Michelin Cottage Pie at Home

Cottage pie is one of those dishes that everyone thinks they know, but often it's flat and a bit disappointing. This is a version from a two Michelin-star restaurant that'll absolutely blow your socks off. This is a dish, I reckon, that's been badly made across the UK for such a long time. And it was only when I was reading this book, The Ritz, John Williams, MBE, that I saw this version of a cottage pie. To be honest, it really got me inspired about what this dish could potentially be. And having cooked it, slightly changed it just to make it a little bit more accessible and affordable, a bit of work, but it really elevates something that everyone thinks of as just like that staple British dish that they have as a midweek meal to something really, really remarkable and special. So for those who don't know, The Ritz is a two Michelin-star restaurant, recently awarded two Michelin stars. It was actually a one-star for a long time, for years and years and years. Recently got a two-star. I think this sort of moved towards really sort of good quality, traditional, fine dining, I suppose. It's an amazing restaurant. Me and Jack had the pleasure of getting suited and booted and going there, and it was absolutely awesome. Such an amazing experience. John Williams is like this sort of world-renowned, classical chef who heads up The Ritz. He calls for oxtail. Oxtail's great. It is quite hard to get and it's quite expensive. So essentially the reason he's using oxtail is because of that magical thing called collagen. Oxtail's got lots and lots of natural collagen in there. We actually decided that we were going to use chunks of short rib and chunks of shin. Short rib, lots and lots of natural collagen. Shin, slightly leaner, much cheaper cut. Lots more sinews running through it. Obviously one of the hardest working parts of the cow, but perfect for something like this, which requires you to do a long braise. Should mention traditionally, or what most people would recognize, cottage pie would always use minced beef. It's important. People always say this is to seal the juices in, but it's not. It's basically to develop layers of flavor. If you think that that's the outside there, this bond is going to go into the sauce and make it really robust. So once you've got like your meat really nicely browned all over, you're looking for golden brown, not too dark. Take your meat out. Okay, and then in this pan, which we've obviously got all this amazing flavor, we're just going to add our red wine. Notice I'm reducing my red wine sort of separately first. If you basically, if you put it in when it's got all the alcohol, you get this sort of like whiny flavor. So I just want to reduce it until it's really nice and sweet. So whilst that cooks, we can get ahead and make our mash. So what I often find with cottage pie, I mean, I absolutely love it, to be honest. It's proper like sort of like English staple. I always made it a lot when I was a kid, but what I often find is that the mash is kind of like a little bit watery. And that's normally when it's made by boiling the potatoes. It gets like unwanted moisture in there. Making really good mash is all about getting rid of moisture. And the best way to do that is to roast. Now, this is just an agria potato. You can use a Yukon Gold. It's probably better to stick with something that's a little bit sweeter and a little bit more waxy. Like the secret to this recipe is actually the mash. Where it differs from normal recipes, this is what they call a pomme de chesse. So a pomme de chesse is an enriched mash with egg yolks. Stabbing all over. All you were thinking about here is extracting as much moisture from the potato as possible. That's why the salt's down there. That's why we sort of permeate that skin. All we want to do now is cook this at 180 for around about 55, 65 minutes. You just want to cook it until it's completely soft. Your knife goes in and the potato falls off. We're just going to make a bouquet garni using the part of the leek that you typically don't use, the green part. And then we put all of our aromats inside. So we've got bay leaf, traditionally, little sprig of thyme, a few things of rosemary, a flavor tea bag in your sauce. So it's going to sit there really happily whilst your meat braises, releasing all of those beautiful aromas, oils, that's sort of natural inside the herbs. And then this just makes it really easy to pull out. Our wine's almost reduced way over by half at the moment. Just taste it just until what you were looking for is basically the tannins sort of escape. And basically what you want is this sort of residual sweetness. So with this recipe, I'm just using a little bit of beef stock and equal parts chicken. It's already quite beefy and I don't want it to be too heavy. Either beef or chicken, it would be fine. But I just like my cottage pie a little bit lighter. So I've got some reduced chicken stock and some beef stock in there. Just whack your meat back in there with your bouquet garni as well. So stock goes on. Let's try and, some of our discerning viewers will probably, at this point, recognize that I'm obviously going to put a nice big fat cartouche on there as well. Give the people what they want, as they say. In the oven, 160 for around about three and a half hours. You want it to be pulling away really nicely and you want that liquid to reduce. Right, potatoes are cooked, cooled down slightly. These ones took about an hour. They're a little bit bigger than I would normally get. Tap off some of that salt, allow them to steam slightly. You look at this potato. It's really dry and fluffy all around that exterior and then just the center is still nice and moist. It sort of shows exactly why this technique of roasting them is the best. And then we're going to scoop into a bowl. So it was invented by someone called Antoine Carême and this is when potatoes were sort of making their way into grand banquets and you can manipulate and change the shape of a pomme de chesse, which was very on trend at the time. The Ritz is, you know what? The best word to describe the Ritz, pretentious? No, no, I didn't say that. The best word to describe the Ritz is opulent. I guess, actually, in a way, the Ritz is kind of completely the opposite of what fallow is. Potato into a ricer. Like I've said before, I really like using a ricer because it doesn't work the starch in the potato too much. So you get a much nicer consistency. The next stage, just to make it even more smooth and glossy, we're going to pass it with a tammy sieve. This is optional. You can just take it this far. It's still going to make a beautiful pomme de chesse. So pass it in for your tammy. Yeah, this is quite a specialist bit of kit, but if you don't have a tammy, just use a little sieve instead. So whilst we're passing off