SHEPHERD'S PIE
A classic dish, where minced meat is cooked with a number of flavorful ingredients and then baked as a pie under a coat of mashed potatoes. There are many variations on shepherd's pie so anything you like to add to this dish - try it! A combination of two different kinds of meat is interesting in that the distinct and maybe too intensive flavors of each animal don't come through as much as they would had they been used on their own. The amount of the tasty liquids (Worcester sauce, red wine, stock) can be adjusted to even more, if you like more intense flavor.
A pie of 4 servings:
450 g/1 lb of freshly minced lamb
450 g/1 lb of freshly minced beef
salt, pepper
olive oil
350 g/0.7 lb onions, chopped
2 crushed cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of fresh thyme, chopped
1 tbsp flour
30 g/1 oz tomato purée
0.5 l/17 fl oz beef stock
100 ml/3.3 fl oz Worcester sauce
100 ml/3.3 fl oz red wine
1 kg/2 lb cooked mashed potato with some butter and two egg yolks (add when potatoes are cool) in it
First, cook the meat in high heat with salt and pepper in a little olive oil just for a few minutes. Remove from the pan and drain away the fat on a paper towel. In another pan, on moderate heat, sauté the onions in oil along with the crushed garlic and thyme for 3 minutes, just so the onions get soft without getting browned. Remove the garlic and add the meat, flour, tomato purée, and cook for 2 minutes while stirring so the ingredients blend well together. Add the red wine, Worcester sauce, and the stock, bring up the heat to simmer and let it cook for 30 minutes. The liquid should be reduced to almost nothing, and you can also take off some of the reduction and use it as a sauce when you serve the pie. Place the meat in a pie form, cover with mashed potatoes, and bake in a preheated oven (180 C/356 F) for about 40 minutes, or just until the potatoes get golden-colored.
You can serve the pie as we did, with oven roasted carrots and asparagus (or other vegetables). Just rub them in olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast them along with the pie. Carrots, since they are quite firm, should be precooked for about 5 minutes or more in water.