Cottage Pie

Recipe: British comfort food

Serves 6

Preparation time 30 minutes

Cooking time about 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients 500g minced beef/ 2 cloves of chopped garlic/ 1 onion (250g)/ 2 carrots (250g)/ 160g mushrooms/ 80g peas/ 1 tbsp gravy granules/ 160ml beef stock/ 120ml dry red wine/ 2 tbsp tomato puree/ 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce/ 1 tsp dried thyme/ 2 tbsp olive oil/ 1kg potatoes/ 30g butter/ 60g milk/ 60g grated cheddar cheese/ ½ tsp salt/ ½ tsp ground black pepper

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Measuring terminology: tbsp=tablespoon (15ml)/ tsp=teaspoon (5ml)

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1 Peel the potatoes and cut into roughly 4cm cubes. Tip them into an electric rice cooker with 80 ml water and cook on white rice mode for about 20 minutes. You can also use a steamer if you do not have a rice cooker.

2 Chop the carrots, onion and mushrooms into about 1cm pieces and fry them over a medium heat with 1 tbsp olive oil for 20 minutes or until softened.

3 Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large pan over medium heat and fry the minced beef until browned for about 20 minutes. Add the wine and simmer for another 5 minutes.

4 Tip the chopped garlic, tomato puree, gravy granules, beef stock, the cooked vegetables and the cooked beef into a large pan. Stir well and leave on a high heat to boil for around 10 minutes. Then simmer over low heat for about 30 ~ 40 minutes until the sauce becomes thick, then add the salt and pepper.

5 Meanwhile, mash the cooked potatoes roughly with butter and grated cheddar. Then add the milk and continue to mash everything thoroughly.

6 Preheat the oven to 220°C (fan: 200°C/ gas: 7).

7 Put the cottage pie filling in a deep baking dish and spoon the mash over the top. Make a textured pattern with a fork, combing the potato topping so it will cook and turn crispy in the oven/ under the grill. Put the dish in the oven for about 20 minutes.

8 Take the dish out of the oven when the potato crust has turned a golden brown colour.

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I think cottage pie is an excellent dish to prepare for guests. Since this recipe serves 6 people and you have to open a bottle of wine to make it, you can serve your visitors a glass of wine with the meal. It is also very easy to make - just cut the vegetables and stir fry them with minced beef, boil everything, top off with mashed potato and that’s it.

I bought a bottle of wine for cooking. I was considering Chianti but chose Shiraz in the end because I remember it was hit-and-miss when I bought Chianti before without knowing much about it. The Shiraz I bought is a supermarket own brand one; it was only £6.99 and it tasted great on its own as well as in the cottage pie.

Any wine that is not sweet can be used for cooking cottage pie. Wine masks the meaty smell when cooking meat, and adds to the flavour of the beef. Cottage pie mainly uses the hob to cook, and the grill is just to make the potato crust crispy. That crispy crust is my favourite part.

In step 4, I don’t make the stock separately, I just add some water with a stock cube. Below is a photo of the stock cube and gravy granules I used. You can use vegetable stock instead of beef stock. The cube form of beef stock is quite common in the UK and is used in the same way as Korean beef granules or vegetable tea bags.

cottage pie filling image source: https://www.recipetineats.com/cottage-pie/

I don’t know why, but the cottage pie gets more tasty the day after, like doenjang-jjigae or dak-bokkeumtang. You don't even have to reheat it - it is delicious straight from the fridge. Maybe one of the reasons is the umami flavour that comes from boiling meaty foods for a long time. Cottage pie needs to be kept in the fridge and is best eaten within 2 to 3 days. It is good for a lunch box too. We didn’t have guests this time so I put the cottage pie into an airtight container, stored it in the fridge then packed this for my other half's lunch. I didn’t need to think about what we would eat for a while.

Pie comes in both savoury and sweet versions. In the past, I only knew sweet pies as desserts, so I was not familiar with pies for the main course. If doenjang-jjigae is soul food for Koreans, cottage pie is like that for the British. When we lived in Korea I wondered about cosy British homemade meals because my other half had been living in a foreign country for a long time. I thought he might be missing some soul food. The first British meal he made for me was a cottage pie at that time. The pie is a very British traditional food that seems to be the equivalent to something like a Korean baeksuk. Cottage pies, steak & ale pies and pasties have that cosy, warm ‘taste of the UK’ that I like.

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Cottage pie originated in the UK and is now loved all over the world. The difference between cottage pie and shepherd's pie is the type of meat used. Cottage pie uses minced beef, while shepherd’s pie uses minced lamb as you can guess from the name. The name "cottage pie" was first used at the end of the 18th century. It was around this time that the poorer people of Britain mainly ate potatoes for most meals as a daily food. Poor farmers who lived in cottages saved leftover foods from their Sunday roasts and made meat pies, topping them with potatoes. According to some sources, poorer people who found it difficult to cook with expensive beef used lamb instead and made shepherd’s pie. The origins of Korean bibimbap were as a simple meal for poor farmers during the Korean Three Kingdoms period, so they had something to eat while working in the fields. Dishes made during certain eras in each country represent that country and have become foods loved by people around the world, being recognized as cultural heritage.

(References: History of traditional Korean food, Seasoned Pioneers)

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