Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Shepard's Pie
I began my first attempt at Shepard's Pie by peeling and chopping up three hefty red skinned potatoes, they were a little bit bigger in size than baseballs. After peeling and chopping then up I put them on to boil.

While they boiled away I put on my 'mince' to cook. And I started that by chopping and dicing up a medium yellow onion, a pablano pepper (I used pablano because I wanted a little bit but not too much heat.), and five cloves of garlic.
I sauteed all that chopped stuff in a pan and then I added a tbl spoon of paprika, a tbl spoon of fresh thyme, a tsp of crushed black pepper, a dash of cumin, and a tbl spoon of ground coriander. As the chopped aromatic veggies cooked I added about one quarter cup of pinot noir wine and then I put in two thirds of a pound of ground lamb. I simmered all that stuff together with six chopped up cherry tomatoes while my potatoes cooked.
When the potatoes finally got done I mashed them up with about a quarter cup of yogurt based butter substitute, Brummel and Brown is the brand I used, a dash of milk, and one third cup of finely chopped up Parmigiano-Reggiano. After I mashed them I got out my electric beater and whipped them so as to make them nice and fluffy. Next I took my mince off the stove and I put it in an 8x8 Pyrex pan and I spread it out evenly. Then I spooned on the mashed potatoes and it looked like this:
As you can see I don't have a piping bag so I had to settle for just spreading and smoothing out the potatoes. Then I put the nearly completed Shepard's Pie in the oven which I had preheated to 350 degrees and I baked it for 20 minutes. And this is what it looked like when it came out:
Those brown spots are from the juices that bubbled up during cooking. The potatoes had formed a nice hard crust on top but you can't tell it from the picture. I let it cool a little bit and I served it up with a salad made out of mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, and shredded carrot:
For my first try at making this dish I have to say it tasted pretty damn good. However, next time I'll use a bit more ground lamb (and you can use whatever ground meat you like and you vegetarians can use mushrooms and TVP if you like) and I'll bake it for 30 minutes at least. All in all I can see why the British love this comfort food dish and I'll be adding it to my repertoire, it'll be a great meal to make during the depths of the winter.