Shepherd’s Pie

134. Shepherd’s Pie (uncooked meat)

Nigella has two shepherd’s/cottage pie recipes in the Feeding Babies and Small Children chapter – one made, traditionally, with leftover cooked meat, and one made with raw mince.

Tonight I made the one with raw meat (minced beef). I doubled the amount of filling, and kept the same amount of potato (600grams) – and it was enough to fit in my oval Le Crueset dish, with a small bowl of meat leftover to have with rice or pasta tomorrow.

The filling pretty much your standard mince-and-tomato combo – onions, carrots, garlic and celery chopped up finely and cooked in oil, then mushrooms and meat added. Once it’s lost its raw pinkness, you add flour, apple juice, tinned tomatoes and Worcestershire sauce. Nigella suggests apple juice or Marsala – I would have rather used the alcohol, but I bought a bottle of cheap-ass P&N apple juice when I made marinated chicken drumsticks, and I want to get through it without actually having to drink it. It does smell revolting though; I can’t believe I used to drink it when I was a child.

So anyway, you let the meat mixture simmer until cooked and thickened, pour it into a dish, cover with mashed potato and grill until browned on top. This amount served four of us perfectly.


Shepherd's Pie

Dad: Sarah, you’re good at cooking. Not only does it taste good, but it looks good too!


Shepherd's Pie on the plate

This was a good pie. Honestly, I think that some of Nigella’s other stewed minced-meat recipes are better, but this was still a tasty and satisfying meal. And very, very easy to make.

Normally I would have made peas to go with, but I was feeling seriously apathetic today, and had just baked a huge batch of biscuits (new post to follow…).