Beef and Mushroom Pepper Pie

Here's a recipe that I love to cook for my family every couple of weeks. It's a cottage pie and this in particular is a pepper, beef and mushroom cottage pie. What I love most about it is I'm reducing the amount of beef in it. So I'm adding lots more vegetables, not only carrots, onions, celery, but I'm also hiding some mushes in here. So instead of using one kilo of beef, what I'm going to be using is 500 grams of mince and then the other 500 grams, well, you substitute it with mushrooms. So to start with, let's sear off the minced meat. We'll just turn the pan on and a good glug of olive oil. Now, usually you'd start with the vegetables, but I actually like to sear off the meat first so we get that real caramelisation on it and reduce a lot of the liquid that's going to come out of it. So in with our minced meat and we'll just break that up into smaller clumps. Now let's get onto the mirepoix. So this is the base of any good stew for a cottage pie. Carrots, onion and celery. And when I'm making this, particularly for my little boy, I like to finely, finely chop these vegetables so he can't see them. And the best way to do this and the fastest way is just to roughly chop everything and place it into a food processor, pulse it a few times and it's finely chopped. In fact, you can do this stage way ahead of time and freeze this. So all you have to do is defrost a batch of mirepoix and then it's ready to go for your next stew just like this one. So I've got two onions, just roughly chopping it like so. And one carrot is plenty. And by all means, with this mirepoix, you can add other vegetables to it. You could add some zucchini, fantastic. Or even some capsicum works a treat. Okay, to this I'll add a few cloves of garlic and some rosemary. I love rosemary, particularly with the mushrooms and the beef. So a few stalks of that. Lid goes on and we're going to pulse it until it's finely chopped. All right, I am really happy with that. Let's have a look at this mince. We've got some good colour and we've still got some clumps, which is what I want for this. So we're just going to remove our mince, place that onto a plate. And in the same pan, I'll add another glug of olive oil. We just want to cook off these vegetables. So we'll just tip them into our pan. Scrape that in. And it looks like a lot of vegetables now, but as it cooks down, you'll see it really breaks down. I'll also add a pinch of salt and let's wait for that to cook. In the meantime, I'm going to finely chop my mushrooms. I love button mushrooms and they're a fantastic way to add in an extra vegetable to a dish just like this. They're really mild in flavour and when you cut them up finely, they resemble mincemeat. So if you've got a few fussy eaters in the family, they won't even know that they're in there. I also like it because once it's mixed in with the mincemeat, it almost gives it a really juicy flavour. So just with my knife, I'm just going to finely chop my mushrooms and then they can go into. All right, the mushrooms have cooked down nicely, so it's time to return our beef. Place that in and just give everything a mix. And you can see it all coming together now. Everything's finely chopped. Now, because it's a pie, I want it to be slightly thick. So I like to add a little sprinkling of plain flour. And I did mention it's a pepper pie. So what I've done here is just crushed some peppercorns, just in a mortar and pestle. So I've got two textures. If you are doing this for the kiddies, you don't have to add as much as I'm adding here. So I like a good heaped teaspoon of that pepper, so you can really taste it. Now I'm going to add some tomato paste. And as always, with the tomato paste and that flour, do cook it off for a moment. Okay, an optional addition of some red wine. If you don't want to add any alcohol, just leave it out completely and go straight onto the stock. And to give this an extra meaty flavour, some Worcestershire sauce. Okay, finally, we'll add some stock. We'll just pour over. And then we're just going to allow this to cook. So I'll pop a lid on once it's come to the boil. And this is going to cook for about 30 to 40 minutes or until we've got a lovely thick stew. And while this cooks down, I'm just going to prepare my mash. So I've just got one kilo of potatoes. I've peeled them. They're in cold water. A good pinch of salt. We're going to bring it up to the boil. When it's boiling, I'll just turn it down slightly. And these will cook for about 20 minutes, 25 minutes or until they're tender. I'll strain them and then we can start mashing. Okay, this mash is looking really good. I haven't added too much milk to this because I don't want it to be too runny. This is the perfect consistency right here. See how it holds its shape? Now, I like to add an egg yolk to this. And this is just going to help set the top of it. Okay, so we'll just whip that in there, break that up and give it a really good stir. All right, have a look at this scrumptious stew. It's cooked down. You can see how thick and rich it is. And all of those veggies, including our mushrooms, have cooked down. And you wouldn't even know that there's that many veggies in there. And it smells so good. Okay, I'm going to transfer this over to a dish. And we'll just pour that in, scrape it all down. We'll just spread it out so it's quite even. And we'll dollop this mash just all over the top. I like to do this in little sections just so it's easier to spread out evenly. So big spoonfuls. And then I'll use a palette knife just to spread it out. This then goes into the oven 180 degrees for about 30 to 40 minutes or until it's golden brown over the top. Well, this beef and mushroom pepper pie is looking the goods. When you bring it out of the oven, do let it cool slightly because it's going to be piping hot. Now to serve this, I'm going to serve it the old English way, which is a generous helping straight into a shallow bowl. Look at that crispy topping. Place that on one side. Scoop up all the filling because really it's all about that filling there. Pour that on. And some peas. Good old peas. I've just steamed them. We're going to add them to our dish on the side. And this is fantastic as is. But I reckon there's some of you out there that are a bit like me and love a bit of tomato sauce on the side. Look how cute my little squidgy bottle is. A big dollop of tomato sauce. And that right there will convert the pickiest of eaters. I'm going to dig in. To think this is a dish that has so many different vegetables and loads of mushrooms all blended together with just a small amount of beef. This is like a hug in a bowl. It's a win-win. Everyone's going to love it. They really will. you