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vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Recipe: Vegetarian (and easily Vegan) Kate Sheppard’s Pie

Lots of you (and absolutely everyone who attended the dinner) asked for the vegetarian shepherd’s pie recipe I used to make Kate Sheppard’s Pie for A Feminist Thanksgiving.

Here it is!

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

To be honest, the first time I tried this I was a bit surprised it worked.  First, I looked at a bunch of vegetarian shepherd’s pie recipes, and then didn’t follow any of them and just winged it with what I had in the fridge.  Second, my track record making anything casserole-y, or traditionally British comfort-food based is pretty poor.  I just didn’t grow up eating or making those kind of foods!  So I expected a repeat of my fish pie/cheesy potatoes/macaroni & cheese experiments (basically inedible).   Instead, I got amazing!  And it’s not a fluke.  Every time I make it its delicious.

This recipe makes a rich, filling, pie.  Most vegetarian shepherd’s pie recipes use celery, but I use parsnips instead.  Their warm, sweet, earthy flavour adds an unexpected element to the pie, and keep it from getting watery and bland, as can happen with celery.  The sweetness of the parsnips and carrots balances the umami of the mushrooms beautifully.  The purple onion and fresh herbs lift the flavour, and keep it from being too heavy and earthy.

I make this recipe as a vegetarian option, with cheese and butter, but it can very easily be adapted to be a fully vegan recipe by switching out the butter and making vegan mashed potatoes.

I’m a ‘whatever looks right’ cook, so every time I make vegetarian shepherd’s pie my recipe is a little bit different, but this is a good average of my ingredients list, and the amount of each I use.

Vegetarian ‘Kate Sheppard’s’ Pie:

Serves 6

25 minutes prep, 1 hour & 40 minutes cooking time

Ingredients:

vegetarian shepherds pie recipe, vegan shepherds pie recipe

For the pie filling:
  • 50g / 1/4 cup butter (use olive oil for a vegan pie)
  • 1 purple onion, diced
  • 1 large or 2 small parsnips, chopped in small cubes
  • 3 medium carrots,  chopped in small cubes
  • 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 5 large portobello mushrooms,  chopped in large cubes
  • 300g / 1 1/2 cups green puy lentils
  • 2 bay leaves
  • a sprig of fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried – my thyme plant happily defies my amazing ability to kill all potted herbs, and waxes luxuriant season in & season out, so I always use fresh!).
  • 4 cups vege stock + 1/2 cup more, just in case (when I’m out of homemade stock I use 2 Massel Vegetable stock cubes, and 4 cups hot water)
  • 4 TBS tomato paste

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

For the mashed potato topping:
  • 3 large or 4 small floury potatoes, peeled and diced in large chunks
  • 3 TBS butter
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • Salt to taste
  • 1/2 cup white cheese (I used tasty cheddar (which is white in NZ))

Or, substitute your favourite vegan mashed potato recipe.  I actually prefer coconut milk to standard milk in my mashed potatoes!

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

To make the pie filling:

Melt butter in a large saucepan.  Add onions, carrots, parsnips & garlic, and sautee for 10 minutes until soft.

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Add the mushrooms, cook for another 4 minutes, stirring frequently.

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Finally, add the lentils and herbs, stir through, and then pour over the stock:

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Cover, bring to a boil, turn down, and simmer, stirring occasionally and adding more stock if needed, until lentils are done (about 40-50 minutes)

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Remove the bay leaves and thyme stems.  Add the tomato paste, and stir through.

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

To make the mashed potatoes:

While the lentils are cooking, boil potatoes in just enough salted water to cover them.

When soft/tender, drain off water.

Add butter and milk, and mash till smooth and fluffy.

Assembly:

Preheat oven to 180/350

Spoon lentil filling into large circular pie pan.  Smooth top.

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Spoon over mashed potatoes.  Smooth top.

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Using a spoon, and working from the outside in, press the spoon into the mashed potato topping  to form ‘camellia’ petals (because white camellias were the symbol of the NZ Suffragist movement):

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Sprinkle cheese over the top, and pop in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until the top is golden:

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Enjoy!

vegetarian shepherd's pie recipe, vegan shepherd's pie recipe

Confession: I was planning to take a beautiful picture of a slice of the pie, with some artistic salad and the whole pie in the background.  Alas, Mr D got home from work earlier than expected and enthusiastically dived into the pie before I could photograph it!  At least that’s a good sign that it’s delicious!

If you do make this, please come back and tell me how it went!

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

Fawkes the Phoenix: a Hogwarts Halloween Costume

Happy Halloween everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday, with lots of the best parts of Halloween: creativity, community, an awesome Halloween Costume, a little bit of candy, and tons of fun.

I’ve never grown out of my love of Halloween, but it’s only recently become a ‘thing’ in New Zealand,  Usually there aren’t many cool events to go to – especially as an adult.

This year  Zara of Off-grid Chic alerted me to a Haunted Hogwarts party.  Exciting! We decided to be the weird fully-grown women who went along without any kids, in full Halloween costume.

Super last minute Halloween costumes!  We’re both incredibly busy!

