French Fridays with Dorie: Hachis Parmentier and my Beef Block

AKA post number one million about how much I love DiPaola Turkey Farm.

Hachis Parmentier, the French answer to the English shepherd's or cottage pie. Usually made with boiled (simmered! simmered! shouts John Thorne in my head) beef and sausage and vegetables, and freshly mashed potatoes, but seeing that it's a down-home, peasant dish, I felt free to adapt it to what was in the house.

Perhaps because I wasn't raised cooking it, or because of all the problems inherent in buying 'good' meat, I have issues buying beef. I'd like to say I don't easily eat that high on the food chain, both literal and metaphorical. Beef has a kind of weight that birds just don't seem to in the American food imagination, and it kind of scares me most of the time. I don't like to buy it, though I'll happily eat it if it's served.

In this case, the meats became boneless turkey thighs and turkey sausage (from DiPaola, where else? I love you DiPaola Turkey Farm). The pototoes were recycled from a batch of roasted fingerlings that made it to a Sunday dinner table too late to tempt overloaded appetites. I mashed them up skins and all and made it work. Sprinkled with some mixed cheese, it was just the kind of food that Matt often asks to have in the refrigerator, a heat and eat, hearty dish, that didn't last long.