“Shepherd’s pie”, and a competition…

 

Ingredients:

The filling

3 tbs vegetable oil

2 tbs tomato purée

2 medium carrots

2 medium onions

400 g cherry tomatoes

500 g green lentils

100 g beluga lentils

2 tbs mustard seeds

about 2 litres of veg stock

dark soy sauce

3 tbs starch

The top

2 tsp salt

5 or 6 large potatoes

2 tbs margarine

100 ml soy milk

1 tbs mustard

Warning: This is enough for two pies. I usually freeze half so that I can make another pie later.

Dice your carrots, tomatoes and onions. Weigh and rinse your lentils. Put the oil in the biggest pan you have (and you will need a big pan, or you’ll have to halve the ingredients) and heat on full. Add the tomato purée, turn the heat down to medium and fry for a minute, then add the carrots and stir.

Carrots n tomato purée

After about five to ten minutes, add the tomatoes, stir well and leave for five minutes.

Tomatoes, carrots and tomato purée

Then add the onions. After a minute or two you can add the lentils, mustard seeds and half of the vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Almost done

Stir occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Add half of the remaining vegetable stock, the dark soy sauce and the starch, and stir well. Leave it for another 15 minutes and then check if your lentils and carrots are cooked through. If not, add more veg stock if you need it and simmer for another ten minutes. Repeat until your lentils are cooked through.

Done!

And that was it, the filling’s done :)

The top is easy, you can just make mashed potatoes as you normally would, or you can try my mustard mash:

Peel and chop your potatoes, add salt to the water and boil until they’re cooked. Then leave them for another five minutes to make sure they’re really, really cooked ;)

Pour the potatoes into a sieve and add two generous tablespoons of margarine to the pan, and throw the potatoes back in there. Mash well. Add the milk and mash. Add the mustard and mash again. Since there’s nothing worse than lumpy mash: mash again. If you’re not sure it’s fluffy enough for you, you can add a touch more milk (and mash!). You want to make sure that the mash isn’t too stiff to spread over the filling, so I use a touch more milk than I would if I was making bangers and mash.

Now you can start putting spoonfuls of mash on top of your lentil filling. Be careful though, obviously the mash will push the lentils away, so don’t just bang a great big spoonful in the middle, or the lentil filling will pour out over the sides. Guess how I know that ;)

Spooning

Put small spoonfuls of mash around the edges and then work your way to the middle. Spread it flat over the filling using the back of the spoon.

Spooned

Then get a fork and do this:

V!

The V is optional of course, but I can’t guarantee your results if you don’t do it :)

Then put some salt and pepper on top and put it in the oven until the top is golden.

If you made your filling in the morning and your mash in the late afternoon like I just did, and they’re both cold before they go into the oven, I would put the pie in the oven for about an hour at 180. If you made it all at the same time and everything is still hot, you can either put it under the grill to get some colour on the top, or you can put it in the oven on high (210) for about 15-20 minutes.

Ready to eat!The first scoop

Serve with some green veg (green beans, broccoli or peas).

Tea is served

The competition:

If you’ve got a clever name for this recipe please tell me in the comments. If you win, I’ll make you a “new name” pie! But you’ll have to come to ours to get it, and we’ll wanna eat some of it… ;)

3 thoughts on ““Shepherd’s pie”, and a competition…

  1. Hachis Ohnetier
    Lentils in Sheep’s Clothing
    Mary Had a Little Lentil
    Baa Baa No Sheep
    Like Lentils to the Slaughter
    No Violence to the Lambs
    PotLent Green

    (PS: i want that fuckin pie! :D )

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