I went closet-diving, and found: the dress I made as my end-of-semester project my first year in Uni; a silk blouse with scalloped edges by NZ designer Blak;  my red sequinned Dorothy shoes;  and a mask, originally made as a tui by the Comtesse de Chambourd, and re-made by me as a Labyrinth Firey when the paint started flaking off, and bunch of wrist, ankle & neck pieces I’d made for said Firey costume (which never got worn – long story).

With the removal of the more Firey characteristics, and the addition of red feathers, the mask was ready to go.  I went out and spent $4 on a red feather boa (never thought I’d see the day when I bought a chicken feather boa!) and some Christmas tinsel for a tail.

The dress just fits, the blouse became wings with the addition of a brooch to hold them on, and the Firey neckpiece became a girdle.

Instant Fawkes Halloween costume!

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

We discovered that we could make my tinsel tale light on ‘fire’ with a little help from the sun coming through the cat door:

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

Zara went as Aragog’s babies and looked fabulous.    I’m going to let her show off her Halloween costume on her own blog.

We had pizza for dinner, and took photographs in the parking lot behind the pizza place while we waiting for it to cook (so glamorous).

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

It was a glorious day, so we went and sat on the beach and ate pizza in our full Halloween costumes.  All the late-afternoon dog-walkers and sun bathers were equally confused and amused!

I’m afraid we scared at least two dogs, who weren’t quite sure what we were.  🙁

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

Then off to the event, which was AMAZING!  I didn’t take a lot of photographs I can share (no pictures with other people’s children online!), but here is one Luna I got permission from:

Luna Lovegood costume thedreamstress.com

And a little bit of the decorations, which were phenomenal:

Harry Potter Hogwarts Halloween decorations thedreamstress.com

I am NOT exaggerating when I say phenomenal. There were piles of teacups with actual wet tea leaves in Trelawney’s corner, and a phrenology head.  There was a winding forbidden forest corridor, and Dementors swooping down from the ceiling.  There were floating candles.  Dolores Umbridge had an office with actual moving kitten plates.  Yep, they went to the level of filming kittens in whiteboxes specifically for the event!.

There were lots of people in Harry Potter-themed Halloween costumes.  There were a couple of Trelawneys, half a dozen Dobbies, a Rita Skeeter, and a Beaubaxton girl.  Plus lots of Harrys and Lunas, and tons and tons of standard Hogwarts uniforms.  People loved Zara’s costume (hugely because her spiders were not scary – very helpful for the little-ys).  My costume absolutely delighted the Potterphiles.  I had more than one person look at my slightly puzzled for a moment, figure it out, and then squeal: ‘You’re Fawkes!’

Halloween costume success!

Halloween costume, Fawkes the Phoenix Costume, Harry Potter Hogwarts Costume thedreamstress.com

Not everyone got it though.  Some people asked, and I had more than one person respond to ‘I’m Fawkes’ with ‘You don’t really look like a fox?’

Nope, not that kind of fox!

wild man co

Rate the Dress: 18th century Wild Man costume

Last week’s Rate the Dress was a natural-form day dress in palest blue and silvery ecru.  To no-ones surprise ever, the rosette bows festooning the lower front bodice of the dress were not popular.   You deemed the rest of the dress both boring and fussy. It didn’t score a single 10/10 rating.  The ratings, like the dress trim, mainly slid to the bottom of the rating heap.  Overall ‘Whirlpool: The Dress’, as Rachel dubbed it, managed a paltry 6.6 out of 10.

Moving on: it’s time to look at a historical fancy dress for our annual Halloween Rate the Dress!

Before there was Tarzan, there was Hercules, Bacchus, and Wild Men: all costumes involving animal skins, and greenery.  Variations on the theme date back to the ancient Greeks & Romans, (and possibly earlier).  Wild Man costumes were popular throughout the Middle Ages.  In the 18th century the wild man idea became linked to a romanticisation of nature and untouched society.  Thanks to the Swedish monarchy’s fantastic habit of keeping their clothing, we have an extant 18th century Wild Man costume to rate.  This outfit was worn by Karl XIII of Sweden as a prince.

This wild man costumes features an with ivory silk jacket-bodice (presumably to create the impression of a bare chest) joined to a draped ‘skirt’ painted in leopard spots and faced in vivid red silk.  The look is finished off with a bear skin (complete with claws!) and garlands of oak or grape leaves.  It’s a considerably safer costume (literally) than the straw-and-tar Wild Man costumes of the 14th century Bal des Ardents.

Both grape leaves and leopard (or cheetah) skins were associated with Bacchus.  However, the bear skin suggests a more generic wild-man look.  The outfit might have been for a masquerade, or an amateur theatrical or dance performance.

Both entertainments were immensely popular amongst the upper classes in the 18th century, and the decadent Swedish Royal Court  of the 1770s was no exception.  Karl’s sister Sophie Albertine is shown with a masquerade mask in one of her portraits.  Karl himself was known for being a rather good dancer.  His stocking clad legs would be nicely displayed under the draped skirt of this costume (which may or may not have been worn with breeches underneath).

What do you think?  Would this wild man costume have stood out?  Would have been a striking figure at a masked ball, or in an theatrical performance?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10  

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