Shepherd’s Pie is one of my favorite comfort foods. The use of sweet potatoes, instead of the traditional white potatoes, makes this really special. I tweaked the recipe, which is from Cooking Light Magazine, a bit to make it paleo friendly. I love the use of the chipotle pepper to give the sweet potato topping a bit of spice-not too much, but enough to make it interesting. The beautiful thing about Sheperd’s Pie is that you can make it the night before, hold it in the refrigerator and just bake it for a delicious, one dish meal. It also freezes great, so you could easily double the recipe and make two; one to enjoy now and another to freeze to enjoy another time.

Topping:

1 (7 ounce can) chipotle chiles in adobo sauce

2 ¼  pounds peeled sweet potatoes cut into 1 inch pieces

6oz coconut milk

1 tsp kosher salt

¼ tsp ground black pepper

Filling:

2 lbs ground meat (beef, buffalo, lamb or a combination)

1 Tbls olive oil

2 cups chopped onion

1 cup chopped carrot

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup diced red bell pepper

½ cup crushed tomatoes

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

3 Tbls red wine

2 Tbls tomato paste

½ ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400°

To prepare topping, remove 1 chili and 2 tsp of sauce from can, reserve remaining chiles and sauce for another use. Coarsely chop 1 chile.

Place potatoes in a saucepan; cover with water. Bring to a boil; cook 15 minutes or until very tender. Drain. Place potatoes, chopped chili, 2 tsp of adobo sauce, coconut milk, salt and ¼ tsp pepper in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer at medium speed until smooth.

To prepare filling, cook meat in a large skillet over medium high heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Remove from pan, drain.

Wipe pan and then heat with 1 Tbls olive oil. Add onion, carrot, red pepper and garlic; sauté about 8 minutes, or until tender. Return meat to pan, stir in remaining ingredients. Cook 2 minutes.

Spoon meat mixture into a 3 quart casserole; top with sweet potato mixture, spreading evenly. Bake at 400° for 30 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

This recipe comes from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins. This is Eastern European comfort food at its best. It’s one of those great recipes where the finished dish is so much more than the sum of its simple ingredients. The brisket is great the day it is made, but improves on succeeding days. It also freezes and reheats beautifully. The only change I’ve made to the original recipe is to add more carrots. The original only called for one carrot, but we love the flavor of slow cooked carrots, so I usually put in 4 or 5.

Ingredients:

1 first cut brisket of beef (5 to 6 lbs)

Coarsely ground black pepper, to taste

¼ cup olive oil

8 onions, thinly sliced and separated into rings

2 Tbls tomato paste

1 ½ tsp coarse salt

2 cloves garlic, quartered

4-5 carrots, peeled and sliced into inch pieces

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Trim the brisket of most of its fat. Sprinkle with pepper.
3. Heat the oil in a large heavy flameproof casserole. Add the brisket, brown on both sides over medium high heat until some crisp spots appear on the surface.
4. Transfer the brisket to a dish. Keeping the heat medium-high, add the onions to the casserole and stir, scraping up brown particles left from the meat. Cook until the onions have softened and developed a handsome brown color, 10-15 minutes.
5. Remove the casserole from the heat, and place the brisket, along with any juices that have accumulated, on top of the onions. Spread the tomato paste over the brisket as if you were icing a cake. Sprinkle with pepper and the coarse salt. Add the garlic and carrot, and cover tightly. Place the casserole on the middle rack in the oven, and bake for  1½ hours.
6. Remove the casserole from the oven, and transfer the meat to a carving board. Cut it into 1/8-1/4 inch thick slices. Return the slices to the pot, overlapping them at an angle so that you can see a bit of the top edge of each slice. (In effect reassembling the brisket, slightly slanted) Correct the seasoning if necessary, and if it seems dry, add 2 to 3 teaspoons of water to the casserole.
7. Cover and return the casserole to the oven. Cook until the meat is brown and fork-tender, 1 ¾ to 2 hours.
8. Transfer the meat, onions and carrots to a platter. Serve and enjoy.