I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been for Molly Yeh’s new book, Home is Where the Eggs Are. Her writing is warm, and evocative — with stories about the farm she lives on, the food she likes to cook for her family, and her cat Sven. It’s the adult equivalent of reading an Enid Blyton book, for me.
One of the dishes that caught my imagination in the cookbook is hotdish. It’s a classic from the American mid-west and Molly describes it as a full meal in a dish: veggies, protein and a carb element, most famously tater tots. Any dish with a layer of tater tots sounds like the best dish ever to me. I set out to make Molly’s beef hot dish and ended up adding a few Malabar Tea Room touches on the way. There’s some ghee roast masala that the beef simmers in, and the sauce gets a south Indian touch with some creamy coconut milk. It’s spicy and coconut-y with bites of crisp potatoes — perfect for a day of staying indoors and pretending you live in a place that has fall weather🍂🍁 😅
Recipe: Beef Ghee-Roast Hotdish
(Adapted from Home is Where the Eggs Are)
Ingredients
500 g, beef/buff mince
3 large carrots, diced
2-3 stalks of celery, cut into small pieces
1 medium-sized onion, diced
3 generous spoons of ghee roast masala (I use a brand called Ideals)
3 tbsp neutral oil
Tater tots (I used Garlic Shots by Mccains)
For the sauce
4 tbsp butter
1/3 cup flour
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup chicken/beef/veg stock (or 1 cup water and a stock cube)
Method
Heat the oil in a pan, add the onions and cook until soft and translucent.
Add the beef and let it brown a little before breaking it up into smaller pieces with the back of your spoon.
Season with salt, and ontinue cooking untiil all the beef is cooked through.
Now, add in the ghee roast masala and just enough water to get the mince fully coated in the paste.
Add the carrots and let it cook for about 5-8 minutes, so that the carrots cook a little and the ghee roast masala loses some of its rawness.
Add the celery, cook for a minute or two, taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
Transfer the mince to a medium-sized baking dish.
Rinse out the pan, and place on a low flame.
Add the butter, and when that melts, add the flour and whisk to form a paste.
Continue cooking this for 3-4 minutes, and then add in the stock slowly, being careful to remove any lumps before adding more stock.
When the sauce becomes thick and smooth, dd in the coconut milk, and turn off the heat as soon as it starts to simmer. Taste and add salt if necessary.
Stir the sauce through the mince in the casserole, until mixed through.
Carefully lay out the garlic shots in neat rows until it fully covers the dish.
Optional — spray on oil, or brush with oil if you’d like it extra golden and crisp.
Bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius until the tots are golden brown and the sauce below starts to bubble deliciously — this took about 40 minutes for me.
Serve hot.