They say that some people eat with their eyes. Well, if that is the case then please ignore the picture of the finished dish here because it does nothing to sell the fantastic flavours combined in the dish. My grandson, Danny, is always telling me to smarten up my photos but, to be honest, when I have a piping hot dish in front of me that smells delicious, the last thing I am thinking about is the appearance. All I want to do is eat it. Surely that is what good food is all about! I am a slave to cookery programmes and often wonder just how warm some of the dishes prepared are for the customer when they have finished messing about with the appearance and ending up with a very pretty but heavily handled meal. A gourmet cook I will never be but at least my food is always hot and barely touched by human hand.
This Shepherds pie is probably unlike any you will have eaten before. The lamb is slow cooked until it droops of the bone and instead of mince (which I often find tasteless) you bite into succulent, meltingly tender pieces of lamb. The spices are subtle but give the meal a wonderful flavour carried throughout the layers of lamb sauce, spinach and creamy mashed potato. If you like curry you will absolutely adore this.
I did wonder about adding a sauce but wasn’t sure what type would best suit the flavours of the pie. In the end I didn’t bother and I felt that the dish was perfectly moist so didn’t need any additional sauce. In fact, gravy, I believe, would have detracted from the eating experience.
Here is a link to the recipe with my slideshow below. It is a bit fiddly but, trust me, it is well worth the effort.
Tasty Advice 