“Mama’s Food”: Phyllo Crust Fish Pie

This morning I overheard Paul and Emmett talking. Paul asked Emmett what he liked to eat and Emmett said “Mama’s food.” I played it cool and pretended not to notice but I felt a wave of happiness and pride wash over me.  I love that “Mama’s food” is an actual category of food to him.  It’s a bonus that he thinks it’s good.  That  it’s what he likes. Most of the parents I know, myself included, feel pressure to be feeding our children the “right” things and so often it seems like an uphill battle in a world full of convenience foods and toddler palates - not to mention busy work and activities schedules.  

When they are very young, it’s easier to control what they eat but that becomes more and more difficult once they are out in the world.  Even at age three, they notice what their friends are eating, what snacks everyone brings to school. They want to go to McDonald’s.  And I’m not going to lie. It’s hard to feed a family. Real food. Night after night. It takes planning, dedication and as much organization as even this Type-A-Lawyer-Mama can muster. And  believe me, perfection is not the standard I’m holding myself to here. I don’t beat myself up over putting a frozen pizza in the oven when I get home late from work, ordering Thai food or calling it “everyone just eat whatever you can find in the fridge night”. I’m not nuts about things like whether everything is organic or how many servings of fruits and vegetables they are getting each day.  I just want food to be a source of sustenance, pleasure and joy for them - eating it, cooking it and sharing it with the people they love. I’m satisfied with feeding them enough home-cooked meals that “Mama’s food” is a category.

Cooking at home requires the ability to adapt recipes so that they can be made with ingredients you already have or are easy to find, on sale, etc. This fish pie is something that I created in order to use some smoked trout that was hanging out in my fridge.  After reading a handful of recipes for fish pie (there's one in Irish Country Cooking, the book I recently got from the Paddy's and blogged about here) and cullen sink (Scottish fish chowder) I felt prepared to embark on my own take. Instead of using a pie crust or puff pastry for the lid, I decided to use the phyllo dough I had in the freezer. Fewer trips to the store, more cooking in the kitchen.

Here goes…

Phyllo Crust Fish Pie

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, Irish if you have it

2 leeks, washed and thinly sliced

2 large yellow potatoes, cubed

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

⅓ cup white wine

2 cups whole milk

8 oz smoked trout

About 6 black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

Salt and ground black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1/2 roll chilled phyllo

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan or dutch oven, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter over medium-high heat. Add leeks, potatoes and garlic, and turn the heat down so that the vegetables and garlic release some moisture but do not brown.  Cook about five minutes until leeks begin to turn translucent. Remove leeks, potatoes and garlic and set aside.

Turn the heat back up to medium-high and add white wine, scraping the bottom of the pan.  Allow most of wine to evaporate and stir in milk, smoked trout, peppercorns and bay leaf.  Bring to the boil, cover, and simmer gently for 7 minutes. Remove fish. Once cool enough to handle break trout into large flakes discarding bones and skin.

Strain the milk through a fine sieve and return the liquid to the pan.  Add the potato-leek mixture, cover, and simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the potatoes are just cooked through. Strain the milk again, this time leaving the milk in a separate pan or bowl, and set the potato-leek mixture aside with the trout.

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in the pan.   Add the flour and cook gently for 1 minute.

Gradually whisk in the milk and bring it back to a boil, stirring constantly. Lower the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes.

Stir in the smoked trout, leeks, potato and parsley, and season with salt and pepper. Pour into a pie or casserole dish and chill for 1 hour or longer, overnight is fine.
 

Preheat oven to 375F.

Unroll defrosted roll of phyllo. Run a clean kitchen towel under water and wring it out.  Use the towel to cover phyllo that is not being used so that it doesn’t dry out.

Take your fish chowder out of the fridge.  

Melt the remaining butter (you can also use olive oil or even spray oil).  

Brush one sheet of phyllo lightly with melted butter or oil and place over the chowder.

Do the same with the next piece, rotating it so that it overlaps the first piece.  I just sort of throw them on there.  Keep brushing then layering your phyllo like this to cover the top of your dish.  

Repeat this process with about 10 sheets or half of the roll.

Cut an opening for steam to escape.

Bake for about 40  minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden and chowder is bubbling underneath. Start checking your pie around the 20 minute mark and cover loosely with foil if the phyllo is getting too brown (mine didn’t need to be covered and I had it in there for the full 40 minutes).

While Emmett's my big fish lover, Isla is into robust, savory foods like blue cheese, extra sharp cheddar, spicy sausage etc.  She loved this one - I think it was the smoked trout.    

Cook the Book: Coast by Rachel Allen

Do you have any friends so perfect you would hate them if you didn’t love them so much? We do. Every year we get a Holiday card or two from those perfect friends who have gorgeous, well-mannered children and live in beautifully curated homes. When the cards arrive I show them to my husband who can’t help but agree with my assessment that: “This card looks like an ad for Tiny Prints! Wouldn’t you hate them if you didn't know them?” This is sort of how I feel about culinary goddess Rachel Allen - minus the part about knowing her personally.  She’s the beautiful and talented cook who graduated from Ballymaloe Cookery School at the age of 18 and went on to work there, marry the very handsome Isaac Allen, son of Ballymaloe’s famous Darina Allen, raise three children, write cookbooks, star in TV shows and basically lead the life dreams are made of. Somehow, despite all of her beauty and talent, she seems to be totally down to earth and, just like those perfect friends of ours, way too lovely to hate.

