Recipe: "Shepherd's Pie 2.0"

I made an earlier version of this and then made some further adjustments.  This version is what I made for Doug's birthday.  It's one of my "leftover makeover" recipes that use leftovers as ingredients for a totally different dish.

Ingredients:
leftover lamb (about 1 to 1 1/2 lb. or 2-3 cups chopped)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 small onion
1 to 1 1/2 cups frozen peas
1 package sliced Baby Bella mushrooms (about 2 cups)
2 cups beef stock
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons corn starch
8 servings mashed potatoes

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 275ºF.  Spray a 9x12” casserole dish with cooking spray.

Chop the lamb into bite-sized pieces.  Distribute the pieces evenly over the bottom of the casserole dish.  Sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt.  Take a pepper grinder and grind a generous amount of black pepper over the lamb.

Peel and dice 1 small onion.  Distribute the onion bits evenly over the lamb layer.  Then sprinkle on the frozen peas.

Distribute the sliced Baby Bella mushrooms over the vegetable layers.

In a medium bowl, combine 2 cups beef stock, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, and 3 tablespoons corn starch.  Whisk until smooth.  Carefully pour over the vegetables in the casserole dish.  There should be enough liquid to cover most of the vegetables.

Put the casserole dish into the oven, on a middle rack, with a drip pan underneath it.  Cook at  275ºF for 2 hours.

Shortly before the casserole comes out of the oven, prepare a batch of mashed potatoes.  Then use a fork to drop small blobs of mashed potato into the casserole dish, until the whole surface is covered by a layer of fluffy mashed potatoes with little peaks.

Turn the oven up to 400 F.  Raise the rack so the potatoes will be close enough to the top heating element to brown nicely.  Put the casserole dish back into the oven, with a drip pan underneath it, and cook for another 30 minutes.  When done, the gravy should be thick and the peaks of the mashed potatoes should be golden brown.

Notes:

This is our version of a very old, very traditional “leftover” dish; my partner Doug and I collaborated on this.  That means the proportions are approximate; use what you have.  You can swap out the vegetables if you want different ones, too.

Use leftover  lamb for this recipe.  Do not use raw lamb!  If you don't have leftover lamb, you can use stew meat and brown it first, but you will also need to add more spices.  I started with Egyptian spiced leg of lamb leftovers, so the seasoning in here is just a little extra salt and pepper to cover the vegetables.  In fact, if you don't have lamb at all, you can substitute beef to create the related dish “Cottage Pie.”

It's okay to use leftover vegetables, including the mashed potatoes, for this dish if you have those.  Adjust the amounts of the vegetables according to how much lamb you have.  Other vegetables, such as mixed vegetables or carrots, may be added or substituted for the ones listed here.  We tried to find things that both of us liked.

If you don't have fine sea salt, you can grind coarse sea salt, or just use plain table salt.

I didn't have a small onion, so I used half a medium onion.  It doesn't take much for this recipe, maybe 1/4 to  1/2 cup.  You just need enough to sprinkle over the lamb layer.

Baby Bella mushrooms, also called Crimini mushrooms, are immature portabellas.  They have a darker, richer flavor than plain button mushrooms; this beautifully complements the lamb.  If you can't find Baby Bellas, get big portabellas and chop or slice them.  Plain button mushrooms would also work.  It's okay to buy whole mushrooms and slice them, but don't leave them whole or in halves; they need to be sliced to combine with the other ingredients.

I used beef stock for this recipe because I didn't have lamb stock.  If you have lamb stock, use that.

You can use instant mashed potatoes, as I did because Doug prefers their texture; or you can boil and mash some potatoes (1 1/2 to 2 lbs).  The amount of mashed potatoes is somewhat flexible.  Ideally, you should have enough to make a layer between 1/2” and 1” deep.  The “serving size” varies depending on what recipe you use, but you should make at least one serving for each person.  For the first version I made 4 servings of instant mashed potatoes, which was barely enough for a thin layer; this time I made 8, which was much better.

This recipe was a big hit with Doug, who loves Shepherd's Pie, and was well received by my other human guinea pigs. 

Shepherd's Pie is a straightforward dish to assemble, but it does involve a substantial amount of time.  You may want to consider it feast food, or maybe post-feast comfort food.