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Old Country Pie

Source of Recipe

Amanda (amcyates) ~ Moosewood Cookbook


Recipe Introduction

Here's one I made this week that everyone in my family loved (but we are all weird, so maybe I shouldn't use us as a standard!). It's from a vegetarian cookbook, but I added meat to it--I'll give you the original version & then tell you how I changed it...

List of Ingredients

1unbaked 9 or 10 inch pie crust
1 TBS butter, marg. or oil*
1 1/2 C. minced onion
1 tsp. caraway seeds*
1 tsp. salt*
1/2 lb. mushrooms, chopped or sliced
1 1/2 C. shredded cabbage
1 medium stalk broccoli, chopped
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
2 tsp. dill*
Lots of black pepper
3 med. cloves garlic, minced
2 TBS flour
1/2 cup cottage cheese*
2 eggs, one or both yolks can be omitted
2 med. scallions, finely minced
optional: 3/4 C. sour cream and/or yogurt; paprika


Recipe

1) Prepare pie crust. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2) Melt butter (or heat oil) in a medium sized skillet. Add onion, caraway, & salt, & saute' over med. heat until the onions begin to turn brown (10-15 min.)
3) Add mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, carrot, & dill, & saute' until everything is just tender--about 8 more minutes.
4) Stir in black pepper, garlic, & flour, & cook, stirring, for just a few minutes more. Remove from heat.
5) Beat together cottage cheese & eggs. Add this to the saute' along with the scallions & mix well.
6) Spread into the unbaked crust and, if desired, top with a layer of sour cream and/or yogurt. Sprinkle with Paprika, and bake for 40 minutes or until set.

Now here's what I did.

I started out by browning 1 small package of reduced fat mild ground pork sausage. I then added the onion to that (the grease from the sausage was sufficient to saute' the onions) & pretty much followed the directions from there.
I left out everything that has an (*) by it--some of the spices I omitted because the sausage was seasoned & I didn't want to overpower the dish with spices. To make room for the addition of sausage, I left out the cottage cheese and some of the mushrooms. I used frozen broccoli already chopped & just added it frozen when the recipe called for it. I highly reccomend slathering on the optional sour cream & paprika, it really made the dish. The worst part of the prep work is all of the chopping, but other than that, it was pretty easy to fix. My DH & DD (3 y.o.) both loved it & I had the leftovers today for lunch, & I think it was even better the second time around!