In Patty’s Kitchen: Intentional Leftovers are Yummy

By PATTY RICE GROTH

Inquirer Cor­re­spon­dent

The sun is shin­ing but the air is quite cool, and I am happy to be switch­ing over to recipes which warm the kitchen and please one’s nose. Except for occa­sional bak­ing of cook­ies, I really do not use my oven very much in the sum­mer. Meat is cooked on the grill or sautéed quickly on the stove­top, with sal­ads and fresh veg­eta­bles round­ing out a meal.

On Sun­day I pre­pared a pot roast with mashed pota­toes, corn and green beans for my fam­ily. On Sun­days we tend to eat break­fast a lit­tle later — after church — and skip lunch. Sup­per is usu­ally ready around 4 p.m. I am most happy when my son and his girl­friend is able to join us. They both work, though, and it’s not pos­si­ble as fre­quently as I‘d like.

When my chil­dren were grow­ing up it was not unusual to have a vis­it­ing child com­ment on our fam­ily sit­ting down to din­ner together. We tried our best to make it hap­pen at least four or five nights each week. I am at the tail end of the Baby Boomer gen­er­a­tion and can remem­ber fam­ily meals grow­ing up. When my sis­ter Shirley and her hus­band Larry missed Thanks­giv­ing din­ner in 1967 we all knew it was because their baby had decided to be born that day! Through all the changes in a fam­ily as it ages, grand­chil­dren are born, young adults move out, the fam­ily sup­per table was important.

You may recall that in those days too chil­dren did not have to report in to their par­ents every 30 min­utes or every time they changed play loca­tion. We were safe all over the neigh­bor­hood. After a long day of play­ing, we all headed home for sup­per together with our families.

Any­way, when cook­ing up the roast I increased the amount of pota­toes in the pot with the inten­tion of hav­ing some left­over to make a Shepherd’s Pie. My recipe card is writ­ten in my own hand­writ­ing so I don’t have any ref­er­ence to where this recipe came from. I do not remem­ber it being some­thing my mother made, but the card is show­ing signs of con­sid­er­able age.

There are so many vari­a­tions on this dish, so this recipe is just basic.

SHEPHERD’S PIE

1 lb. ground beef

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbs. flour

1/8 tsp. black pepper

1 cup beef broth

½ cup thinly sliced celery

1 cup thinly sliced carrots

2 cups mashed potatoes

1 cup onion rings

Brown the ground beef, remem­ber­ing not to over­cook it, espe­cially if it is lean ground beef. Drain off any fat if nec­es­sary. Add salt, pep­per and flour, stir­ring them in. Add the beef broth. Bring to a boil, stir­ring until gravy is thick. Add car­rots and cel­ery. Cook a few min­utes more.

Pour meat mix into a casse­role dish and cover with the left­over mashed pota­toes. Place a layer of onion rings on top of the potatoes.

Bake uncov­ered at 350 degrees Fahren­heit for 30 min­utes. Serves 4.

Because it is such a basic recipe, I freely mod­ify it to match what I have in my cup­boards. I do not have any car­rots or cel­ery, so I left them out, and added some chopped green pep­pers. I have frozen lots of green pep­per from the sum­mer gar­den and will be using it all win­ter long. When the timer goes off, I will put some shred­ded cheese on top of the pota­toes and let them bake just a few min­utes more.

We will have our veg­etable as a side dish, and it will be the last of the green beans picked from the gar­den before the recent frost. We still have let­tuce and brus­sel sprouts grow­ing in the gar­den. The cool tem­per­a­tures do not bother them at all. Over the let­tuce is a row cover to keep the frost from set­tling on the leafy greens.

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