Thanks you all for your support and good wishes for my upcoming farm job. The comments and emails were wonderful and will help me get through the transition. Now, as a reward for your patience after two recipe-free weeks I would like to give you an old fashioned comfort food recipe that I’ve been making since high school. The interesting thing about this comfort food recipe is that it’s a vegetarian recipe.

 

Most comfort foods seem to focus on the old “meat and potatoes” concept, fried chicken with mashed potatoes, meatloaf with macaroni and cheese, or New England boiled dinner are some of the classics. I must admit that I buy into that style of cooking quite a bit; it’s what I was raised on. However, I think that it’s important to have meat-free cooking options that rival meat dishes in satisfaction. As I went through my recipe database this week to check for typos and to add new recipe categories I realized that I’m lacking vegetarian entrées. I have many vegetarian side dishes, appetizers, and snacks, but I want to provide more than that. I want to provide main courses that have no meat and yet are hearty, satisfying, and filling.

This recipe is Vegetable Cheddar Pot Pie. I found the recipe online years ago and although I really liked the concept (A cheddar cheese pie? Who wouldn’t want it?) I found the specifics less than appetizing. For example, instead of using a roux to thicken the filling the original recipe asked for you to mash the potatoes and mix the mashed potatoes into the liquid. I have no problem with alternative thickeners like potato starch, but I really like hunks of potato in my pot pie and letting all the potato turn into paste wasn’t an idea that I liked.

 

If you’re one of those people who worry that a vegetarian dish might now have enough protein, fear not. This pot pie is nutritionally balanced. The cheese and edamame pack a double protein punch, and unlike with meat you’ll also be getting calcium and Omega-3 from the cheese and beans. I love it because it’s delicious, nutritious, and meat free all at the same time. It’s also adaptable. In the recipe I name specific vegetables, but those ingredients are guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. If you happen to have other veggies in your fridge that you want to use up you can easily substitute ingredients or add them onto the original list.

Don’t stress about messing it up if you adjust it. I almost always make the pie from memory and so what I put in depends not only on what we happen to have on hand, but what I happen to remember from the original recipe. This past attempt I forgot the mushrooms and ended up using mushroom broth instead to make up for the loss of mushroom flavor.  The only thing that I suggest leaving alone is the cheese. The cheese is the centerpiece of this recipe. I suggest cheddar, but any aged, flavorful cheese would be fine. I have used an aged Gouda with fantastic results in the past. What you shouldn’t do is pick a cheap cheese or a young cheese, neither one will stand out enough against the hearty vegetable background.

 

Finally, I would like you to notice how the filling can leak out of the pie if the top crust is not properly sealed to the bottom crust. Don’t try to prebake the bottom crust of the pie, and more importantly make sure to place a cookie sheet or pizza pan under your pie dish so that any leaks don’t spill on the bottom of your oven. This is a good way to create lots of smoke and set your smoke detector off.