derryX’s “Maybe I’m the shepherd” shepherd pie

One of the awesome Christmas gifts Cassie gave me this year was a professional meat grinder and sausage stuffer, and to christen it, I decided that I wanted to freshly mince some lamb for a proper shepherd pie. The inspiration for this was a quickfire video I saw of my favorite chef, Gordon Ramsay, making shepherd pie.

I bought 3 lbs of boneless leg of lamb (purchased at Falvo Meats for $9.29/lb), and I cubed it to fit in the grinder. I scaled the rest of the recipe appropriately (by eye, for the most part).

And I got 3lbs of ground lamb…within like 30 seconds!

I boiled up some peeled and quartered Yukon gold potatoes in salted water for 15 minutes.

I drained them and passed them through a ricer.

I quickly mixed the riced potatoes with enough warmed heavy cream and butter to bring it together into a nice mashed potato.

Then I got to work on the meat base.

I finely chopped some fresh thyme and rosemary.

I got my wine and chicken stock ready.

I grated up the onions, carrots, and garlic, and cried like a nutjob.

I got the worschestershire sauce and tomato paste ready.

I browned the lamb, drained the excess fat, and added the grated vegetables,

allowed that to cook for a few minutes, then added the herbs.

I added the tomato paste, and deglazed with red wine. Once that reduced to nothing, I added some chicken stock and allowed the mixture to cook down for a few minutes.

I laid this out in a non-reactive ceramic dish…

topped it with the mashed potatoes, leveled it out, added a very liberal coating of freshly grated parmigianno regianno cheese over the top, and baked it for 20 minutes.

Then I served it!

It was amazing. I impressed myself here.

In all honesty, I’d like to try this with beef next time, only because it would be much more cost effective. However, I didn’t mind splurging for the lamb to make this dish right. Hopefully, for the future, the price of lamb comes down so I can make this regularly.

As an added bonus, I got a bunch of desserts that I can’t remember now from Crisan.

Side-note: Crisan bread pudding (approx 2 o’clock in the above) was out of this world. The rest, especially the baba rum, was pretty bad.