Shepherd's Pie or Shepherd's Pie

These cakes that Miriam, author of The Winter Guest , brings us today, will enchant you because of their tasty combination and how easy they are to prepare. In addition, you can do them both in mini format as they are presented here, as well as in a single large font. Do not miss it!

This shepherd's pie or shepherd's pie is a typical British dish that consists of a base of chopped meat with vegetables, topped by a layer of mashed potato that is gratin or toasted. It is very easy to make and it was also normally a dish for use, it was used to make the most of the leftover meat from the Sunday roast.

Shepherd's pie is traditionally prepared with leftover roast lamb, but if you are so greedy that there are no leftover roasts in your house, all you have to do is make roast lamb on purpose to make shepherd's pie. Stranger things have happened.

And you should know that if you don't use lamb meat, but veal, for example, the purists will tell you that you can't fairly call it shepherd's pie. But I'm not going to tell.

Although this meatloaf is usually made in a large dish (surely you will find some cool ones in the Baking Dishes section ), we have opted to make very cute mini shepherd's pie in cute ceramic cocottes . Do not say that the cake is not cute.

Ingredients

• ½ kg of suckling lamb meat (leftovers or prepared on purpose)
• 1 large onion
• 2 medium carrots
• 75g peas
• 6 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 pinch of thyme
• 300 ml of water
• 250 ml of white wine or meat broth
• 750 g of peeled potatoes
• water
• 80 g butter or coconut oil
• salt to taste
• 100g Cheddar cheese

Elaboration

1. Finely chop the onion and fry it in olive oil in a large frying pan . His thing is to do it in butter, or you can also use coconut oil , and with both options you give it a different and equally wonderful flavor, but that way we make the dish more heart-healthy, ahem. Although if you want you can put a mixture of oil and butter. When the onion begins to be transparent, we add the carrot in small cubes.
2. While the vegetables are frying, chop the meat. Add it to the sauce and pour in the wine or broth. Add the cooked peas.
3. Add the bay leaf and thyme, and cook slowly for about 30 minutes, so that the meat takes on the flavor and the liquid reduces. Salt and let cool. We pass this mixture to the source that we want to use for the oven , in our case to the oval mini-cocottes .
4. To prepare the mashed potatoes, cook the potatoes or steam them. When they are tender we pass them through the mill. Add the butter and salt.
5. When the purée has cooled down a bit, transfer it to a pastry bag with a curled nozzle, although if you don't want to use a piping bag, the purée can be distributed by spoonfuls over the meat filling.
6. We cover all the meat with the puree and sprinkle the grated cheese. We put the cocottes in the oven at 200° (with air) / 210° (without air) until we see that the puree is toasted, about 20-25 minutes depending on each oven.
7. We serve these individual shepherd's feet cuckoos immediately, always with a good wine, even if this is not very British.

Le Creuset oval mini-cocottes and Emile Henry ceramic plate