Shepherdess pie

(or Vegetarian Shepherd’s pie)

This is a lovely one-pot meal (though you can add a light salad on the side, too), especially in winter months, as it’s very warming and filling. Note that this is a pretty salty recipe, so might need adapting/avoiding if you need to keep to low salt.

Ingredients

2 onions
3 carrots
1 courgette
2 handfuls of green beans
punnet of mushrooms
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 handfuls of frozen peas
tin of lentils
2 vegetable stock cubes
2 tablespoons Marmite
1 litre boiling water
3 large (baking size) potatoes
2 medium sweet potatoes
100g butter
salt

Method

Dice all the vegetables finely (around 7mm x 7mm) and sauté them on a low heat in the olive oil – I add them to the pan in the order listed above, stirring and leaving a couple of minutes in between each for the flavours to develop the way I like them to.

Add the peas and lentils.

Make the stock with the vegetable stock cubes, Marmite and boiling water.

Add about half the stock to the pan, turn the heat up to medium/high, put a lid on the pan and let it bubble away. It doesn’t matter if the vegetables stick to the bottom and burn a bit – in fact, that’s actually a desired effect!

Peel and cut up the potatoes and sweet potatoes and boil them until they’re cooked and mashable (stick a fork in and if they crumble a bit, then they’re ready).

Meanwhile, stir the vegetable mixture every 5-10 minutes and add some more stock, bit by bit. You’re aiming for the liquid to be soaked in/burnt off considerably, so that you have a consistency a bit like a bolognese.

When the potatoes are cooked, mash them really well and add the butter and a decent amount of salt (according to taste – though not as much as you might have for plain mash, because the filling is quite salty from the stock and Marmite).

Put all the filling in the bottom of a large (ovenproof) dish – I use either one of the lasagne dishes (as in the picture above) or a large oval dish – and spread it out evenly.

Cover the filling with the mash and spread it out evenly. Use a fork to score patterns in it.

Place under the grill for 10 minutes, or until crispy brown on top.

Accompaniments

Serve on its own or with a light green salad.

A full-bodied red wine or a nice dark ale will go well.

Adaptations

You can go for a slightly lighter version by keeping out the lentils and swapping the potatoes for butternut squash.