The Return of Grandpa's Gotta Cook: Shepherd's Pie

Wow. It's A Been A While

Looks like the last time I made a A Grandpa's Gotta Cook/Eat post, it was the day after Thanksgiving last year. A lot has happened since then, but it still feels like a couple weeks, not several.

All I can say is, I'm back for now, and hope to present to the Food Fight Friday crew (and anyone else reading this) a new adventure in cooking.

On the docket this week: Shepherd's Pie.

Not Traditional?

As happens on occasion, I went off road as far as the recipe went. Not too far, mind you, but far enough that any Shepherd's Pie traditionalists will notice. The thing is, before I even cooked it, there was a consensus brewing around leaving certain ingredients out—namely, peas and corn. The carrots, I was told, was okay to leave in, but by then I was already thinking about getting rid of all the vegetables and replacing them with other ones.

Get The Potatoes Going

Supposedly, this recipe takes 45 minutes from prep to final product. Yeah, right. Try an hour and a half for us uninitiated types. I've cooked enough to know, though, that mashed potatoes can take their sweet time, so I started on those first. The recipe called for 1.5 pounds of potatoes, then some melted butter, milk, sour cream, salt and black pepper. So, I peeled and cut up that many potatoes and put them to boil.

Meat And Vegetables

While that was happening, I started chopping the onions (part of the recipe) that would go in the frying pan before the 1.5 pounds of ground beef. Accompanying the onions would be garlic and thyme, sizzling in extra virgin olive oil. Once that was fragrant, I was told, then came the beef. After that my improvised fixins, which included mushrooms and tomatoes. I was also going to add bell peppers and spinach, but all the bell peppers had molded (what a waste) and I decided I'd leave the spinach out last minute.

I'm glad I did.

Put It Together

While the beef mixture was cooking, I mashed potatoes, added in the good stuff, and set it all aside. It was at this point that I started wondering if I had enough of the mashed potatoes but I hoped for the best.

When the vegetables and the meat were more or less cooked, in went some flour, and chicken broth to simmer for five minutes. It ended up being 12, and the broth still wasn't as consumed as it sounded like it should be. I was already past the 45 minute time frame at that point (somewhere around an hour, actually), so I went ahead and dumped the beef mixture into a large baking dish, then added the potatoes. You can see the result. Not quite enough. Probably needed another half pound to a full pound of potatoes.

Bake It!

I thought for roughly a full second about boiling some more potatoes, but knew I was running late, so I just went ahead and put the dish into the pre-heated oven (400 degrees Fahrenheit). That meant another 20 minutes, but I set the timer for 18, since our ovens have always cooked faster than the recipes dictate.

Thai Mango Salad with Peanut Dressing

With the Shepherd's Pie baking, I still had more to do. I decided I wanted a nice salad to go with this (since I was getting rid of some other vegetables), so I opted for a Thai salad. That meant butter leaf lettuce, mangoes, bell pepper (which I didn't have so didn't include), green onion, roasted peanuts, cilantro, and jalapeños, which I opted out of, for the salad part. The dressing called for creamy peanut butter, lime juice, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, maple syrup, sesame oil, garlic and red pepper flakes (which I did include, but with caution).

When I went shopping for ingredients I needed earlier in the day, the store had a half dozen mangoes most of them which weren't ripe. It also had some fresh made mango salsa, which meant the fruit was already chopped and sitting in cilantro and onion. The price, interestingly enough, favored the salsa, so I got two, along with a bag of pre-chopped lettuce. That meant all I really had to do with the salad part when it came time was empty the bag of lettuce into a bowl, toss the mango salsa into it, grab some peanuts, and viola, onto making the dressing.

For some reason, though I know I measured everything correctly, I couldn't get the peanut dressing to thin up. So, I kept adding lime juice. I finally got it to a point where it wasn't quite what I wanted, but close enough. About then the Shepherd's pie was ready, so that meant it was dinner time.

The Verdict

My son, his wife and daughter continue to live with my wife and I, so I frequently get their input. This time around, the daughter-in-law and I were the first to eat. Unlike on other occasions, I didn't even have to ask her what she thought. She said the salad was delicious and that the Shepherd's Pie was really good, too. Score one for Grandpa! I thought both were incredible myself. The combination of mashed potatoes, ground beef with a kind of gravy flavor along with the mushrooms and the tang of the tomatoes was amazing (I'm salivating right now just recalling it all). I really liked the peanut sauce and mango flavors from the salad, too. It was like the latter opened up the palate for the former.

My son said he really liked the Shepherd's Pie, too, but that the salad had "too much mango." He apparently got more of that with the onions than he did the lettuce.

My wife didn't end up eating dinner that night, so I don't know how she felt about it.

All in all, I'm looking forward to doing this again. I like it just as I made it, too, so I'm not figuring to experiment with it for once.

Or not. We'll see.

About This Post

This edition of Grandpa's Gotta Cook is in conjunction with Food Fight Friday, an ongoing weekly contest where participants can receive an award for their efforts. Just write about food, use the #fff tag and post on a Friday. Then, go and look at other entries, and if so moved, upvote and comment. Repeat for the next week.

_{All images by Glen Anthony Albrethsen}