I had a pie crust left over from Thanksgiving living in my freezer. I used to make my own crusts from scratch, until I discovered that the ones I bought from the store tasted exactly the same. (What? Sometimes you have to cut corners).
I also had steak and chicken thawed in the refrigerator. And buttermilk left over from mashed potatoes and pancake making. I also had a very pregnant, very hungry, sister and her very tall, always hungry, husband to feed.
I decided to make some sort of version of Shepherd's Pie based on the ingredients we had handy. I'd never made one before and just sort of, well, was winging it based on what I remembered from dining at many a fine Irish establishment.
Upside Down Shephard's Pie:
--chicken, sliced into bite-sized chunks
--steak, sliced into bite-sized chunks
--olive oil
--1 onion, diced to your size preference
--garlic
--sliced mushrooms
--beef bouillon
--Worcestershire sauce
--1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
--tarragon
--parsley
--flour
--3 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks for mashing
--buttermilk
--1 stick butter
--1 pie crust
The Meat & Gravy:
Cook chicken in olive oil over medium to medium high heat until free of salmonella. Remove to plate. In same pan cook steak in olive oil over medium to medium high heat until outside is brown but inside is still mostly rare. Put with chicken.
In same pan, melt 1/3 of stick of butter. Add garlic and onion. Cook 2 minutes until fragrant and onion begins to get translucent. Add mushrooms and cook down. Add 2 spoonfuls of bouillon paste (or 1 bouillion cube). You do NOT need to melt the bouillon first. We are making gravy with it! Splash in some Worcestershire sauce and shake in parsley and tarragon.
(I'm terrible at measuring, so here's my tip: don't over do it! I just shake it a little at a time until it tastes like delicious).
Add the can of diced tomatoes and scrape all the bits together. Add the cooked chicken and cooked steak back into the mix. If mix seems too liquid, add a tsp of flour and stir it all up. The flour will thicken the gravy.
The Mashed Potatoes:
Cover the chopped potatoes in large pot with cold water. Heat on high heat until water is boiling. (I'm at altitude so I don't know how long it takes potatoes to cook at lower elevations). Let potatoes/water boil for a few minutes. Potatoes are ready to be mashed when you can easily stick a fork into them.
I used a hand held potato masher to smash up the potatoes. Then I added the other 2/3 stick of butter and a few splashes of buttermilk. Pregnant sister mashed her little heart out and added buttermilk as needed to make the potatoes fluffy but not too creamy.
Then I added it one TBSP of flour to make them thicker and sticky for the pie.
We put the potatoes in the bottom of the pie crust (or Shepherd's Pie was upside down, remember?!) and smoothed them around to make a nice potato bed for all the meat mix to live inside of. The meat/gravy mix went on top of the potato bed.
Bake in the oven at 350 until the pie crust is golden on the edges.
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