Rustic Cottage Pie Revisited

I wrote about my recent mini bulk cooking session a couple of days ago.  Essentially what I did was make three casseroles in advance to help get us through a very busy weekend ahead.  One of the casseroles was cottage pie sometimes erroneously referred to as shepherd's pie. Technically, shepherd's pie is made using ground lamb while cottage pie is made using any type of ground meat except game meat (eg. moose, venison) then it is called hunter's pie.  If using fish it is called Maritimer's pie.  There you be, a short lesson on naming essentially the same dish based on the type of meat used.

Cottage pie is a very frugal, easy to make, nutritious casserole.  I often cook two roasts at a time which gives me double the gravy.  I freeze the extra gravy for later use.  In general, meat or poultry gravies freeze nicely but those thickened with corn starch thin slightly.  I browned the ground beef, drained the seasoned lightly and stirred in about a cup of the beef gravy.  That formed my meat layer.  I topped the meat layer with seared mushrooms, sweet peas and niblet corn.  The potato mixture was mashed steamed potatoes, steamed carrots, herb & garlic cream cheese, sour cream and a little beef stock.  I used the rest of the gravy to top the cottage pie servings.

Note the layering of the beef flavours by the use of three beef ingredients - ground beef, beef stock and beef gravy.  Each form of the beef adds a slightly different element while enhancing the flavour of the other beef variants.  This was a very simple, frugal dish using about a pound of lean ground beef yet giving a yield of 6 good sized delicious servings.  Cottage pie does freeze nicely.  Simply freeze after assembly without cooking then reheat right from frozen without thawing.

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