Friday, October 1, 2010

Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd's Pie under construction  Photo: Filia Artis


As I mentioned yesterday, there has been a bit of a cooking frenzy here. I thought I would share at least one of the recipes I made - Shepherd's Pie. Originally, this came out of some website years ago, but today, it has become a dish that I make out of my head and have tweaked things over the years quite a bit.

The key here is to multitask and try to prep and cook the components roughly at the same time, otherwise, this recipe can take a while to make. The mess is substantial, but each step is really easy and you end up with about eight servings at the end, so worth the effort!

You have to somewhat judge how many potatoes and carrots to use based on the size of your casserole dishes. Leftovers can always be eaten or just frozen for another dinner, so I always try to aim on the side of a bit extra.

My final tip is to make this in those foil pans you can get at the dollar store so that they are easy to store and there is no clean-up at the end. We find they are reusable and otherwise, can be recycled.



Macedonian shepherds enjoying lunch circa 1962 

DIY Rating: 8

Tasty and suitably easy for the uninitiated cook. 

I simply warn you that the clean-up afterward involves a 
few more pots and pans than I enjoy washing, 
so make this as a double batch and freeze at least one pie! 

2 comments:

  1. How do you make your potatoes look like that? Potatoes are not naturally that pretty!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Weaver!

    I used a pastry bag with an icing tip to make the rosettes. It looks super "pro", but was a bit of a pain to do. If you want to try it, make sure you add a bit of extra milk to your mash and get the potatoes as smooth as possible. I used a "wilton 21" size tip, but would recommend something a bit larger if you can. The final touch is to dust the rosettes with a bit of red paprika!

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