Shepherd's Pie

I don't know about you, but I always thought Shepherd's Pie was an Irish dish. Turns out, it's actually an English dish that was typically made to use up leftover pieces of meat from a previous meal. We don't often have leftover meat, but you can certainly make Shepherd's Pie with fresh ingredients.

Because I thought the dish was Irish, we made this dish on St. Patrick's Day.

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef (organic, from Skagit River Ranch)
• 3 bacon strips (I was out of bacon, so I omitted this)
• 1 small onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 cup tomato sauce
• 1 can chopped olives (I left these out as well)
• 5 1/2 cups hot mashed potatoes
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 1 tablespoon minced cilantro
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Melted butter

Directions

Cook up a mess of mashed potatoes. The recipe says to make them without butter or milk, but don't worry too much about that. If you have leftover mashed potatoes from last night's dinner, those will work too. Heat them up a bit while you're doing the next few steps.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cook the beef until all the pink disappears and remove the beef from the pan. If there's a significant amount of fat left in the pan, drain it. When we use grass fed beef from Skagit, there's hardly any fat in the pan.

Dice the bacon strips, chop the onion, and mince the garlic. In the same pan as the beef, cook these, along with the oregano until the bacon is crisp. We omitted the bacon because (gasp!) we didn't have any! Add the tomato sauce, olives (if you're using them) and cilantro as well as the precooked beef. Simmer for 10 minutes.

If you haven't already, use this time to mash the cooked potatoes.

Butter or grease a 9 inch pie plate. Line the bottom and sides with mashed potatoes. Fill the pie with the beef mixture.

Now spread more mashed potatoes over the top of the pie. This can be a little tricky, and it's best to use a greased spoon or spatula to help you along.

Bake the pie for 20 minutes.

Brush the top with melted butter and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

This makes between 6 and 8 servings.

I liked it, but I did feel that it was a bit bland. I think it could have been even better with the bacon and with adding some sour cream or horseradish to the mashed potatoes. Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top of the mashed potatoes would have also added a nice touch.