Basically, Ryan’s job gave him a promotion and a transfer to their London office. Exciting right?! I’ll be honest, I’ve felt a ton of emotions about all of this. Excitement, over living in a new city and seeing new sights! Fear, of starting somewhere new. Stress, over all the logistics of moving. Proud, of Ryan’s great accomplishment. Sadness, over leaving my wonderful job and moving away from family and friends. And happiness, that Ryan and I are able to take on this wonderful adventure and live abroad, which is something we have both dreamed about.

It’s been a few weeks since we made the decision and started announcing it to the people closest to us, and now my top emotion is definitely excitement. There’s tons to do as we prepare for our move, but I can’t wait for the museums, experiencing a new culture, and traveling. I have always wanted to see the Globe Theater. I’ve been dying to return to Rome. And now I can do those things more easily. But also, I can’t wait to have new food adventures.

To start the food adventures, I ran out and bought a British cookbook as soon as we officially decided we were going. Barnes and Noble only had one British cookbook, but it’s ok because it was the one I wanted. I bought Jamie Oliver’s Great Britain. This book is gorgeous! Full color pictures, an image of the food for each recipe, and great pictures of places, restaurants, and people from all over Great Britain. However, the book showed me that I need to learn some British jargon because I’m not totally sure what a “knob of butter” equals or how exactly to know if I’ve made “squiffs and quiffs” with the mashed potato topping.

Truly, I don’t know anything about British food, so I decided to start with the only dish I slightly knew about: shepherd’s pie. The recipe is so flavorful, aromatic, and satisfying. It’s the kind of food that as you eat it, the pace of the world seems to slow down, and staying snuggled up in the apartment flat (I need to practice practise my British lingo) feels like the best thing ever.

I’ll be honest though, the first time I made this, it came out soupy. It tasted delicious, but it was all wrong in texture. The problem was, I followed too closely to the recipe and didn’t listen to my intuition. That might sound counter intuitive, because shouldn’t the recipe lead me in the right direction? Yes, sometimes. But pots, pans, ingredients, and heat levels are different across kitchens and so sometimes the timing in a recipe isn’t what works best for you. For example, the recipe said that a liquid would thicken in a few minutes. It wasn’t thickening, but I moved on anyway, and that’s how I had soupy shepherd’s pie. The next time I made it, I really waited for it to thicken even though it took way longer than a few minutes. My end result was much better because I trusted my eye and watched what was happening in the pan.

So for this recipe, don’t worry too much about times and instead be patient and trust what you see and feel. It will be worth it and you’ll end with something delicious. Most importantly though, if you have any recommendations or advice about London please leave it in the comments!

This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Great Britain

Ingredients:

2 yellow onions

2 cups chopped carrots

1 tbsp olive oil

3 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, divided

sea salt & white pepper

leaves from 8 sprigs of thyme

2 bay leaves

1 lb ground beef (or veal or lamb)

2 tbsp all-purpose flour, divided

zest from 1 lemon

1 cube of chicken stock

1/3 cup of beer (preferably something English!)

2 pounds russet potatoes (I’ve also done this successfully with waxy yellow potatoes)

1 cup of milk

1/2 white mushrooms, thinly sliced

3/4 cup light cream

1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Chop the onions and carrots into small, bite sized pieces, about 1/3 inch.

2. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp butter in a large sauce pan. Add the onions and carrots. Season with some salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaves. Cook for 8-10 minutes, until the onions have softened a bit.

3. Add the flour. This will soak up some of the excess liquid. Then add the ground meat, lemon zest, and stock cube. Stir everything until it is all well mixed. Use a wooden spoon to break up the meat.

4. Once the meat starts to brown and is sizzling, add the beer. Then, add just enough water so that the meat is 1/2 covered by liquid.

5. Bring everything to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer with the lid askew for 1 hour. Stir occasionally.

6. While the meat is cooking, peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters. Put the potatoes in a large pot, cover with cold salted water. Bring the water to a boil and cook until the potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork (this can take anywhere between 15-30 minutes).

7. When the potatoes are done cooking, drain the water. Let them sit an steam for a minute or two. Then, mash the potatoes. Add in the remaining butter and slowly add the milk. Mash until you have nice fluffy potatoes.

8. When the meat has been cooking for 30 minutes, heat the oven to 350°.

9. When the meat has been cooking for about 1 hour, add in the sliced mushrooms. Then add the cream. Turn up the heat a bit and bring everything to a boil. Allow to thicken on it’s own for a few minutes

10. Slowly sprinkle in the remaining tablespoon of flour. You might not need the whole thing, but stir in the flour until the meat mixture has thickened. You want the meat to be like it’s in a thick gravy and when you pull a spoon through the pan, it takes a little bit liquid to fill in the spoon’s path.

11. Transfer the meat to an oven safe casserole pan. Sprinkle the cheddar cheese on top.

12. Spoon the mashed potatoes in an even layer over the meat. Make it pretty or make it messy, whatever look you like. Or try to make a Union Jack, like I did.

13. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, or until it’s a bit golden on top.

14. Spoon out the finished pie into a bowl or plate.

Messy level: This recipe has a lot of steps, ingredients, and dishes. It’s not hard work, but it does take a bunch of work, so I’m giving it 4 stars. This is the kind of meal you make on a leisurely weekend day because it takes a long time and there’s a lot of clean up. Transferring things between pots, pans, strainers, and casseroles there is lots of opportunity for spills, splashes, and messes. It’s a good recipe, but it’s not clean.

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One of my new kitchen gadgets is the inspiration for this blog post. At my bridal shower a family friend gave me a Moroccan tagine. When I opened it I was impressed by how beautiful it was, but I had no idea how to use it! The tagine is a ceramic cooking vessel made up of two parts. The bottom is like a dish, and the top is a cone shaped lid. There is a small hole at the top of the cone to let out the heat and steam.

The same family friend followed up at the wedding by giving us Mourad Lahlou’s book New Moroccan. I read through the book and got some tips on how to use the tagine, and I made a couple of stew-like meals and they came out pretty well. Pretty well – but not great. Every time Ryan and I would have a couple of ideas about how we could make it better the next time. I was feeling mildly discouraged, but then on William-Sonoma’s website I found a video of Mourad cooking the Chicken Legs with Preserved Lemons in a tagine! The recipe is also in his book, and so armed with all of these resources I felt sure I could finally use the tagine well. If you don’t have a tagine, don’t despair! If you have a dutch oven or some other ceramic cooking vessel that can go on the stove and in the oven, you can do this recipe!

Before getting to the recipe, I wanted to talk about the seasonings. First, I was skeptical about preserved lemons. Mourad’s book talks about how important preserved lemons are to Moroccan cooking and he gives details instructions on how to make them, but I was less than convinced I’d do it myself. But, Williams-Sonoma, always my favorite dream cooking and food place sells preserved lemons in the store so it saved me a step! They tasted pretty good in the recipe but straight out of the jar – OH MY! They are so salty, but also tangy from the citrus. It’s a powerful flavor. I was also a little put-off by the amount of spices required for the recipe. I didn’t have a lot of the spices in my cabinet before doing this, and so buying all those spices hurts the wallet a bit – but it is worth it. First, now I actually have the spices and can make it again. But, it also creates an incredible yellow broth that smells just decadent. Expanding my horizons from my usual salt, pepper, and garlic powder was truly worth it!

Anyway, let’s get to the recipe!

Ingredients:

4-6 chicken legs with thighs (use what fits in your tagine, mine only fit 4)

Salt

vegetable oil (Mourad uses duck fat, but I don’t have that kind of thing!)

5 cups thinly sliced yellow onions

2 tbsp ground coriander

2 tsp ground white pepper

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp saffron threads

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

4-6 quarter preserved lemon rind (as many rinds as you have chicken legs)

1/2 cup green olives, pitted and cracked

3-4 tbsp unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Salt the chicken legs and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour

2. Preheat over to 350° and make sure there will be enough space for the tagine in the oven. You might have to take out all racks except the bottom one.

3. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a pan at medium-high heat. Once it’s hot, add the chicken legs and cook, turning once until the sides are well browned. It should take 3-5 minutes per side. Remove the legs from the pan and set aside.

4. Heat 2 tbsp oil in the tagine on the stove. IMPORTANT NOTE: When using the tagine on the stove be sure to use a difusser! Without the difusser the tagine is likely to crack.

5. Add the onions and saute over medium-high heat. Stir often and cook until they are a nice brown. It should take about 15-17 minutes.

6.  Add the spices and a bit of salt to the onions. Stir for 1 1/2 minutes to toast the spices.

7. Return the chicken legs to the tagine, pour in the stock and bring to a boil.

8. Cover the tagine and put it in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes. When you remove it from the oven, the chicken should be tender and falling off the bone.

9. Remove the legs from the pan.

10. Return the tagine to a burner and simmer for 3-5 minutes to reduce the sauce. The soft should be thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. If you taste the sauce at this point it will have a little bit of a spicy kick to it.

11. Add the lemon rinds and olives if you’re using them.

12. When the rind and olives are hot whisk in the butter 1 tsbp at a time. Taste the sauce after each tbsp of butter has melted. When I made it, I put all 4 tbsps in at once. It made the sauce more creamy and less spicy. It was delicious, but I wish I had let some of the spiciness remain.

13. Serve chicken and place sauce, onions, lemons, and olives over the chicken.

This picture might not look all that impressive, but you can see the lemon rind (top middle of the plate), the sauce, onions, and chicken. The flavor was lovely and the chicken was so tender. We ate it over couscous!

Messy level: Two spoons. The final product looks messy, and moving the chicken can be a bit dangerous, but overall you’re cooking in one vessel.

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