Mashed Yam and Potato Shepherd's pie

When the cherry blossoms bloom, you know spring has arrived.   Crisp morning air and warm afternoon sunbeams greet me as I commute to and from work.  And then there's the rain.  Unpredictable and inevitable, it is virtually synonymous with the Pacific Northwest.  It rains here more often than not, and on those cold, clammy evenings, I find myself craving a hearty home cooked meal. 

Enter vegan Shepherd's pie.  Underneath the mashed potato crust, it barely resembles the Shepherd's pie (also called Cottage pie)  that my English ancestors once baked.  I don't think I've ever made the exact same shepherd's pie twice, because it's always a mish-mash of whichever vegetables happen to be in the crisper.  That's one of the things I love about it.   But one thing you do need is potatoes.  Unfortunately I was well on my way to assembling my pie when I realized I only  had 3 red potatoes - not quite enough to cover the vegetable layer.When I remembered that I had a large yam that I had bought with the intention of making yam fries, the rest is history.

There's three parts to this recipe:

• mashed yam/potato crust
• sauteed vegetable filling
• cheez sauce.  

Mashed Yam Shepherd's Pie

Ingredients for mashed potatoes
3 red potatoes, cubed and boiled with skin on
1 large yam, cubed and boiled with skin on
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
2 tbsp Earth Balance (or other vegan margerine)
- Make mashed potatoes with these ingredients.  I'll spare the details on how to do this as I'm pretty sure you already know how to make mashed potatoes.

Recipe for Cheeze sauce
"Cheez" Sauce from Get Sconed's Adapted Version of the New Farm Macacorni and Cheez

Ingredients for vegetable filling
1 tbsp olive oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup frozen corn
1/4 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup fresh broccoli, sut into bite-sized pieces
2 cubes frozen spinach
1 tomato, diced
(use whatever veggies you have on hand, be creative!  I've also used mushrooms, cauliflower, carrots and wax beans)

Directions
Saute the onion with olive oil in a large frying pan or wok over medium heat.  Once onion becomes translucent, add the corn, peas, broccoli and spinach.  Cover, and let steam for 5 minutes.  Remove lid and stir occasionally until all of the vegetables are al-dente.

Pour cheez sauce over vegetables, add tomato and stir gently until combined.  Pour into casserole dish.  Using a spatula, spread mashed potato over the cheezy vegetable mixture.  Grind some sea salt and white pepper if desired, and bake in 350 oven until mashed yam/potato cover is slightly golden (about 30 minutes)

Enjoy!

Lasagna a la Vegan

 

Time for this month's Daring Baker's challenge!  The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

Making a savoury dish this month was perfect for me because I had leftovers for days and didn't have to cook much else for the entire weekend that I made it.  The main part of the challenge this month was to hand make the pasta, (I made this spelt-chickpea pasta from Bryanna Clark Grogan) and include a bechamel sauce.  Instead of topping the lasagna with cheese, I scrambled up some medium-firm tofu with nutritional yeast and smoked garlic chipotle salt.  This combined with the white bechamel sauce was really tasty!  The vegetable layer of the lasagna was a simple saute of white onion, celery, carrots and zucchini.

I'm seriously all lasagna'd out after eating this for three days straight.  The rest of it is going in the freezer and may end up in my lunchbox one day.

Mock Tuna Casserole

I trust you all had a spooky Hallowe'en?  Ours was a little less spooky with this little butterfly fluttering around...

A few days ago Happy Herbivore posted a Mock Tuna Salad recipe and I just had to try it.  The last time I ate tuna was at least 16 years ago when my mom used to bake tuna casseroles for dinner.   Though I don't miss tuna at all, I do miss my mom so I made this dish with pleasant memories of cooking in the kitchen with her. 

I whipped up a batch of the mock tuna, and let me say that it is so tasty it barely made it out of the food processor! I tasted a spoonful which then became two spoonfuls, then three...

But I managed to save enough of it to add to a casserole dish full of cooked brown rice pasta and peas.  I combined the mock tuna with my favorite pasta cheez from Get Sconed's adapted version of New Farm Macacroni and Cheez.   I sprinkled some kelp granules and black pepper on top before baking it.

Oh my, this was extra delicious!  And since I loved the mock tuna so much, I later made it again and enjoyed it on some sprouted grain bread with romaine lettuce.  Equally scrumptious!