Zees Wine Bar & Grill’s Cottage Pie

Ingredients

Serves 8 people

Ingredients:

2 tbsp Vegetable oil

1 lb Ground beef or Lamb

1 large White onion, finely diced

1 large Carrot, finely diced

1 sprig Fresh rosemary

2 sprig Fresh thyme

4 clove Minced garlic

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 small can Tomato paste

¼ cup Red wine

¼ cup Beef or chicken stock

1½ lb Yellow potatoes

¼ cup 35% Cream

¼ cup Butter

 2 Egg yolks

1/3 cup Aged white cheddar or parmesan cheese

Method

1. Peel and wash potatoes, place in a pot of boiling water with salt and set a timer for 15 minutes.  Then begin the filling.
2. Dice garlic, separate herbs from the stem, separate egg yolks, open wine (if not already), and open can of tomato paste.
3. Upon the timer going off, take your potatoes out and strain the river off. Put potatoes back into the pan, or into a medium mixing bowl.
4. Mash the potatoes using cream, butter, egg yolk, salt and pepper to taste, whilst warm (your filling needs to be about produced by this point.

Filling

1. Pour olive oil to a hot, rather large pan, adding meat. Stir meat for a couple of minutes so it’s nice and brown, and broken into small pieces.
2. Add rosemary, thyme, and garlic, then stir even more. Quickly add your carrot, and onion, stir longer. The idea is to have everything to some minced consistency.
3. Add Worcestershire sauce, stir, then add tomato purée, stir, then add red wine and sweat down for a minute or two. Add the stock and cook for 3 more minutes.
4. Scoop your meat mixture right into a deep casserole or another oven safe dish and after that spoon the mashed potatoes. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top in the mix together with the bottom from the spoon (use a fork to get nice peaks that crisp when cooking) and sprinkle a generous amount of cheese over top.
5. Cook in the oven at 400°F for 18 – 20 minutes to brown the potatoes and allow the pie to set. 
6. Let stand before serving.