An Unusual Shepherd’s Pie Dinner

Our son and his friend came to visit for an early Winter Holiday, and all of us chipped in to make a very good dinner that had some unusual twists to some traditional dishes. For instance, a dry Shepherd’s pie, a heavily peppered roasted broccolini, and a dinner served with Glühwein. But let me tell you, this was up there for the second best meal made in our house this past year.

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Meal

We celebrated Christmas this year on 21 December since it was a time our son and his girlfriend would be here. Changing the time was no big deal, and it gave us the excuse to consider different kinds of food for the holiday meal.

Menu was a simple meal of hearty food that actually worked very well together. Where our Thanksgiving meal was full of carbs, this one would be full of vegetables.

• Shepherd’s pie
• Roasted broccolini
• Green salad
• Glühwein

A Dry Shepherd’s Pie

Although used interchangeably by some, Shepherd’s pie is not supposed to be the same as Cottage pie. Shepherds herd sheep, so Shepherd’s pie is filled with minced (or in the USA it is called “ground”) lamb meat, and the potato topping is etched with a fork to resemble a sheep’s wool (1).

A cottage is where poor people lived and augmented left over beef parts by mincing them, cooking with left over veggies, and topping with sliced potatoes that resembled roofing tiles (2). Thus, cottage pie always contains beef.

In the UK and Ireland, any cooked meat covered with a thick topping of mashed potatoes is a pie. So if you use either beef or mutton, and if you top the potato crust with breadcrumbs instead of cheese, it turns the dish into a Cumberland pie. This type of pie has its roots way back in British medieval times, when it would be made with a variety of beef, mutton, or game, and also had dried fruit and apples, along with gravy and different spices in the filling.

What we did, which is unusual, is we cooked the meat mixture long enough that the gravy was mainly boiled off and the result was a drier than normal Shepherd’s pie. If you wanted a gravy version of this pie, you would turn off the heat after the liquid has had time to mingle with the other ingredients in the lamb mixture (see the icon ^ in the recipe). To make the wet version, add some flour or corn starch to the broth and mix well over the heat. Then turn off the heat to finish making the dish, and put into the oven for the same amount of time as noted in the recipe.

For vegans, use your favorite mushrooms chopped into cubes and follow the same recipe, but also use faux beef broth or a mushroom broth. This recipe is great for lactose intolerant or gluten free eaters, and people sensitive to salt you can certainly not use added salt and the dish will taste great.

• Dry Shepherd’s Pie
• Filling
  • 2 tablespoon olive oil added to a heated cast iron skillet (min is 12” diameter)
  • 1-1/2#  ground lamb added to skillet, spread out, let it get browned on one side before flipping and breaking apart with a spatula.
  • Add 1t kosher salt
  • Add 1t freshly ground pepper
  • Add 1 diced large yellow onion and stir to mix in well
  • Add 1 diced large carrot
  • Add 2 minced cloves garlic
  • Add 1C thinly sliced dark green tops of a leek
  • Add 1C sliced celery with leaves
  • Then fry 1/2C chopped (I used scissors) dulse seaweed in olive oil, and once crispy add to the lamb mixture (it should totally break down and just leave an umami flavor.
  • Make a hole in the center of the skillet and add 2T tomato paste letting it fry a bit before mixing it well into the other ingredients.
  • Add 1C dry red wine (I used Cabernet Franc)
  • Add 2T fresh thyme
  • Add 2T chopped fresh rosemary
  • Add 1C beef bullion, mix well and lower heat to low simmer.
  • ^ The goal is to evaporate off most all of the liquid. What remains should be a glossy mixture of condensed flavor. If you want a gravy, then after you add the bullion and mix well, move off the heat and continue to prep.
• Topping
  • 2# russet potatoes that are washed, peeled and quartered, and boiled until a fork can easily break them up. Then drain and using a ricer put back into the hot pot.
  • Add 4T unsalted European butter
  • Add some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
  • Then mix with a fork, and using a spoon scoop to cover the lamb mixture sitting in the skillet. Smooth the top, then crimp all around toward the center of the pie using the fork, and scratch lines into the potato topping.
  • Sprinkle 1C finely grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese on top of the potatoes.
• Bake + Serve
  • Put into a 350F oven for 20 minutes or until the cheese topping is a toasty light brown color.

