My shepherd's pie recipe

Agatha has asked for the recipe of my shepherd’s pie but it was in my head :) So now I'm writing out the recipe. I have actually gotten the idea from a recipe in Today’s newspaper column some time ago and just made my own version. The pumpkin adds sweetness to the otherwise savoury dish. Joan and Mom suggested that sweet potato could be an alternative too but I have yet to try that.

The ingredients are:

Fillings:

• Minced beef (about 400g) – You can substitute this with minced chicken
• Fresh button mushrooms (a handful and cut into small chunks) – you can use shitake mushrooms too.
• 1 or 2 carrot (cut into small chunks) – you can use celery or your favorite veggies or even frozen vegetable but I didn’t use that as Sis doesn’t like green peas.
• 1 or 2 tomatoes (cut into small chunks)
• 1 can of cream of mushroom soup (I only use about ¾ can)
• 1 teaspoon of Maggi Chicken stock granules
• 1 tablespoon of light soya sauce
• Pepper (amount as you desire)
• ½ teaspoon of sugar
• ½ teaspoon of cornstarch (mum said it helps to make the filling moist)
• 2 tablespoon of olive oil

On top of the fillings:

• 3 or 4 large potatoes
• Pumpkin (about ½ the amount of potato)
• Grated cheese (I bought a packet containing a mixture of Cheddar, Mozzarella, Parmesan)

How to make your own shepherd pie:

1. Marinate the minced meat (a few hours before the stir-frying) with the sugar, chicken stock granules and cornstarch and refrigerate it.
2. Steam the pieces of carrot, pumpkin and potato. As I want the carrots to be cooked and not as soft as the pumpkin and potato, I remove the carrot once it is cooked and leave pumpkin and potato to continue being steamed. If you like your carrot to be crunchy in the fillings, you can stir-fry it with the other ingredients later instead of steaming it.
3. Mash the steamed softened pumpkin and potato together and set it aside.
4. Heat up oil in frying pan, stir-fry tomato pieces (be careful of the initial spluttering due to the water content in tomato), followed by mushroom, carrot and meat. Add in the light soya sauce (this wasn’t added in marinating of the meat as Mum said the soya sauce will turn sourish).
5. Beef: Don’t overcook the meat as it will be in the oven later and you don’t want the beef to taste dry. The cream soup can be added almost immediately after you manage to mix the beef with the earlier ingredients. When the cream is well mixed in (don’t wait till the beef is fully cooked i.e. no redness detected), pour them into a tray (aluminium or pyrex). The filling should reach half of the tray, as there are still pumpkin, potato and cheese to go on top. Chicken: The meat needs to be cooked longer than the beef. When it’s half cooked, add in the cream soup and follow the rest of above steps.
6. Preheat the oven at 200 degree Celsius. Use a fork and spoon to cover the fillings with the pumpkin and potato followed by a thick layer of grated cheese. Bake for about 30 minutes or more until the cheese has melted and turning brown and giving a nice aroma.

Let me know if any of the above is unclear and tell me what you think after trying the recipe. Happy cooking and baking!