Cottage Pie - Recipe Idea
As we near the end of our long, long winter we end up missing many of our weekly meals that we create only during the cooler months like this Cottage Pie. This humble savoury pie is quick and simple dish that we make often in our household. We find it very versatile and it’s a great way to use up frozen or leftover veggies. You can prep ahead of time or even make some to freeze for meals later on.
In these picture we took our homemade ground chicken or you can use ground beef, lamb, bison or elk and brown it up in a pan. Once that is complete take it out and put to the side.
Sauté up your veggies in the same pan, almost any will work. I started by sweating the red onion (typically would of used a shallot, yellow or sweet onion but I already had this in the fridge from night previous) and garlic then added in the hardier veggies like, rainbow carrots, turnip, parsley root, mushrooms, Brussel sprouts, celeriac, golden and candy stripe beets. Cook for 5-10 minutes.
Finished by tossing in our spinach and frozen corn. (Most people would add peas but we haven’t grown those yet but I would add broccolini if I had any on hand)
Add your ground meat back into the pan again.
Add in your tomato sauce (if store boughten you may need to add tomato paste too to thicken it up) and season well with dried herbs, salt and pepper.
Bring up to a low boil or until everything is married and tastes good.
Pour everything into a casserole or large baking dish.
Top with homemade mashed potatoes. Made by boiling celeriac, Norland red potatoes in water until cooked for fork tender. (You can boil it in milk for the most luxurious mash)
Mashed them while adding butter and milk until it’s the right consistency.
Added dried herbs like parsley and summer savoury, salt and pepper to taste.
Take even scoop fulls and topped the casserole dish.
Then spread that out to cover the entire surface.
Baked it in the oven at 375F for about 45 minutes, we leave it uncovered.
You can serve it with warm bread or a side salad. It is delicious, fulfilling and warming every time. Nothing beats homemade food straight out of the oven.
