Mrs Bailey’s Shepherd’s Pie

“Shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd on top…”

Photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash

For the avoidance of doubt: if it’s made with minced/ground lamb, it’s a shepherd’s pie. If with beef, it’s a cottage pie. If with a mix of both, I guess it’s a shepherd’s cottage pie, or something. If you make it with fish in a white sauce, that would be a fish pie. If you make it with whole fish, their heads & tails poking out of a pastry crust, then that would be a star-gazey pie, and what are you doing here, reading this?

Ahem. Moving on:

Mrs Bailey is fond of this dish, for it’s easy enough that she can leave the senior kitchenmaid to oversee its making, quite unsupervised, while she does other necessary work. It’s also easy to scale up for a whole schoolful, or down for an intimate dinner [NB, this is as usual the down version I reproduce here, plenty for two and simple to multiply]. Either way, it tends to get devoured, and there’s little she likes better than clean dishes and girlish voices clamouring for more.

500g ground lamb, beef or a mixture

One onion, sliced

Two sticks celery, sliced

A couple of carrots, sliced

Garlic, lots

One 400g tin of fire-roasted crushed tomatoes, or nearest equivalent