the potato, melt your butter, 70 grams of butter. And we've got, so we've got 70 grams of butter, which is going to enrich our potato mix. And we have three egg yolks as well. Okay, so once we've got our potato mix, pass through the sieve, whack it into a bowl, and then we're going to fold in our butter in there with our egg yolks as well. I'm just going to whack a tiny bit of seasoning in there. Really important thing, I think, with this mashed potato is just a little bit of pepper and some grated nutmeg. I don't want to mix it too hard at this stage because I don't want to sort of activate the starch in the potato too much. So this is obviously quite different to mashed potato. It wants to form like a nice protective layer over the mix as it bakes. So it needs to be a little bit stiffer. And the way that you get that perfect finish that you can see is to make sure that the mix is nice and firm. If it's too soft and too much fat, it'll basically bubble and foam whilst it cooks, and you'll get this almost like spongy texture. If it's too firm, it won't have a nice consistency when it's finished cooking. So we're just going to add in a bit of butter into a pan, and we're just going to put sweat off our mirepoix. So for this mix, I'm using shallots. If you don't have shallots, you can easily just buy a nice white onion would be just as comparable. Our carrots, follow the shape of it around. You get these nice little chunks of mushroom. Just going to cook those in a little bit of foaming butter. We've already got like a really nice caramelization on that beef. So we're not looking for a huge amount of color here. Now we're just going to add in our mushrooms. Turn the heat up slightly. Okay, all the moisture's come out of the mushrooms. Now we're just going to add in our carrots and just finish these cooking. You want a nice golden color on all this veg without the pan getting too much color. Okay, now add in a bit of tomato puree and then just cook that out. So you might be curious why always recipes ask you to cook out the tomato puree. And it's basically to start to caramelize the sugars as it's naturally in there. It also kind of removes that sort of metallic tin flavor. So that's been in there now for about three and a half hours. Beautiful and thick. That shin's broken down nicely now. The short rib's completely broken down. Obviously with the shin, using these two different meats together is a really nice touch because the shin and the short rib cook slightly differently. So the shin will give you still a little bit of texture whereas the short rib is really beautiful and melting and soft. So what I'm going to do is just take out the meat and lay it into the dish that I'm going to ultimately be serving it in. And then I just want to make sure that I finish this sauce and get it to the perfect consistency before it goes into the pot. Pour this into the pan and then I can just keep this going to adjust the consistency. The thought behind the original recipe using oxtail is that the collagen thickens the sauce and short rib and shin is also a really good replacement for that. So my little secret ingredient there is just a little bit of Worcestershire sauce. It's almost like a gastrique, I guess. So now mix all your meat into your pot and just mix all the ingredients together. Now, I want to keep the chunks of meat almost like Marco's sort of a ragu recipe. You want the big chunks of meat in there. And that's what, this is what I mean about having really nice bits of texture from the shin, slightly more sort of hache from the short rib. It's really good because we've only sauteed the veg, so it's still got a bit of texture before they go into that final cook. Okay, so put it into your pan, your chosen pan. The mixture should be nice and thick. So leave yourself a good maybe inch for the potato because we're sort of sealing it in. Start on the outside and work your way around. And what we want actually is a nice sort of domed shape. So you want it to be nice and generous all the way to the top. Then nice little hack for you. What I'm doing here is just creating a really nice smooth surface. And this is why a duchess is so much more indulgent than just normal mashed potato. So this is just melted butter. You can use clarified. I'm just using melted. The butter solids will help the top caramelize, so it really doesn't matter too much. And that is this perfect domed shape. Probably the most common way to do this is with a fork. But really nice thing, this is a pallet knife. You can use basically anything. The back of a spoon also works. But basically what we want to do, and this is why we put a nice layer of mash in there, is just press down. And you just get this really beautiful symmetry. I mean, it almost looks like the scales of a fish. So the ridges also give the whole thing a bit more of a beautiful finish, both texturally, but also visually. It's gonna go in the oven now at 160 for around about 25 minutes. Look at that. So just to give it one little bit of extra decadence, just a tiny bit more just melted butter. John Williams, hope I've done you proud. Okay, so to verify whether or not we did justice to the John Williams two Michelin star Ritz version cottage pie, we have our resident group head chef, Jake, who? Used to work for John Williams. John Williams, yeah, there we go. What, five years? Five years in that kitchen, yeah. Was it a good five years? Where I learned how to cook. Really? Yeah. So what is it, do you think, about John Williams that's got this? How does he have the edge on other Michelin kitchens? The biggest thing he does, which is really, really great, is he sticks to tradition. So a lot of the recipes, a lot of the cooking style, a lot of the products they use, only the best and in a very traditional way. And really staying true to that and the way they cook is probably what he has that a lot of chefs don't. And some people say he's like the best saucier in the world, right? Yeah, learning to cook sauces there, learning to make stocks there, it was amazing. And was a version of this ever on the menu then? It was on the menu, never the rich restaurant menu because that was always more fine dining. But in terms of the cooking for the hotel, for the guests, for the in-room dining, classic dishes like this were always knocking around. Do you think I've done him justice? I think so. He wouldn't open me up. I've heard he's a bit of a beast. He might give you a few words. Shit. You've not even tried it yet. Let's see how it tastes. It's not your traditional. No. Better, it's better. It's definitely better. The richness, the meatiness, like all the flavour profiles coming through. I think one key takeaway is using the right meat. You need that collagen to thicken the sauce and enriching the potato. Two really simple ingredients were put together so well.