Shepard's Pie

[calimac]

I had a sachet of seasonings to make Shepherd's Pie. I must have picked it up on my last visit to a British specialty grocers without looking very closely. According to this recipe, Shepherd's Pie is made by browning mincemeat with onion, adding the seasonings, peas, and carrots, and baking it in a casserole dish with mashed potatoes on top.

Well, I don't like mincemeat, peas, carrots, or mashed potatoes, so I made it with ground turkey*, asparagus, broccoli, and polenta on top. That's more to our tastes. Since it's not exactly Shepherd's Pie, I call it Shepard's Pie, in honor of, well why not, Alan Shepard. I've always liked him.

The dish was a success, just like Al's spaceflights.

*A versatile meat, ground turkey not only makes great meatloaf, but I've been using it for Cajun rice dressing in place of the usual ground beef, which in turn is a substitute for the original chicken giblets.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I'm just checking: you do know that "mincemeat" in this context means ground beef, yes - and should properly be "minced meat" - and not the mincemeat that we put in mince pies at Christmas time? (I love being English. It leads to such splendid confusions. We also have mince pies that contain minced meat, rather than mincemeat, but I thought it better not to mention those.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know that. Sometimes I still get caught offsides by British usages. So ground turkey wasn't that off after all.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, ground turkey was close enough to spot-on. Tho' when I said "ground beef", I should of course have said "ground lamb", as it's shepherd's pie; if you used beef, it would be cottage pie. (The British household tradition is that this is made on Monday, with the leftovers of the Sunday roast, so you'd be mincing/grinding cooked meat either way - but nobody does it like that any more.)