My father did all the cooking in our house when I was a kid — except for a regular “fend-for-yourself day.” His approach to cooking was a combination of a few things: chemistry (he was a textbook editor), the liberal use of certain flavors he thought went with everything, and as little effort and time as possible. He was, after all, a single parent with three kids.
Thyme, dill, caraway, and marjoram — these were my father’s go-to herbs, and he always used them with a heavy hand on the blocks of frozen haddock and sinewy chicken thighs he served us. Mashed potatoes without milk or butter and sausage and peppers cooked to the proper safe temperature by boiling were two of his specialties.
At the start of his cooking “career,” he bought cookbooks: Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cookbook, Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking, and, at the recommendation of his hippie girlfriend, the Moosewood Cookbook, compiled and illustrated by Molly Katzen. We lived in Ithaca, where the restaurant collective behind the recipes was on the forefront of the vegetarian revolution.
Their food was heavy on cheese, yogurt, potatoes, and butter as vegetarianism, despite its long history in cuisines of many cultures, was just gaining ground in the U.S.; a lot of their cooking was about replacing meat with something convincingly filling. My father decided that the cookbook’s Cossack Pie had potential. It was an amped-up quiche, with cabbage, broccoli, onion, mushrooms, cottage cheese, and sour cream. But it also had a hefty dose of dill, ground caraway, and parsley.
My brother and sister would eat anything. Not me. I was a very fussy eater, though not in the usual kid ways: I loved vegetables, especially cucumbers and celery, didn’t have any interest in most proteins, and gave pasta only a passing glance. I was wary of that pie, just knowing its ingredients.
When he served it to us, my first impression was the texture: lumpy, curdled, eggy. Some of the vegetables were only partially cooked. And he decided to use sauerkraut instead of plain cabbage because he felt the vinegar was “a kick in the Cossack’s rear end.” The caraway and dill were so pungent I really couldn’t taste much else.
I remember eating bites of the crust, surreptitiously scraping the filling off of it first. My dad knew it wasn’t a hit. When he asked me if I liked it, I said, “sort of,” which was his least favorite answer to any question because of its ambiguity.
He tried hard to introduce us to food, some of it from his own cultural background — matzo brei and gefilte fish — and adventurous dishes he found in food columns. Every now and then, he’d go all out on pot au feu or sardine al sugo. Something in his efforts took, because I began to believe food was integral to a colorful life. Eventually, I found myself in cooking school.
We made Chinese steamed buns and Italian timbales, but the pedagogy was classic French, and meat was central to it all. We learned the art of butchering, breaking down a side of beef, dressing poultry, and larding pork shoulder. I came to appreciate the ways meat would be part of my work, but as far as my own everyday eating, school awakened the fledgling vegetarian in me.
My vegetarianism would not be the 1970s version. Instead of lentil and bulgur wheat stew or black bean burgers with all the flavor of a shoe, I set out to make alternatives to meat-centered dishes that were hearty but also tasted good. And so, I returned to shepherd’s pie.
In winter, it might feature turnips, parsnips, or fennel, but I especially like my version in early fall, when eggplant, zucchini, and summer squash are abundant. Whenever I make it, I think of my father and how he might have liked it — sort of.
END OF SUMMER SHEPHERD’S PIE
Makes 4 to 6 servings
For the garlic mashed potato topping:
2 medium russet potatoes
2 oz. butter
½ cup milk
1 head garlic, top trimmed off
Salt and pepper to taste
- Heat oven to 375° F. Wrap the trimmed garlic in foil and bake until cloves are soft — about 45 minutes.
- Meanwhile, scrub, peel, and cut the potatoes into a pot of well-salted water — enough to cover them by an inch or two. Simmer until soft, then drain, reserving the starchy potato cooking water: you’ll use it to enrich the gravy later.
- Mash the potatoes with the butter and milk. Season well with salt and pepper and mash in the roasted garlic cloves. Set aside.
For the filling:
About ¼ cup olive oil
½ large celery root, peeled and diced
1 small eggplant, peeled and diced
1 zucchini, diced
1 yellow squash, diced
1-2 large carrots, peeled and diced
½ fennel bulb, trimmed and sliced thin
6-8 mushrooms, button or cremini, cleaned and quartered
1 medium onion, peeled and sliced thin
½ cup wine (optional)
2 cups potato “stock” from the mashed potato topping
2 Tbsp. flour (or cornstarch)
½ tsp. umami blend (I like Trader Joe’s) or 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce
Big pinch dry mustard
Big pinch red pepper flakes
Leaves from a small sprig of rosemary and one of thyme, minced
½ cup fresh parsley, mincedSalt
and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. melted butter
- Keep oven at 375° F from your garlic roasting, or if you did the mashed potatoes ahead, preheat oven now. Have all the vegetables cubed and sliced.
- Drizzle about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a deep sauté pan and brown the cubed celery root, eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, and mushrooms separately, removing each to a ceramic pie plate or casserole dish when lightly caramelized, drizzling more oil in the pan as needed for each round. Don’t overcrowd the pan. Liberally salt and pepper each batch as you go. Sauté the sliced fennel and onion last, until caramelized, turning down the heat to allow them to become tender while caramelizing, then add these to the rest of the cooked vegetables.
- Add ½ cup wine and one cup potato-vegetable liquid to the pan to deglaze it: with the stock at a gentle simmer, stir to loosen any browned bits of vegetables. Measure a half cup more of the stock into a jar with 2 tablespoons of flour and shake or stir well; add mixture to the pan and simmer to thicken the juices into a gravy.
- Season the gravy with the umami, spices, herbs, salt, and pepper. Top the pie with mashed potatoes, drizzle on a little extra butter, and bake 30 minutes. Then broil briefly to brown the top lightly.
- Let pie stand about 5 minutes before serving. I serve it sprinkled with a little extra minced parsley and with crusty French bread and a simple herby salad on the side.
