Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Duck shepherd pie

My parents sent us home with half a roast duck.   I wanted to try something new with all of the duck meat.  I had two sweet potatoes that I had to use up so I thought maybe I could try a duck shepherds pie with sweet potato mash.

There aren't many recipes out there for this so I pretty much decided to wing this one and hope for the best. 

Ingredients
Duck meat, diced.  
Half an onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/4 cup frozen peas
2 sweet potatoes
1 package sliced mushrooms
1 tsp paprika
1/8 cup red wine
2 TBSP butter
cornstarch

1) I had a little less than half a duck that had bones still in it so I had to debone the duck and diced up the duck meat.  Fill a small pot up halfway with water and boil.  Add sweet potatoes and cook until a fork can pierce the sweet potato easily.
 2) In a deep skillet, with some olive oil, I sautéed all of the veggies (with the exception of the peas and mushrooms)  After a couple mins, I threw in the tsp of paprika.
 Then I added the mushrooms and the wine.  Set the burner to simmer and let the mushrooms and wine cook down.  This will take about five minutes.
 Then I added the peas.  In a small bowl, I mixed about 1 and 1/2 TBSP with about 1/4 cup water.  Stir in the cornstarch mixture.   Cook for a couple minutes and the mixture should thicken.  If not add more cornstarch and water mixture.
 After mixture has thicken, pour into a greased 9x13 inch pan.    Mash up the sweet potatoes with the butter.  Add warm milk if you think the sweet potato mixture is too thick.  I added some milk but I thought mine would have been fine without it.   Add sweet potato mash to the pan and spread.
 Top with cheese and bake about 15-30 minutes until the pie is heated through.