RECIPE - Cottage Pie

Cottage pie is one of my favourite comfort foods, and also really fills me up. This recipe is only 1 syn for the entire lot on extra easy (although it serves 4)

Ingredients
500g extra lean mince beef
4 carrots
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
1 stock cube
1 tbsp tomato puree
50g red lentils
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried rosemary or thyme or a mixture of the two
Salt & Pepper
800g potato
4 spring onions
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Method

1. Finely chop the onion, garlic and carrots into small chunks. (I normally use a food processor to do this for speed)
2. Brown the mince (no oil/fry light needed if using a non stick pan), and drain off any fat
3. Add the finely chopped veg and enough water to just cover the mixture. Stir in the stock, lentils, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper and bay leaves.
4. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally
5. In the meantime peel and boil the potatoes and allow to steam dry in a collander.
6. Finely chop the spring onions
7. After the 30 minutes, add a tablespoon of tomato puree and stir through. Cook for a further 10 minutes.
8. Preheat the oven to 200C
9. Add the mince mixture to the base of an oven dish
10. Mash the potatoes together with the spring onion and nutmeg. I normally use my food processor for this, but it can be done by hand, though it takes longer because you're not adding any fat to the potatoes. (though if you have milk left over from your daily allowance you may wish to add a splash)
11. Top the mince mixture with the mash potato and smooth out with a knife. Swirl the potato around with a fork to create texture and small peaks
12. Pop in the oven for 15 minutes. The potato should be lightly browned by this time
13. Serve with the veg of your choice!

Variations

• If you have a Healthy Extra A choice left you could always add cheese to the mash for a cumberland pie
• Experiment with the mash on top. It also works with celeriac, swede or sweet potato instead of potato, or even a combination of two of these.