It’s very, very tough to hate a woman who provides you with a delicious meal like this one that can be made on a weeknight (oh, and my birthday cake).  So instead I am one of her biggest fans. I watch her on TV and buy her cookbooks. Her latest one, Coast, is probably my favorite yet. The book is set up as a culinary road trip that takes you along Ireland’s Atlantic coast from Cork all the way up to Donegal. The book makes you wish you were able to join Rachel on her journey and sample all of the local produce and artisanal products available along the way.  Each time I open it, I vow to make the same trip up the coast with my family.  I will, once the kids are old enough to remember and enjoy it. In the meantime I feed them.

Pork Schnitzel with Sage Butter

adapted slightly from Coast by Rachel Allen

1 ½lb fillet of pork, cut at an angle into ½ inch-thick slices

½ cup all-purpose flour

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 ¼ cup fine white breadcrumbs (fresh or frozen)

Grated zest of ½ lemon

2 eggs, beaten

Butter and extra virgin olive oil, for frying

For the sage butter:

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

1 stick butter, softened

1 tbsp chopped sage

1 tbsp lemon juice

Mix all the ingredients for the sage butter in a bowl. Put on a sheet of greaseproof paper, roll into a log and chill.

Place the pork fillet slices between two sheets of plastic wrap and, using a rolling pin, gently beat until flattened to about one quarter of an inch thick .

Mix the flour with a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper in a bowl big enough to toss the pork in; in another bowl, mix the breadcrumbs with 1⁄4 teaspoon of salt, a few twists of pepper and the lemon zest; and, in a third bowl, whisk the eggs together.

Dip each piece of pork into the flour, then into the egg and then in the crumbs. Make sure they are well coated.

Heat one tablespoon each of butter and olive oil in a frying pan and fry the schnitzels in batches, adding more butter and oil when needed. Keep the cooked schnitzels, uncovered, in a warm oven while you cook the rest. Serve with slices of sage butter melting on top, and a salad or seasonal greens.

Get out the meat mallet and some aggression.

Breading station - flour, egg, breadcrumbs.

Add salad, rice and lemon. That's it. Perfect.

An Irish Italian Meal: Bacon and Pea Risotto

I had just started cooking dinner the other night when Paul suggested that I take some photos and blog about it. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I looked down at the big pile of cubed Irish boiling bacon that I was about to put into the risotto and realized that I use Irish bacon all the time.  So often that I don’t even recognize it as an “Irish” ingredient anymore. Friends who aren't Irish ask me what it is and how it's different from regular bacon. Like brown bread, I had never even heard of Irish bacon until I started dating Paul and celebrating holidays with his family. My father-in-law, Paddy, studs his with cloves and boils it for just the right amount of time.  It puts the turkey to shame every Thanksgiving and I can never decide whether to eat more then and there or to hold off with the hope that there will be some left over. I think Paddy has caught on to my not-so-subtle clamoring for the leftovers so he often sets some aside for me when he makes one. I freeze it for fried rice, pasta, omelettes, sandwiches, pot pies, soup, you name it.

Bacon and pea risotto was actually a first in my household but I will definitely make it again. The kids loved it and Emmett, who had requested “plain noodles” for dinner ended up cleaning his plate. We were joking that we should have been wearing the “Half-Gaelic, Half-Garlic” T-shirts for this meal, but really, who doesn’t like bacon, peas and rice?

Mr. Plain Noodles stealing bites of the good stuff from Dad. 

Bacon and Pea Risotto

1 fist-size slab of cooked Irish boiling bacon, cubed

1 cup frozen peas

1 shallot, thinly sliced

3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

¾ cup Arborio rice

⅓ cup white wine (optional)

1 tablespoon butter, divided in half

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 cups chicken stock or broth (This is more than enough.  I heat up more than I need and use what's left for another purpose)

1 sprig rosemary

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (dried work fine as well)

Salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup Parmesan cheese plus more to finish

1 lemon for serving

Place chicken stock or broth in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. While stock is coming to a simmer, prepare your shallot, garlic and bacon. Place a heavy bottomed pan on the stove and turn heat to medium high. Add half of the butter and the olive oil.  Once the pan is hot, add the shallot and garlic and turn down the heat as necessary to make sure the shallot and garlic do not burn. Cook about five minutes, until shallot is translucent.  Add the rice, rosemary and thyme and stir until all of the grains of rice are coated in oil/butter and begin (just barely) to toast. Turn the heat back up and add wine, scraping any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Once wine is almost completely evaporated, turn the heat down to medium low and start adding the stock. I use a soup ladle and add a couple of ladles of stock at a time, keeping the rice-stock mixture at low boil and seasoning with salt along the way. Once the rice has absorbed most of the stock, I add more. After 10 to 15 minutes I start checking the rice to gauge how much longer I think it will take to cook through. Once it is just a little more al dente (15 minutes or so) than I would like, I remove the sprig of rosemary and add the bacon, peas, and a little more stock.  I continue to cook until the rice is just cooked through. Try not to get distracted at the end because it can go from perfect to mushy quickly. When the rice is ready, I turn off the stove  and remove the pan from the heat.  Then I season the risotto with salt and pepper and stir in the remaining butter and Parmesan cheese. I serve it with lemon wedges, more Parmesan, and ground pepper on top.