Shepherd Pie

I was in the mood for some shepherd pie a few days ago (so much for making a menu ahead of time), and after looking at a few recipes on allrecipes.com, decided to wing it. Most recipes had similar ingredients, and there seemed to be two main variations: chicken with cream of chicken soup as a base, or beef with tomato sauce and worcestershire sauce. I will have to try the beef/tomato kind next time! This time, however, we went with chicken, since we had more of that in the freezer.

It would have been nice to have some already-cooked and cubed chicken on hand, but all I had was raw, frozen chicken (someday I will be uber efficient and cook up a huge batch after we have our big stock-up grocery trips-- it would be great for ground beef, too!). Sean was very patient and waited the hour or so it took me to prepare this, with thawing, cooking, and cutting up the chicken; peeling, slicing, boiling, and mashing the potatoes; THEN cooking the entire ensemble for 30 minutes. Oy! It was well worth it! Absolutely heavenly, especially with the fresh garlic in the potatoes, and my secret ingredient (see below)!



the filling mixture

 

mashed potatoes on left (oh, how I will appreciate having a potato masher someday! Using a fork takes forever) and chicken/veggie mixture on right

pepper jack cheese, all cozy in a layer between the filling and the topping of potatoes! It was awesome!

Finished product: voila! Sean had seconds, and loved taking it to work for lunch. I loved eating it for lunch too! It made several servings for us.

Just another day in the life of the Allen family. :)