A Shepherd's Pie (of sorts)

First of all, a quick note for any of you who have a foraging bent. In the UK at least we are still very much in wild garlic/three cornered leek/jack by the hedge (aka garlic mustard) season - the above photo shows them cheek by jowl together at Kew Gardens, along with the English bluebells. They all do very well in my 1 Minute Greens Soup from Modern Pressure Cooking, or wilted into the Cheese, Garlic and Noodle Soup, or really anything you would add spinach or chard to, but a little tip - reserve a handful to add post pressure cooking and wilt in off the heat before blitzing. It will add a bit of oomph to the flavour. Just not too much if it is wild garlic, as it has the strongest flavour and it is easy to overdo it. Jack by the hedge, you can get away with more, because it has a much subtler flavour. Jack by the Hedge flower tips are also very good lightly steamed (zero minutes, fast release).

I had a surprising conversation the other day, revolving around what you can and cannot call a shepherd’s pie. The surprising element which prompted it was a recipe for a lobster version, which called for the steaming of 5 live lobsters, before mixing the meat with shitake mushrooms, leeks and peas, and then making a sauce from wine and cream. As far as I am concerned, this makes it much closer to a very luxurious fish pie and I would love to know why the author called it shepherd’s pie – there is unusually no headnote for context and explanation. I would normally ask, but I can’t in this case, because the recipe was one of Molly O’Neill’s – a food writer who I admired enormously, lobster shepherd’s pie nomenclature notwithstanding - and she very sadly passed away in 2019.

I did wonder about whether in the US anything covered with mashed potato and baked might be called a shepherd’s pie, in the same way that anything given an egg and flour crust can be called “chicken fried”? (This was something else that confused me no end the first time I saw it on a menu). Purely so everyone knows it is mash not pastry? But I haven’t got anywhere with this and I don’t think it makes sense, anyway, because a mashed potato fish pie in the US is usually called a fish pie, not a shepherd’s pie, although it is also sometimes called a fisherman’s pie, as a nod to the similarity with shepherd’s pie. So why not call the lobster pie lobsterman pie? Since this recipe was published in 1995, there have been lots of other lobster shepherd’s pies, cropping up in Epicurious, Bon Apetite, Martha’s Vineyard Times, amongst others. Unsurprisingly, it seems to be an Eastern Seaboard thing. But nothing before. So I suspect I will remain none the wiser.

I am NOT giving you a recipe for  a lobster shepherd’s pie today. I hope no one is disappointed by this. I will just say that if you want to steam lobster or any large shellfish, or potatoes for mash, a pressure cooker is the way to do it, for the massive savings on fuel and water (info on both in Modern Pressure Cooking).

As shepherd’s pie was on my mind I decided to turn what was going to be a fairly traditional picadillo into one, rather than serving it with the usual rice and black beans. Shepherd’s pie has always very much a moveable feast in our house. It is not uncommon for me to shout out to everyone who is home and ask what spicing they might like. This is is how we ended up with the keema peas version which appears in Modern Pressure Cooking. I usually stick with lamb or goat for the meat, either leftovers or fresh diced or minced meat. Beef I consider to be cottage pie, but picadillo can be lamb or beef so I have included it as an option in the ingredient list below. I might eke out the meat with brown or green lentils - both will cook in the same time and break down enough to thicken the sauce a bit, or with diced aubergine (lamb and aubergines are such a good combination and I’ll usually go a bit Greek with the flavours so it ends up a shepherd’s pie/moussaka mash up) or mushrooms. When I want to go all out from scratch, and be traditionally British about it I always remind myself of what Gary Rhodes does in New British Classics and adapt for the pressure cooker (much less red wine needed).

This version, as written, isn’t exactly as I cooked it last week, because I made mistakes. The filling is based on the flavours traditional to picadillo – the Cuban version - and because sweet potatoes are used much more than “Irish” potatoes in the Caribbean, I thought it might be nice to make it with sweet white fleshed potatoes (the purple skinned kind), in place of what we would consider to be the usual sort. I confess, my main reason for this was that I was out of floury potatoes and had some sweet ones to use up. I was wrong to do so. Even with the heat of the scotch bonnet to balance, it was too sweet (not as sweet as orange fleshed would have been, but still too sweet). And I forgot that the larger white fleshed sweet potatoes can sometimes be stringy inside, so they were not the easiest to put through a ricer, either. So the recipe calls for floury potatoes, but use whatever roots you like.

As for the picadillo – this is very much my own adaptation of Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz’s recipes in her Caribbean Cooking book. I don’t think I have ever made it the same way twice. It is often described as a hash, as it can include diced potatoes, so putting potatoes mashed on top isn’t too much of a stretch. The main difference between this recipe and a proper picadillo is the inclusion of the beans and lentils, the latter of which are there to help thicken the meat sauce, but which you should probably miss out if you want to make picadillo and serve with black beans and rice, as is traditional, as the texture should really be a bit looser and drier.

The method below is an all in one method. If you have a pressure cooker that is deep enough (any tall 5-6l should do it), you can cook the potatoes above the filling. If not, even cooking them separately will save all the time and fuel.

