dusted with the flour. Brown the meat for five minutes, then throw the rest of the ingredients right in the pot. Cook on low UNCOVERED for at least one hour, stirring gently on occasion. I want you to cook it until it is really thick and dry. You want the juices to look more like gravy than soup. You will get some stuck to the bottom of the pan, which is okay (just soak the pan before you try to scrub it). Let the filling cool down significantly before you stuff your pasties.

Ingredients for the pasty dough:

1 1/2 lbs. all purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
6 oz. cold lard
2 oz. cold butter
8 oz. cold water, or slightly more if your flour is dry

Sift the dry ingredients together with a sifter or just shake them through a strainer, then cut in the cold fats using a pastry cutter or a large fork. 

Add the cold water and mix with your hands. You want to dough to all stick together, if it doesn't, this is when you drizzle extra water if you think you need it, but the dough should be dry and stiff.

Now don't think of this as a pie crust, it's not. You don't want some crumbly thing that won't hold together. At this point, unlike pie crust, you are actually going to knead this hard dough for a minute until it feels smooth-ish instead of chunky and grainy.  Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 30-40 minutes. DON'T SKIP THE REFRIGERATION!

When the pastry is ready, divide it into 6 pieces. Roll each piece out to about a ten inch round circle with your rolling pin. You can lightly dust your board with flour, but this isn't a sticky dough, so you hardly need to. 

Place a nice generous semi-circle shaped blob of filling on one side of each circle, then fold the dough over to cover it. Press the edges together and either mash the edge with a fork to crimp it closed, OR crimp it like the edge of an apple pie (which is what I did), OR roll the edge over and squish the it down so it looks like a rope. Here's a great YouTube video that shows you how to do it: Pasty Crimping

Brush the tops of the pasties with an egg wash, and bake on a cookie sheet in a 325 degree oven for 45 minutes, but raise the heat to 350 at the end and cook ten minutes longer to get more color on the top if you like.

Pasties ready for the oven

   

Kale and Red Onion Pie

Two big bunches of Italian (Lacinato) kale, chopped up (yes, you can substitute other greens but this kind of kale is really starchy and good)
8 organic eggs
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (Spanish or Greek would be good here)
4 oz. feta cheese OR shredded Manchego (go with your gut)
1 red onion (if you really hate this much onion, try a thinly sliced fennel bulb instead, but I would add a little chopped onion to the mix if you go that way)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1 pinch of mace (if you have it) 
2 heaping tablespoons of any kind of flour (rice, wheat, coconut, potato- doesn't matter, I think I used brown rice flour because that's what I had)
2 heaping tablespoons pine nuts

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix  the chopped kale, and everything else, EXCEPT the red onion and one of the tablespoons of oil. 

Meanwhile you can either line a 9X13 inch pan with your favorite pie crust OR just leave it out entirely. 

Pour your kale mixture in the pan. Then thinly slice your red onion and arrange it as nicely and evenly on top as you can, and sort of smoosh the slices down onto your kale mixture a bit. Drizzle the last tablespoon of oil on top of the onion slices and sprinkle them with a little salt and pepper. 

Bake in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour. You want the onions to get crunchy on the edges. In fact, you might want it a bit more brown than it is in my photo, this is after cooking for only 45 minutes. This might be nice for a lunch, you can serve it warm or at room temperature (like pizza really). A little fresh squeezed lemon on top wouldn't be totally out of line, or even a side of marinara or pizza sauce to dip it in.  

Eat your veggies!