https://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/pressure-cooker-spiced-shepherds-pie/
It’s been a while …
It has to be said that this isn’t a “quickly rustled up” sort of dish but, with time on your hands, it’s worth the wait.
I dragged the Instant Pot out from the utility room for this one. I had bought a non-stick inner pot for it a while back and it was certainly a good purchase for something like this.
I browned the lamb mince in the frying pan – less steaming and all that. I do find that browning stuff makes a difference to the end result even if it is a bit of a faff.
I used carrot, swede and parsnip for my root vegetables and sautéed them in the Instant Pot in the coconut oil. When they were beginning to brown, I added the garlic, ginger, coriander stalks and medium curry powder. I had to give it a good stir to stop the spices sticking on the bottom.
After a couple of minutes, I added the browned mince and the green lentils.
After that, in went the tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce (no idea what Pickapeppa sauce is) and the coconut cream. Fortunately, I found a box of powdered coconut stuff which can be mixed with more or less water to make “milk” or “cream”. As I had a lamb stock cube, I used that rather than chicken stock.
I then set the Instant Pot to 10mins on high and left it to it. I think it took about 25 mins to drop to natural pressure after cooking. The result was a thick, meaty ragu.
Decided it wasn’t worth pressure cooking the potatoes so I simply did them on the hob and riced them.
The second part was doing the spices etc for the potatoes. I finely chopped another onion and softened it in a saucepan with rapeseed oil.
Decided against 4 chillies as I have a tendency to overspice and these were quick perky. I de-seeded 3, took out the membrane and then finely chopped. They stayed out until the end but the garlic, mustard seeds and curry leaves went in for a few minutes before melting in a healthy-sized knob of butter.
Finally, the chopped coriander leaves and chopped chillis were added to the potatoes with the spiced butter.
Once cheese had been grated on top of the mince-then-potato, the pie was baked for 30mins at 180C. (I made one for 2 people and then 3 little one-person jobs which are in the freezer to be cheesed and cooked another day).
I served it with petit pois and a good squirt of tomato sauce. You can’t have shepherd’s pie without those two.
Do it again? Oh, yes! This is deliciously different. The bottom is warming, well-spiced, soft and filling. There is a slight sweetness from the swede and the parsnip which works well with the curry powder. The potato has little hits of chilli. If you’re not so keen on that, go down to one/two chillis and chop really finely.
Old Bull enjoyed it and he’s not a shepherd’s pie fan by any means. He said he thought the bottom could be a little more saucy/looser and so I would double the tomato next time. But if you want something warming that is a little off-piste, go for this. It’s worth the trouble.
Do it again? 