Tempeh Shepherdess Pie

This dish should have been named "Thanksgiving in a Dish," or "One Pot Thanksgiving." It had all the flavors of a typical Thanksgiving meal in this house and most of the textures.

Potatoes, gravy, "meat", mushrooms, peas, corn. The only thing missing was dressing, but this pie was so good I didn't miss it.

Okay, so the picture isn't all that appealing, but nevermind that.

The potatoes were creamy, the sauce was thick, rich and herby and the tempeh was nice and tender.

You know, I should really write these "reviews" much closer to the actual eating experience. It's probably been a few weeks since I made this dish and I had it all worked out in my head what I'd say. I pretty much do for every meal but by the time my lazy ass gets up to write it, I've forgotten. The memories of the flavor details fade fast. Let this be a lesson to me.

In any case, I remember how good this was. It was relatively simple to make, too

I made no substitutions, with the exception of using canola oil instead of grapeseed oil. You can assume from here on out that I will use canola oil unless there's a really good reason to do otherwise.

Cost: Sorta high, in the range of $13-$15.
Difficulty: Moderate.
Cleanup: Pretty easy. Just a skillet and a pot as the main dishes used.

This recipe is on page 167 of Veganomicon.

Kasha Phyllo Pie

One word: boring. No, three words. Boring, boring and boringer. There is a but, however.

The but being, I actually didn't make this dish correctly. Put another way, I totally screwed up the phyllo dough. Because I had forgotten to thaw it out, I decided it would be just fine to defrost it in the microwave. Despite taking precautions to protect it from drying out, not only did it dry out parts of the dough, but it made other parts meld together into one large piece of dough.

Thus, no picture here.

Instead of throwing the filling away, I decided to make some of the biscuits from the Leek and Bean Cassoulet With Biscuits recipe and serve those under the filling, topped with the sauerkraut.

The biscuits were great. And I always love sauerkraut. But that filling was one of the most bland things I've made. It was so boring, I couldn't even eat a second serving, opting instead for a biscuit with jam. Bryan was able to shove a serving down the next two days for lunch, but I know there were not an ounce of enthusiasm about that.

And that kasha stuff...yeah, a little funky if you ask me. Not as in disgusting, more like just too earthy.

So, in all fairness, I can't say this dish wouldn't be totally wonderful if made with the phyllo dough. It's hard for anything, even this, to probably taste bad (or boring) with phyllo dough. Does that mean I'll try it again? Highly unlikely. But I will try to find a substitute filling to use with the phyllo dough sometime. I simply must make something with phyllo dough, not only to correct my wrong but also because it's so damn good.

This recipe is on page 165 of Veganomicon.