This dish and all the variations are also great for freezing into individual serving dishes when preparing meals for the ill or homebound. I buy the little aluminum loaf pans, bake the pie in them, browning the mashed potatoes and sprinkling with grated cheddar. They are easy to defrost and bake in the oven at 325 until warm and bubbly.
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Made this last week and husband has not stopped raving about it. It makes a lot for 2 people. Next time, I will place in 2 or 3 smaller baking pans.
In the UK they call them Good Shepherd pies.
Shepherd's pie without the lamb? forget!
These pie and the British ones are delicious when made properly. Actually Brit food is delicious if you have a good recipe of which there are hundreds, a good cook and good ingredients. I lived there and had it both ways, good/excellent food or not so good. Take the two fat ladies dishes for examples.
How about doing an article on no longer prepared New England savory pies: chicken and oyster, cod and oyster and other pies topped with mashed potato or a pastry lid?
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I like the whimsy in calling it a gardener's pie. However, there is no place for breadcrumbs in this sort of a pie. Potato mash only, with a fork run across the top before baking to develop little crunchy bits that can be stealthily picked off before dinner time.
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I knew I wasn’t the only one.
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I like the name Gardener's Pie, but it's not truly a gardener's pie when there's a cow in that garden (in the form of milk produced to feed a baby cow, but stolen by humans).
So I made a variation of this recipe with a non-dairy milk - cashew cream for the richness and a non-dairy butter as well. And since a leek-loving ex-boyfriend left me feeling like I never want to eat leeks again, I substituted less gritty, mild onions, added sweet bell pepper and carrots, and supplemented the fresh brown mushrooms and shiitakes with some dried cepes (and their broth).
I haven't heard anyone mention the word ''chocolate'' yet....
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I don't think this recipe works very well. Instead of leeks -which can be gritty- I used Crest toothpaste. Also, I did not cook or mash the potatoes, I just sliced and laid them on top at the end.
The flavors really did not mix very well and I cannot recommend.
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@Dude Love Too clever!
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If the dish doesn't include lamb, it is not to be called shepherd's pie, under any circumstances. The ingredients give the dish its name. Just as chicken pot pie wouldn't be called that if it contained beef or horse meat or whatever, instead of chicken.
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We love this idea, but my wife is lactose intolerant. We make Shepherds pie and Cottage pie and Pate Chien (a standard in my wife's home of Quebec). Any ideas on substitutes for the heavy cream? We know how to deal with butter and milk, but not heavy cream.
@Alaska Dave
I've made cashew cream a couple of times to go over roasted cauliflower steaks and thought it could work to replace cream. Just google it. There is also coconut milk powder but I have not tried it yet.
@Alaska Dave Whoops! Pate Chinois not Chien LOL!
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@Alaska Dave, look up vegan bechamel recipes online and sub that.
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Always was a BIG DISAPPOINTMENT for me when the answer was Shepherds Pie to my “what’s for dinner” question posed to my British mother. I am so glad as an adult I never have to eat this yucky mess. Eww.
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Big deal. I have been making this for over 20 years. It's not hard to cook without meat.
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Why, why, why do Irish joints EVERYWHERE insist upon calling the dish with ground beef Shepard's Pie? It is correctly called in your article, Cottage Pie. Just call it Cottage Pie in your menu. No one will be insulted by that. Any server could just explain the difference. Lamb is in Shepard's Pie and Ground Beef is in Cottage Pie. Or, simply explain that shepards look after sheep, not cattle.
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So wait, you lot in America don’t eat Shepard’s pie or have Steak and Kidney pie?
Wow. Missing out!
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I grew up being served shepherd’s pie for lunch in our local school cafeterias outside Philadelphia back in the ‘60’s and 70’s. My non-British mother also made it for dinner every so often, so shepherd’s pie is known in the US. Steak and kidney pie? No, for that we go to the UK!