Cuban Shepherd’s Pie

For the filling:

1 tbsp olive oil

500g lamb or beef mince

50g cooking chorizo, finely chopped (optional)

1 large onion, diced

1 tsp cumin seed

1 green pepper, finely diced

2 sticks celery, finely diced

3 cloves garlic, finely diced

1 hot pepper (I like a scotch bonnet), finely diced) OR use hot sauce to taste

250g cooked black beans (optional)

75g brown or green lentils (optional)

2 tbsp tomato puree

½ tsp ground allspice

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp dried oregano

25g raisins

50g pimento stuffed olives, sliced

25g capers

2 tsp Pickapeppa sauce or Worcestershire sauce

Juice and zest of 1/2 lime

For the topping:

1 kg potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

2 large sprig thyme

4 spring onions, finely sliced (include the greens)

50g butter

50-75ml milk

Zest of 1/2 lime

100g coarse cheese

First start the filling. Heat your pressure cooker (or frying pan if you want to do the searing elsewhere). When it is hot, add the olive oil, followed by the meat a few moments later. Spread the meat (including the chorizo if using) evenly over the base of your cooker, pressing it down, then leave for a couple of minutes until it is well browned on the underside. Break up and stir, and continue to brown. You will probably find that the meat will render out a lot of fat. If so, strain this off and leave to cool for a little while – it will take no time at all for it to harden, leaving some liquid underneath. Don’t discard either.

Remove the meat from the cooker and add around a tablespoon of the fat you have just strained off. Add the onion, cumin seed, celery and green pepper and fry for a few minutes until the vegetables are starting to soften. Add the garlic and cook for a minute longer.

Stir in the chilli or hot sauce, then return the meat to the cooker along with all the remaining ingredients except the lime zest and juice. Include the liquid reserved from searing the meat at the beginning. Season with salt and pepper and add 200ml water. Stir, making sure the base is completely deglazed.

If cooking the potatoes in the same pot, put a trivet topped with a steamer basket in your pressure cooker, making sure the steamer basket is suspended above the meat sauce below. Add the potatoes on top, with one of the sprigs of thyme. Season with salt.

Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Lower the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure. Cook for 10 minutes and allow to drop pressure naturally.

Remove the potatoes, steamer basket and trivet from the cooker and mash (I prefer to put through a ricer). Add the leaves from the remaining sprig of thyme, along with the butter, milk, spring onions and lime zest. If you happen to have any of the foraged leaves I mention above, they would work, finely chopped in, too. Mix thoroughly, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as necessary.

Add lime zest and juice to the filling and simmer uncovered for a short while if it is at all runny (it will also thicken considerably as it cools). Taste and adjust as necessary - you might want more heat or seasoning. Transfer to an oven proof dish and top with the mashed potato, followed by the cheese.

Now for the baking, and you have options.

You can put in a hot oven (180Cish).

If you have an air fryer, you can cook at 180C.

If you have an electric pressure cooker with an air fryer lid, you can assemble in the pot or use the Pot in Pot method (dish on top of a trivet) and air fry (roast function at 180C).

They all take around 20-25 minutes for the cheese to melt and brown, and the filling to be piping hot.

You could also get away with putting it under a hot grill, but I like the filling to be super hot, bubbling up around the sides as you can see it has done in this picture.

I served this very simply with seasonal PSB and asparagus, cooked together with a tiny splash of water for zero minutes. Perfectly cooked through, so green they could almost be raw, but I promise you they’re not! With butter and another squeeze of lime juice.

What else have I been pressure cooking? There has been a little bit less cooking over the last week – we were out a bit more because of the Easter holidays, and then I was out of commission a little bit with a painful pulled muscle in my hip. It gave Adam a chance to get into the kitchen and cook a few very unappealing looking things which only a 14 year old boy could find appetising but which actually tasted very good (thinking in particular about his egg, bacon and vegetable stir fry recipe. Looked GRIM. Tasted great once I had steeled myself to try it). I am also trying to get through the freezer store of meals because I am at the beginning of a big project again (not one of my own books) and need space. Ditto the store cupboards, which is why I have been using up all the pasta types which don’t usually take well pressure cooking and trying to perfect them. For example, angel hair. Unless I use way more liquid than I want to, it always sticks to the base, always clumps together, always cooks unevenly. It only takes zero minutes, but still, so fiddly and perhaps best saved for noodle soups. I have also found myself having to experiment with a few pressure cooker vegan dishes for a thing and have so far failed to make a vegan cheesecake which doesn’t rely on any dairy substitute that isn’t ultra processed. It also led me to try coconut condensed milk which I am sad to say was really quite unpleasant in both taste and texture. I also made several versions of specific soups and pastas before I was happy with the results - these mainly went to neighbours with the usual caveat of “this is NOT the final version!”

Here is one of the freezer meals which was a good base for a lot of vegetables -

I had leftover lamb shoulder from just before Easter, which went into the freezer sitting in all its garlicky, herby, red winey cooking liquid. I defrosted it in the pressure cooker, which took zero minutes, natural release. Then in my big saute pressure cooker,  I seared carrots, added onion, celery, more garlic, frozen broad beans and cooked for 2 minutes HP fast release. Then added the lamb, the cooking liquid, chard, frozen broad beans and leeks. Cooked for zero minutes, fast release. Served with couscous. Almost instant casserole!

Just before I go, I want to express my thanks again to all subscribers, whether old, new, free and paid. I hope you are all getting something out of these posts. Please do shout if there is something you would like me to cover which hasn’t yet cropped up - I have several long posts in the works, you might just nudge me into pushing something to the top of the list. And finally thanks to everyone who came to the demo at Omved Gardens last Saturday - you were a great audience and some of the questions that came up really made me think, which is always a good thing!