Summer's End Veggie Pie

Perhaps it's the dip in daytime temperatures or the shorter daylight hours, but the only foods I want to think about these days are the hearty comfort foods of fall and winter--stews and soups, casseroles and root vegetables. In the meantime, it’s still summer (technically), and the farm-stand bounty of northeastern Ohio continues to flow through my kitchen.

Piles of fresh veggies wait on my counters to be preserved or devoured, so last weekend I decided to split the difference between a celebration of fresh vegetables and the early introduction of winter fare by marrying ratatouille to a shepherd’s pie.

[This babble continues....]

I'm naming their offspring “Summer’s End Veggie Pie.”  Here’s how how to make it:

Step 1:  Make mashed potatoes (4 cups or so), or have them left over from a previous meal. In this case, I had to make them, which I did by mashing up boiled potatoes with a bit of butter and milk, salt and pepper, and (because I saw the poor thing hanging out all by itself in the fridge), one head of roasted garlic.

Step 2:  Carmelize some onion. I diced up 2 medium onions and fried them slowly in a few tablespoons of canola oil. When I say "slowly," I mean s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y. One of the "tricks" of flavorful cooking is taking the time to create the depth of flavor that only a low fire and a lot of patience can provide. When the onions look like this . . .

 ... you're not even half way there. They may be fragrant and translucent, but they are not ready. And when the onions look like this ...you'll be tempted to move to the next step because, well, look! They're brown(-ish)! But they're still not carmelized.

I'm not saying that the dish will turn out bad if you don't take the time to brown the onions. It'll probably taste pretty damned good, as a matter of fact (it's hard to screw up when you use good ingredients). However, you will be missing out on an entire layer of satisfying flavor--that "home cooked," slow-cooked taste.

"Patience, Grasshopper."

It takes at least 20 minutes to carmelize onion. But, like the roux in an earlier entry, the deeper the color (that is, the more time you give it), the deeper the flavor. None of this time is wasted, of course, because while the onion does its low-slow-creeping-toward-golden "thing" in the pan, you are busy chopping up all the other veggies.

I ended up cooking the onions for 25 minutes. Here's what they looked like after 20 minutes:

Step 3: Add all the other vegetables, the fresh herbs, and the seasonings. 

The veggies included 1 lb. of sliced mushrooms, 1 diced yellow summer squash, 1 diced zucchini, 2 stocks of diced celery, 1 diced bell pepper, 2 diced tomatoes, and 3 cloves of minced garlic. (If I'd had eggplant, I would have added that, too, obviously. But I didn't.) For the fresh herbs, I used 4 twigs of thyme (use whole) and a small bunch of basil, chopped up. The other seasonings were 1 bay leaf and 1 tsp. fennel seeds, plus salt and pepper. Oh . . . and about 1/2 cup of water or vegetable stock. I used filtered water.

Step 4:  Put the lid on, turn up the heat to medium, and let the veggies cook down for 10 to 15 minutes. (After waiting for onions to brown, waiting for vegetables to cook will be easy!)

Step 5: Remove the lid and add 3 to 4 tablespoons of good quality, organic tomato paste to the juices in the pan. With the lid off, let the sauce boil just a few minutes more to thicken with the help of the tomato paste. Remove the bay leaf and the now-bare thyme twigs.

Step 6:  Assemble the pie.  Put the stewed veggies in a casserole dish.

Cover the vegetables with a layer of mashed potatoes, and bake in a 375 degree oven until the potatoes are lightly browned.

Now ... I don't have a "pretty" picture to show you here. Because I was taking the veggie pie to friend's house as a gift, I used a foil pan, leaving the final baking to her. I also made a separate single-serving pie to save for myself. But, again, since I did the final baking a few days later, alas, there is no pretty photo.

But you get the idea. Comfort food, summer's end style.