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Before my freshly stropped carving knife makes first contact with a roast leg of lamb, I’m contemplating the Shepherd’s Pie I will be making with the inevitable leftovers. The vegetables may vary - when morels or porcini are around, I always work them in somehow. The starchy component might be potatoes or a mixture including turnips or celeriac or whatever; I may douse the vegetable/lamb mixture with amontillado or oloroso, marsala or even port.`
But the lamb is a constant. Last time I checked, lamb is what “shepherds” do. Nobody ever has herded leeks and mushrooms. There are no “English Leek Dogs.”
All with good reason.
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@chambolle, the title and sub-heading are, “When Shepherd’s Pie Loses the Lamb/Think of it as gardener’s pie.” Gardeners do herd leeks and mushrooms. And my leek dogs keep my garden free of footed predators, just as herding and droving dogs were bred to do. Even in England.
I think of it as Enlightened Shepherd’s pie.
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@chambolle My dog leeks every ten feet. He's a German Poodle Leakier.
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@chambolle
I love lamb, but as I grow in years fatty red meat has less appeal.
I cotton to this alternative.
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This sounds lovely! I can’t imagine making a vegetable pie without carrots, though, so those will definitely be added in.
I wonder how it would taste if the mash topping was colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale). Gonna try that.
While looking up other shepherd’s pie recipes, I found one (from Sainsbury’s!) where the mash is sweet potato, carrot and potato all cooked and smashed together. That was for a meat filling, but I could see playing with that idea sans meat. I think the filling would have to include corn. Maybe a succotash mix?
I like practically anything (except meat) in pie-ish form.
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skip the potatoes and use cauliflower !!!
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Made this today. Used: gobs of leeks, large amt of shrooms of all sorts, onions, blanched broccoli rabe, green cabbage, lot of garlic, thyme, a splash of sherry, covered in smashed yukon gold potatoes, simply DELISH! Do what suits your needs, its designed to be foolproof. Will make again.
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We call that kind of dish Refrigerator Special.
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"Shepherd’s pie, for example, is traditionally made with minced lamb and vegetables and baked with a mashed potato topping. If made with beef, however, it is referred to as cottage pie."
SOMEONE finally got it right on this side of the pond! If I got to choose (& this is why I don't), David Tanis would win the Pulitzer for this!
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@ Cameron DC
Not being a great admirer of mashed potatoes, a heretical question comes to my mind: can a pseudo-shepherd's pie be made in a crust?
The ingredients can stay unchanged -- lamb, mushrooms, vegetable or fish. I recall from the remote days of childhood a cold pie with fish and transparent cylindrical noodles, all in a crust.
@Tuvw Xyz If it were made with a crust it would be a "pot pie." I'm not a particular fan of the typical pie crust (just empty calories and not much taste) and prefer topping the "pot pie" with biscuits - preferably buttermilk buscuits. But then I suppose it's a cobbler. Sometimes I don't bother topping it at all, then it's just a stew. One could even top it with leftover pasta and baked- not sure what it would be called. Have fun. Play with your food.
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@ Golem18
I rather like crust made of puff or filo pastry. Your comment suggests that Beef Wellington is nothing but a generic variety of a [Something] Pie.
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And if the pie is filled with the fish species pilchards and topped with mashed potatoes, it is called a stargazy pie.
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@Marianne I just made one with (hot) smoked salmon and sauteed mushrooms and it was stargazy, crazy delicious!
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@ Marianne @ ambrose84 chicago
Thank you both for reminding me of fish pies.
Can one make them also with smoked sturgeon?
My preference would be to serve a fish pie cold.
There may be non-strict vegetarians who consume mushrooms (non-plants) and those who feel sorry for lambs, goats, and rabbits sacrificed in a pie. But I can hardly see a pie without meat, to be accompanied by a heavy read wine.
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@Tuvw Xyz
I’ve heard this one other time. We eat mushrooms.
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@Tuvw Xyz
I love lamb, but as I grow in years fatty red meat has less appeal. I cotton to this alternative.
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