Cottage Pie or Shepherd’s Pie

The traditional cottage pie or shepherd’s pie is a meat pie with mashed potatoes as the crust, as potato is a cheaper food then. This recipe is not truly the traditional cottage pie, for simplicity, I do not bake it, but simply heat it up in a warm steamer or toaster.

(The preparation of the whipped potatoes is as the other post, but I’ll just repeat here for completeness.)

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. 4 potatoes
2. 1 table spoon butter
3. ¼ – ½ cup milk
4. 2 slice cheese
5. 150 grams minced meat (beef or pork or chicken or lamb)
6. ¼ teaspoon salt
7. 1 1/2 table spoon tomato sauce
8. 1 1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce or mushroom sauce
9. 1 teaspoon sugar
10. 1 tablespoon light soya sauce
11. ½ cup water
12. 1 teaspoon corn flour
13. 2 tablespoon cooking oil
14. ½ big yellow onion

Method

1. Peel potato and remove the eyes.  Cut into chucks, steam for 30 mins until soft.
2. While it is still hot, put the potatoes in a pot or big bowl, add in butter and mash it thoroughly by pressing down with a potato masher.  Add in milk, ¼ cup first, and start mashing the potato till smooth, adding more milk a little at a time until the required soft and smooth texture.
3. Peel onion and chopped into small pieces.
4. In a bowl, mix ingredient 6 to 11.  Add in corn flour. To prevent lumping, do not stir immediately, let the corn flour slowly sink to the bottom, then stir.
5. Heat up a frying pan or a sauce pan. Add oil and onions and fry till fragrant.
6. Add in minced meat and stir fry until cooked. Pour in the gravy from step 4.  Allow it to boil for a 5 mins and thickens. And remove from heat.
7. In a bowl or plate or baking dish. Put the cooked minced meat at the bottom.  Then top and cover with whipped potatoes.  Put the slice cheese over the potato.  Put in a toaster oven, or steamer, with low heat for 3 mins to melt the cheese.
8. Alternatively, you can also keep the minced meat aside, and pour over the potatoes after the cheese has melted.
9. Serve warm