Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Culinary Creations: Easy Beef Bourguignon Cottage Pie with Leek Topped Herbed Watercress Mash

We had a lot of the Red Watercress left over from Valentine's Day. I hate to let anything go to waste, so tried to come up with an idea of how to use the remaining cress. As I had the makings for Cottage Pie, I decided to do some research. Loads of recipes came up on Google for Watercress Mash, which consisted of mashed potatoes using watercress butter. Now I'm sure this does make it taste divine, and the extra step probably does add an element of flavor, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to make a butter, so decided to add directly to my mash. While the potatoes were cooking, I finely chopped the remaining watercress.
I used my standard recipe for Easy Leek and Cheese Topped Cottage Pie, only using Coleman's of Norwich Beef Bourguignon sauce mix instead of the Shepherd's Pie mix (with only 2/3 of the required liquid) and adding the cress to the mash, using Kerrygold Garlic & Herb butter.
After baking for 15-20 minutes or until bubbling, it was ready to come out of the oven.
You want your cheese to melt and the leeks to slightly brown, but not to be too charred.
The flavors of the red wine, beef, mushrooms, carrots, mashed potatoes and leeks went so well with the peppery flavor of the watercress.
I'm a bit of a vegetable fanatic, but had spent enough time preparing this dish (even though it was easy), it was a Sunday and I wanted to relax a bit. This is where the big Green Guy came in handy. By the time I had popped the pie in the oven and cleaned my mess up, preparing another veggie dish didn't rank high on my list of priorities.
All in all, I was very pleased with this dish. The only thing I would do differently would be to add more watercress. The other recipes had called for 2 bunches. While I'm not convinced I'm make the watercress butter, I am convinced I'd use double the cress.

3 comments:

gina said...

Then main street it is.
Amy's Bistro!
My mouth is watering.
Kate and I were talking today about how you really should be a chef. Maybe when things get better with the economy you will have your plan together and voila! P.S. did you see the movie Ratatouille?
one of my fav's and Aristocats.

Michelle said...

Hi Amy! Thanks for stopping by my place so I could discover yours! Oh boy, I'm in trouble...another food blog. I'm obsessed with food as it is. You've got some great recipes! I will be a regular here, I can tell. :)

Amy J said...

Thanks ladies :-)

Gina, I haven't seen Ratatouille but it is in my Netflix queue. I also love the Aristocats, but haven't seen it in years.