Roasted Peppered Broccolini

This is a cruciferous vegetable, that I incorrectly call “baby broccoli”; it’s actually a hybrid between regular broccoli and Chinese broccoli. It has a sweet and mild flavor, and I eat the leaves as well as the stalks and florets. But note, it is also easy to overcook.

My son was all setup to roast these veggies and had an accident (I caused) that I think created a wonderfully peppered dish. He did not noticfe the container of pre-ground pepper I had prepared earlier this month was missing a sprinkling-lid, and a whole bunch of the ground pepper poured out and onto the cleaned, trimmed, and lightly oil sprayed broccolini. Rather than tossing the food out, and after taking a survey of our preferences, he removed what pepper he could and roasted the broccolini anyway.

This heavily peppered dish was very tasty and I enjoyed the mouth feel of its crusty top. As it turned out, the heavy pepper flavor fit with the rest of the meal and went well with the Shepherd’s pie, as well as the very sweet Glühwein.

The key to cooking this dish is to not turn the veggies over midway, the goal is for one side to get crispy while the other side remains soft. The result is a crunchy, yet chewy vegetable side dish.

• Pepper Roasted broccolini
  • Clean, trim, and layout the broccolini on a parchment lined baking sheet. Sliced down in the middle to maximize surface area
  • Spray a little bit of olive oil onto the greens
  • Add some kosher salt
  • Add a lot of freshly ground pepper
  • Add some smoked paprika
  • Roast in the oven under broil, but keep an eye on the cooking as this will go fast.

Green Salad

We made a simple salad with lettuce, carrots, celery, and thin slices of greenish-white cabbage. Served with a variety of creamy and oil-based salad dressings.

Glühwein

This is a German recipe I have made for years, the only difference is that traditionally I used lemons, but my spouse prefers oranges. What was amazing to me is that this drink was always approached like tea, a good cup on a cold day, sitting in the living room. But we served it this time with dinner and it was great. The reasoning has to do first with the wine, we used it both in the drink but also in the Shepards pie. But also the pepper overused in the broccolini had a nice floral aspect to it that combined with the floral aroma of the Glühwein, very complimentary.

Alicia, who had never tasted Glühwein before was tasked with making it from scratch. I just gave her the recipe and she put things together. She did an awesome job, and what makes this so much fun is that it tastes very complex when compared to how easy it is to make. Hopefully she makes this again and impresses her friends and family. I told her to just go into the kitchen and bang some things around so it sounds like she is working furiously to make the drink. They will never know.

• Glühwein
  • Add almost 2 bottles of dry red wine Cabernet Franc (1C used for the Shepherd’s pie)
  • Add 1C organic sugar
  • Add 2-3 star anise
  • Add 2-3 cinnamon sticks
  • Slice 1 orange, and pierce the slices with whole cloves ~30
  • Heat and stir until the sugar is incorporated, then cover and leave on low.
  • Right before serving, turn heat up, ladle into cups and include one clove sliced orange in each cup.

Last Thoughts

We ate and drank everything, except the rather large Shepherd’s pie, which luckily had leftovers. During this cold spell I plan on having this for lunch or dinner everyday till it runs out. Heck, I would even eat it for breakfast as I like it that much.

Dulse Seaweed

I want to add one comment on the use of dulse seaweed. Often the Shepards pie recipes you will find, ask for some Worcestershire sauce to be added to the dish. This fermented sauce is often considered to be a combination of: vinegar, molasses, anchovies, garlic, tamarind extract, chili pepper extract, sugar, and salt, along with other undisclosed “natural ingredients” (purportedly are cloves, soy, essence of lemons, and pickles). The intent of the sauce is to add a deep umami flavor to the dish.

Well, I think that once fried, dulse has the hints of a baconish umami flavor, so I thought it would be a good way to up the umami of the dish without adding the sauce, which I did not have anyway. I also figured that since the sauce has fish in it, and seaweed contains that ocean flavor, it might be a good replacement. To my taste it worked. It added umami and actually disappeared into the dish so it was not evident in the final outcome. Which is great because it also adds a nice dollop of nutritional health.

—Patty

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