Apparently my shepherd's pie is all wrong

"The best cottage pies and shepherd’s pies are made with leftover roast meat, not mince. In fact, the whole purpose of these pies was to eke out the leftovers." The Hairy Bikers

Last night we had what I call Shepherd's pie for dinner, and when we had finished I remarked that I really did not understand why this particular dish is so delicious. I ruminated on doing another post on the subject - for I'm sure I have 'done' it at least once a long time ago, but decided that I had been there and done that.

However, later on I found myself trawling the net for pictures of a shepherd's pie that roughly equated to what I had cooked, because I had not photographed it last night, and found none. Indeed of the few that I looked at I found, for me anyway, that virtually all of them were way different to what I make in a number of crucial ways.

So here I am about to ramble around various random thoughts about all of this. And let me first get out of the way the usual picky thing about is it cottage or shepherd's pie? Yes, I know - cottage pie is beef and shepherd's pie is lamb - for obvious reasons. So technically we had cottage pie because it was made with the leftover beef and sauce from Elizabeth David's Daube à la Corsoise which had been a bit underwhelming in itself but the remains of which would make a good shepherd's pie. Yes I always call these pies shepherd's pie even if it's beef - or anything else come to that. And I really don't think it matters.

I think this was the recipe which really started me on this ramble. It's Nagi Maehashi's recipe for Shepherd's pie. But it wasn't just the picture, which is far runnier than mine ever are. It was really a couple of statements that she made in her introduction and I'll take them as illustrations of the major differences between my version and the rest of the world's. For indeed most of the recipes I glanced at were similar to hers.

The first of her statements was:

"Essentially, it’s lamb and veggies smothered in a gravy – and who doesn’t love an excuse for tons and tons of gravy?"

Well maybe not in terms of tons of gravy, and of course mashed potato is an ideal way of sopping it all up. But my shepherd's pies do not have lots of gravy. They are moist, but only just and they are definitely not runny. Gravy as a thing in itself is not the aim of my shepherd's pies. In fact I don't like it and feel I have failed if it is indeed runny like this.

I learnt how to make shepherd's pie from my mother, who probably learnt from her mother and so on ad infinitum. She used a meat mincer, which was fastened to the table with a clamp and a screw device. Then you put your meat into the opening at the top, turned the handle and the meat came out. We used to help by turning the handle. There were not often any vegetables other than potatoes left from our Sunday roast - Shepherd's pie was a Monday dinner. However if there were any they were put into the mincer too - as was some chopped onion. So what you got was a kind of paste, the fineness of said paste depending on the size of the holes in the mincer. Generally a similar size to those shown above.

It was a dry mixture though, so any leftover gravy was added to make it moist - not runny. Well there was never enough gravy to make it runny. Indeed sometimes there was none, because Nagi Maehashi is right about one thing - you can never have too much gravy and ours

would have been eaten with the roast. If this happened, some of the water from the boiled potatoes would have been added with some OK sauce for extra flavour. Even, maybe - oh the horror - some Bisto. And as well as some kind of liquid of this kind - maybe she used Worcestershire sauce sometimes - a large pinch of dried mixed herbs would also have been added for a bit of extra flavour. As you can see this is not a gourmet meal.

Nagi's second instruction is:

"A really good Shepherd’s Pie should always start with a soffrito – that is, onion, garlic, carrots and celery sautéed on a lowish heat until sweet. It’s the secret to a great flavour base."

No, no, no. The base was never recooked before being covered with the mashed potato. And yet, again as I glanced through the recipes, I saw that almost all of them recooked the meat as well as the vegetables. Now I am not saying that this is not a good idea, but it's not what my lifelong understanding of the dish has been. Even the Hairy Bikers, who had the good sense to call their dish Leftover pie, and whose version was the closest I could find to mine - fried the meat and the vegetables together before putting it in the pie dish.

I should also say that virtually all of the recipes I glanced at used raw mince meat. They were not using leftover roast meat. Which as the Hairy Bikers pointed out is the whole point of the thing. It's a poor person's meal making good use of the leftover meat, and cheap potatoes.

The other thing I noted as I trawled all those pictures was that almost all had peas - whole peas - in the filling. Indeed big chunks of vegetables sometimes, not minced - or even chopped. Well I don't use a mincer these days - although I used to - one attached to my electric mixer - but I chop it in my mini food processor. Sometimes it ends up pasty, sometimes chopped. Either is good. And I don't think I have ever had a shepherd's pie with peas in it. Sometimes it's just onions, sometimes it's any leftover roast dinner vegetables, although these days I have been guilty of adding something additional if there were not many vegetables from my leftover dish. Indeed yesterday I added some grated zucchini, because the only vegetables from the daube were a few mushrooms - and some tomatoes which were part of the mushy 'gravy' which was used as the moisturising element. I didn't include the olives because they had stones in them and I could not be bothered to stone them.

So it's a dish that is never the same twice. As I wrote in the cookbook that I made for my sons when they left home:

"The ingredients for this dish will vary according to what you have available. The essentials are some leftover roast meat, some chopped onions and some flavourings and liquid to bind it together, plus potatoes and cheese."

Yes let's turn to the potatoes and cheese. I suspect that many of these homely shepherd's pies did not have much meat in them. The meat layer would have been thin, so to bulk it out you boil some potatoes, mash them and spread them on top - and it really needs to be a good thick layer. If you have any roast potatoes left over - a rare occurrence in my youth - these are combined with the potatoes you have just cooked. Yesterday's dish did have a couple of potatoes from the daube which were mashed in.

Top with grated cheese and bake in an oven until the top is crispy and brown and the meat layer is giving out of its juice. Perhaps half an hour or so in a moderate oven.

As I said, I did not take any photographs of yesterday's meal. Why would I? I wasn't going to write about it after all. Today however I had no other inspiring thoughts, so I took a photograph of the remains in their glass dish, cold and unappetising looking I know but at least it shows the texture. Next to it is the photograph I put in my long ago cookbook.

And yes you serve it - in my house anyway - with baked beans and HP sauce. It would have been OK sauce in my youth. More risible everyday ingredients. So two last things to say:

It is really delicious, although I don't understand why. It many ways it should be disgusting - pappy nursery food. No extra flavour or careful cooking. Just bung it all in a food processor, until you have a rough grey looking sort of sludge. Top it with roughly mashed boiled potatoes and ordinary tasty cheddar and hey presto - dinner is served. I love it. David loves it. My sons loved it - even one of their friends asked for the recipes, so I guess he loved it too. It's all wrong that it should be good is'n't it? Of course there is a comfort, nostalgia element to it all, but honestly I don't think it's because of any memories associated with it that I love it. After all I loved it as a child when I had none.

Second thing. Should I now get a complex because I'm not making it right? Have I and my mother and all of her forbears been making it wrong all these years? A big no to that one. I think all those recipes think you have to do all those fancier things to make it acceptable. Maybe I should try frying the meat and vegetable mix some time to see if it makes a difference. But I suspect not. Maybe I should add peas. No - that is just so wrong to me.

Maybe I should just pretend that our Shepherd's pie is a unique invention of the Ellis family and spread the word. I doubt that's true anyway. No I'll just go on doing the same old thing and wonder why I like it so much every time I eat it. Maybe one day I'll find out.

BACK THEN

October 23

2023 - Gubbins - oddments in other words

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Gingernuts

2020 - I've been doing it all wrong

2019 - Nothing

2018 - A lion

2017 - Nothing

2016 - Manure, horses and should we all be vegetarian