Shepards Pie

Shepard's pie is one of the first things I made from scratch.  I've made it so often that I almost forgot to mention it on this blog.  I really does encorporate evrything I believe in...if a meal could represent ones beliefs...

Wikipedia says... 

Cottage pie or shepherd's pie is a meat pie with a crust of mashed potato.  The term cottage pie is known to have been in use in 1791, when the potato was being introduced as an edible crop affordable for the poor.

Wikipedia goes on to say that you can use any kind of leftover meat in this dish.  One of our favorites is venison.  My mom and her fella left for Arizona and left us with their meat!  What a score!

Hubbie browned the ground off a few days ago.

That was pefect!  

All I had to do was saute the veggies, add the meat and make the juice. 

I used a full carrot from our garden (stored in moist peat moss), 3 cloves of verona garlic festival garlic, pressed, saute both until soft.  Add meat and a liberal dash of worchestershire sauce.  Prepare 2 packets of beef boullion and add to the mixture.  Heat until flavours mix and the juice gets thicker.  Add a turn of steak spice of your choice and simmer.  When the mixture gets to smelling great...add the peas and corn (or beans) all of which we had frozen while they were in season and stored in ziploc bags in the freezer.

I have to admit to a certain amount of sneakiness here...I hide parsnips in with the mashed potatoes! 

I used several brown potatoes from our garden (stored in buckets in the basement in dry peat).  But I also slipped in 3 hunks of frozen parsnip too.  I boil them right along with the taters and mashed them with milk, a dash of cream and a big helping of butter.  S & P to taste.

I scooped all the venison mixture in a large dish...then smooth out the surface with the spatula. 

I add large dollops of mashed potatoes to the top...and smooth it out too.

I always add a dash of salt to the top of the mashed potatoes and a tsp of butter on top (to make the mashed topping get a bit crispy!)

I love that eating shepard's pie feels like you are eating a bit of history.

What you're really doing is using almost everything out of a garden and adding in someone's free meat

You also have one heck of a great recession-busting, not-made-of-turkey, beat-the-winter-chills celebration dish!  Here's to the home made goodness of gardening all year round!!!