Shepherds pie

Dinner is served!  I'm pretty sure Mike went back for seconds.  This picture looks like a pretty small serving.  What's even more amazing is that even though they finished all 20 or so potato skins which I had made as an appetizer, they still finished about half the Shepherd's Pie for dinner!

This dish is a definite keeper!  It's another recipe from the Comfort Foods Makeover book.  It was pretty good, though it did take a while to make.  This could be because I was trying to make the Loaded Potato Skins at the same time.  If I made the potatoes using the technique specified in the book instead of using the insides of the baked potatoes, perhaps it would have been faster.

Mike did help me make the mashed potatoes since I was running out of time, and was trying to cook the meat mixture while also putting toppings on the Loaded Potato Skins.  He used his KitchenAid mixer to mash the potatoes and mix in the butter.

I didn't have any Worcestershire sauce, so I used soy sauce, as Michele suggested.   I don't think Mike noticed that it had a slightly Asian flare.  I also didn't add the cornstarch at the end, since the sauce already seemed really thick to me.  I think I would probably add it next time, since the meat mixture seemed slightly water (but not overly so) at the end, after I broiled the dish.

The dish called for 93% lean ground beef (which they didn't drain, but that might be because it's so lean).  I didn't have this, so I used ground turkey instead.  I think it tasted fine, but it might have been better with ground beef.  Ground turkey is healthier anyway.

I also used corn in this recipe instead of mushrooms.  Mike deplores mushrooms, and won't touch a dish where mushrooms have been in the same vicinity as the food.  I also had some leftover canned corn from the Minestrone anyway.  I'm not sure how much I used.  I just used all of the corn that I had in the can.

Here is the whole Shepherd's Pie as it came out of the oven.  The recipe said to put the meat mixture in a 10 inch broiler safe skillet.  I didn't really have one, so I put it in a Corningware dish.  The dish is probably about 8 inches by 10 inches or so.  As a result, most of the dish was filled with the meat mixture.  I'm glad the mashed potatoes fit in the dish as well.