Shepherd's Pie

If you want to get wasted quicker than you can say "Bob's your Uncle," go on a pub crawl with a British expat.  If  you want to have  a great dinner, accept the invitation.  One of my British friends, transplanted to Indianapolis IN from Nottingham, gave me this recipe.  My other British friend got me hooked on Yorkshire pudding with a beef roast and gravy.

This great recipe came from a Jamie Oliver cookbook. I'm not sure which one, as Jamie Oliver is not a chef who typically graces my bookshelf.  After having this at Claire's house, we put our heads together and converted the metric measurements to cups.  Which is a little hard to do, but there are good on-line conversion calculators like this :  http://www.onlineconversion.com/cooking_volume.htm

Funny British cooking vocabulary

Knob of butter - About two tablespoons of butter in American Speak
Marrow - A squash
Biscuits - Cookies
Bin - Trash can

Shepherds Pie
1/4 cup Olive Oil
2 Large Onions
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 lbs Hamburger
3 carrots, diced
1 cup mushrooms
2 teaspoon tomato paste
1 cup beef stock
1/2 half cup red wine ( I use any Cabernet Sauvignon)
dash Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese for the topping.
about 4 cups mashed prepared mashed potatoes
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350.

Heat the olive oil and saute onions and garlic until golden.  Add the hamburger meat to the pan and cook until browned.   Add carrots and mushrooms and cook for about five minutes.  Add the tomato paste.

Pour the stock and red wine over the browned beef, season with salt and pepper to taste, then add the thyme and Worcestershire sauce.  Gently simmer for 20 minutes or so, until the meat is cook and the mixture has thickened.  Spoon the mixture into an ovenproof dish.  I sometimes get a little crazy and add frozen green beans, or peas, or corn.  It's a very forgiving recipe.

Cover with your mashed potatoes.  I'm not actually going to tell you how to make mashed potatoes because I figure we are all grown ups here.  If you don't know how to make any form of mashed potatoes at this point, you may be beyond my help.  If you really don't now how to make mashed potatoes, then by all  means top this with some of those pre-made mashed potatoes that come in tub.

Sprinkle with Parmesan and finish with a drizzle of olive oil.  Bake for 30 minutes or until the top is golden.  In the picture above, I used cheddar because I was sadly out of Parm.

Let sit for a few minutes to rest, and then TUCK IN!  Enjoy!  And don't forget to finish off the rest of the bottle of red wine!