Ingredients
- 4 potatoes
- 2 medium carrots
- 1 stalk of celery
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 onion (whichever you like most, I suggest yellow)
- Milk
- Butter
- Olive Oil
- Wine (Red)
- Meat (ground beef preferred but around a pound)
- Package of gravy mix
Equipment
- Chef’s Knife
- Pot for boiling potatoes
- Large saucepan or even cast iron skillet
- Potato Masher
- Wooden Spoon
- Casserole dish if you do not want to use a cast iron skillet to serve from (I use the cast iron; looks rustic)
- Vegetable peeler
Recipe
- Prep vegetables: wash them, peel carrots and potatoes with veggie peeler.
- Dice potatoes into semi-small cubes. Dice up onion, carrot, and celery into very small pieces (you can cheat with a food processor if you have one)
- Put the potatoes in a pot and fill with water so that they are decently submerged. Bring them to a boil and keep them at that boil for around 15-20 minutes.
- While the potatoes are doing their thing, heat olive oil in a pan on medium to medium-high heat.
- Add other vegetables to pan and cook for around 15 minutes or until they start to turn soft.
- Add meat and cook until brown.
- Do you have some fond on the bottom, add some red wine (maybe a half cup at most) and use that liquid to break up the fond on the bottom. Cook out the alcohol from the sauce.
- Add the gravy mixture.
- Add some milk to give it a creamier texture.
- Strain potatoes and then return to same pot they were boiling in and mash them. Add a splash of milk and some butter, and stir it up.
- If you are going to use a casserole dish, get that and put in the meat/veggie mixture.
- Whether you used a casserole dish or not, you will make a layer of mashed potatoes on top and try to level it out.
- Toss it into an oven to crisp up for a few minutes using the broil feature.
Notes
You can find recipes in odd places sometimes. This one came from Volume 2 of Scott Pilgrim versus the World by Bryan Lee O’Malley. While there is some stuff with the story going on, around 4 pages include a vegetarian version of a shepherd’s pie recipe. I replaced a few things and it is an authentic recipe. Of course you can add things if you’d like (that’s how almost all cooking goes…except baking; that’s a bit more of a science). This recipe came from seeing something in a work of fiction and wondering how that would actually taste. Keep an eye out when you’re dabbling into some worlds of fiction for some cooking inspiration.
