It’s been a slow week for blogging, and a slow week for me in general - evident by the lack of a blog entry for a week now. So, as a little change, I’m going to show you good folks (many of whom are students with primitive cooking skills) how to prepare a cheap, wholesome and most of all, tasty Shepherd’s Pie that will astound everyone.

On Sunday night I made this very dish from a mixture of a recipe I found online and my own creativity. I made lots of it and shared it with some people, who all were looking for seconds afterwards. Je suis un excellent cuisinier.

You will need:

• Potatoes, roughly 4 large ones. If you like a lot of topping, go for 5.
• 2lb of ground beef
• Carrots and peas (fresh is better, but tinned comes ready prepared and is still good)
• 1 tin of beef broth
• 1/2 cup milk
• Small amount of butter
• Pinch of salt
• Lots of shredded cheese (optional)

Cooking Time:

About 1 hour

Serves:

Around 4 people, I fed 3 with everybody taking seconds…so maybe more.

Popular with:

Everybody! It’s Irish food so everyone loves it. Especially Brazilians.

The Recipe

1. The first thing is to wash and peel your potatoes. Afterwards, cut each potato into quarters and place into a saucepan of boiling water. Add a pinch of salt for flavour, and 1/2 cup of milk to make the potatoes really creamy.

2. Let the potatoes boil for a few minutes, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes. It might also be a good idea to preheat your oven at this stage. Keep it fairly warm, around 7 or 8 on the dial.

3. Meanwhile, preheat a large frying pan and melt some butter into it to grease it. Chop up your carrots and peas (you may add onion if you wish, personally I think it’s evil) or simply open your tin and drain most of the juice.

4. Add the ground beef to the frying pan and keep the temperature at a medium level so as not to burn the meat. When the meat is brown, add in your carrots and peas. Cook together until the meat is a nice dark brown and the vegetables are hot. Add in the beef broth periodically while stirring to give the whole thing a rich, juicy texture.

So far you should have something like this:

5. By this stage your potatoes should be nearly ready. Test that they’re soft by poking them with a fork, and if all is good drain the water/milk and mash them up. In the absence of a potato masher, a whisk is an effective alternative as shown below:

6. While mashing it might be a good idea to add in the some more butter to improve the flavour. It helps to make the potatoes more spreadable too.

7. When they’re done, use the rest of your butter to grease the inside of a baking tray and add your beef mixture into it. Spread it out over the tray and make sure it’s still nice and moist.

8. Spread the potatoes on top and make sure it covers as much as possible. Use a fork to rough up the top of it so that it can turn a nice golden brown when done. Place it in the oven as close to the top as possible and leave for about 30 minutes.

9. The final stage is to bring it out the oven when the top is crispy and golden brown. Depending on your tastes, you may wish to add cheese to the top. I love cheese, so I added almost an entire bag of 4 Italian cheese to the top of my pie and let it melt for a few minutes before serving.

10. The end result is a really tasty Shepherd’s Pie that will feed a whole house. If you want, you can serve it with chips or some garlic bread, that works quite well. And it goes down great with a cold pint of Guinness!

So that’s it. give it a try and tell me how you get on. I guarantee you’ll love it (not a guarantee). Hope fully I’ll have something more exciting to blog about in a few days.

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