Cottage pie

I don't usually get excited about making (or eating) casseroles, but we put a big dent in this cottage pie the other night. It was cold and dark, and we were hungry and tired. Cottage pie is just an old-fashioned beef mince (hamburger) pie with a crust of mashed potato. If you use lamb mince instead of beef, they call it a shepherd's pie.
The potato has a fascinating history. It's hard to imagine England, Ireland or Russia without the potato, but spuds weren't introduced until the 1700's. They were considered food for the poor, but even the Russian peasants refused to have anything to do with the potato until they were starving in the famine of 1774. Frederick the Great gave them free potatoes, and soldiers were sent out to "persuade" people to eat them. What an image! The Irish hated them too, at first. But nothing like starvation to whet the appetite.

All types of meat and potato pies are popular in Great Britain. In early cook books, cottage pie was a way to use up leftover meat and potatoes, and to this day it's a popular Monday night supper, made with meat and gravy from Sunday's "joint." I threw mine together with what I had on hand, but you can find hundreds of recipes on the Internet, some of them elaborate with mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, etc. I stumbled upon a website called Cooking for Engineers and ran away as fast as I possibly could. But if you like following fussy charts and precise, illustrated directions, this may be the cooking site for you.