Squash and Meat Pie by Sicut Cervus

[From The Victory Garden Cookbook]

1 partially cooked pie crust (use your usual recipe for that part -- flour, a bit of salt, fat, water); roll out and put in pie pan, prick with a fork, weigh it down with another pan buttered on the bottom and full of old pennies or whatever; bake at 425, take it out after 8 minutes and get rid of the weighing-down pan, prick again and adjust the edges if needed, put back for a couple more minutes, take out and let cool.

Meat layer

3/4 lb ground beef
1 stalk celery
1 small onion
1/4 lb ham
2 T butter
1 egg
1/2 cup grated swiss cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 t thyme
1-1/2 t salt (I found this a bit excessive and would use less next time)
freshly ground pepper

Topping

2 eggs
2 cups cooked winter squash
1/2 cup cooked rice (or other similar-textured bland carb, whatever you've got)
2/3 cup cream
1 T melted butter salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

To make meat layer, brown ground beef, drain off fat, and put meat in mixing bowl. Chop celery and onion, dice ham. Melt butter and sauté celery and onion till barely wilted, 3-5 minutes. Add ham and cook for 2 minutes. Stir into ground beef.* Beat egg and mix with beef mixture along with cheeses, parsley, thyme, salt and pepper. Let cool while you make the custard layer.

Put all ingredients for custard in food processor and blend till smooth.

Put cooled meat mixture in the pie shell, spread around and pat down. Cover with squash topping (I had extra topping; I didn't measure the squash, so there may have been more than 2 cups of it; plus the recipe is for a 10-inch pie pan and mine are 9-inch. I put the extra custard in an oven-proof dish and baked it separately.)

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese (I forgot to do this).

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, turn down heat to 325 and bake for 20-30 minutes longer till crust is nicely browned and filling is set and starting to brown around the edges.

Confession: I was in a hurry. I baked it for 15 minutes at 375, then turned it down to 300 for 10 more. It was perfect.

*I did this in my usual order -- do the onion and celery in the butter, then add the (raw) beef and brown it, then the ham, etc. It saved one dirty bowl, and probably blended the flavors a little more.

New York Times Moussaka

3 medium-sized eggplants
1 cup butter
3 large onions, finely chopped
2 pounds ground lamb or beef
3 T tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine
1/2 cup chopped parsley
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
6 T flour
1 quart milk
4 eggs, beaten till frothy
nutmeg
2 cups ricotta or cottage cheese
1 cup fine bread crumbs
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. Peel the eggpalnts and cut them into slices about 1/2 inch thick. Brown the slices quickly in four tablespoons of the butter. Set aside [my annotation: sprinkle with salt]

2. Heat four tablespoons of butter in the same skillet and cook the onions until they are brown. Add the ground meat and cook ten minutes. Combine the tomato paste with the wine, parsley, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Stir this mixture into the meat and simmer over low heat, stirring frequently, until all the liquid has been absorbed. Remove the mixture from the fire.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 F

4. Make a white sauce by melting 8 tablespoons of butter and blending in the flour, stirring with a wire whisk. Meanwhile, bring the milk to a boil and add it gradually to the butter-flour mixture, stirring constantly. When the mixture is thickened and smooth, remove it from the heat. Cool slightly and stir in the beaten eggs, nutmeg and ricotta.

5. Grease an 11 x 16 inch pan and sprinkle the bottom lightly with bread crumbs. Arrange alternate layers of eggplant and meat sauce in the pan, sprnkling each layer with Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs. Pour the ricotta sauce over the top and bake one hour, or until top is golden. Remove from the oven and cool 20 to 30 minutes before serving. Cut in squares and serve.

Chicken Livers with Onion and Bacon by liz_isabella

I was actually really chuffed with how easy it was to do the livers, you should definitely give it a try.

I grilled some bacon before hand and set it aside.

Then I chopped up an onion, and chopped some garlic, and set that to fry. Once the onions started to change colour I added the chicken livers (I had drained them and rinsed them a bit before hand, because they can be quite mucky). Keep gently frying them until they're brown on the outside and a little pink on the inside. Their texture will change a little, and get a bit smoother.

Get some potatoes on the boil, then mash them up. Put that on a plate and then pop the cooked livers and onion on top. Add the bacon. Then put a couple of spoons of red wine and some nice balsamic vinegar into the still warm pan and swirl it around to get some of the bits out, pour that out over the livers and mash, Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt, dinner.

It only took me about 15/20 minutes. Yummy.