Saturday, January 23, 2010

Meat and Potato Casserole (Empadão de Carne)



This is an easy dish, but takes a little bit of time to prepare because we like our mashed potatoes made from scratch. It takes time, but tastes delicious. This is a light dish that goes very well with a green salad.

Ingredients:
  • 1 medium diced onion
  • 3 cloves of minced garlic
  • 2 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice
  • 1 pound of extra lean ground beef
  • 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
  • 10 large white potatoes
  • 2 table spoons of butter
  • 2/3 of cup of milk
  • sea salt
  • pepper
  • 1 beaten egg
  • black olives for garnish
Directions:

First prepare the ground beef:

In a large skillet (medium heat), put the olive oil, onion, garlic. Let it cook until the onion is golden and soft. Add the beef, 1 teaspoon of salt and a dash of pepper and let it fry for a few minutes in high-medium heat. As soon as the beef looses its pink/red color, add the lemon juice and bring the heat to a medium-low. Leave it cooking, stirring ocasionally, for 7 minutes. Put the ground beef aside.

Then prepare the mashed potatoes:

Peel, wash and dice the potatoes. Put the potatoes in a large pan and cover them with water. Add 3 teaspoons of salt and bring everything to a boil. Let it boil in medium-low heat for about 15 minutes (until the potatoes are soft; you can try them with a fork). When the potatoes are cooked, drain all the water from the pan. Let it cool for 5 minutes and then with a fork, mash the potatoes. Put the mashed potatoes back in the pan, and add the butter, milk and a dash of pepper over low heat. Mix everything carefully and thoroughly for a couple of minutes.

Now, you just need to assemple the dish:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a pyrex dish with butter. Cover the bottom of the pyrex with a thick layer of mashed potatoes, then on top create another layer with the ground beef. Finally cover the beef with another layer of mashed potatoes. Spread the beaten egg on top of the mashed potatoes and garnish with olives.

Bake for 20 - 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.


2 comments:

  1. Looks like a nice recipe. I'm working on a new recipe for http://pasto.wordpress.com with an Italian style ragu plus chorizo meat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. mmmm sounds good. We hope that you enjoy our recipe.

    ReplyDelete