FFWD—Hachis Parmentier

What in the world is that?

It’s our recipe for French Fridays With Dorie this week.  It’s basically a shepherd’s pie made with leftover beef.  Get this—I followed the recipe exactly!  But I didn’t use leftovers.  I just happened to have some beef chuck about three weeks ago, so I decided to use it for this. 

I knew Kevin would like this and that I wouldn’t really care for it.  You see, I don’t like sausage—of any kind.  But I wanted to make this as Dorie wrote it, so I added some sausage.  I don’t like touching raw meat, and I consider removing sausage from its casings just about as bad as it gets.  BUT, I did it. 

I didn’t see the notes for the quick method by using ground beef until I’d already started making this with the beef chuck.  I’d rather use beef like that for a really good roast/potatoes/carrots in the crockpot or something, so if I make this again, I’d for sure use ground beef, which is the only way I’ve ever made shepherd’s pie in the past and think it’s just fine that way.  Maybe sometimes I’ll throw in some sausage for Kevin, but since it had sausage, I really only at a very small amount of it. 

I’m happy to be cooking and baking along with Dorie’s new book, Around My French Table, but I’ve decided something—I’m not a photographer, well, I knew that already.  And I’ve had some not-so-good pictures and some really bad ones, even with sweet desserts and things that I actually enjoy photographing.  But try as I might, I just don’t think I’ve got that knack for snapping shots of savory food.  I know it’s me and my lack of skills.  I guess I’ve improved in my photography overall since starting my blog, so now that I’ll be trying to photograph savory food more, maybe it will improve over time.

That said, I’m not sure shepherd’s pie is all that photogenic, so this one really isn’t ALL my fault. ;)  Now I give you a few pictures of the pie, just so you can see that I did make it.

I even took a fun prep photo with my very dirty looking cutting board in the background.

The beef is ready to go.  (Yes, I did add the carrots and stuff from cooking the meat, Dorie said it was optional, waste not want not I always say.  Except if you know me, do you really think I added all those extra onions? 

Yeah, that just really doesn’t look that good to me.  It did get eaten up here though!  I do prefer the ol’ traditional American shepherd’s pie with ground beef and when I do make it, I usually add all kinds of veggies, whatever I have.  That’s just the way we like it. 

I’m  really excited to make more savory dishes from Dorie’s new book (AND the desserts!) so stay tuned for that.  In the meantime, can’t wait for apple week coming up.  TWD—apple pie.  Next FFWD—an apple cake.  Yep, now THAT sounds good!