Cottage Pie a la Millbrooker

A main meal.An old favourite, and I expect that pretty well everyone has their own idea of what makes the perfect cottage pie. Or "beef shepherd's pie" as it's sometimes known here at Millbrooker Towers after we once heard a recipe on the radio that described it exactly as that!

Just in case anyone's unsure of the difference, a shepherd's pie is made with lamb (or mutton if you can find it); a cottage pie uses beef. There might well be other minor differences, but nothing that the normal home cook need worry about.

Anyway, this is my version. As with so much of what I cook, the exact quantities of ingredients can and does change with what's lying around in the kitchen; if you haven't got precisely what it says below - try improvising.

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Ingredients, this will feed six normal or 4 very hungry people.

1 large or two small onions, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

400-500g minced beef

Beef stock cube

500-600ml water

5 or 6 carrots

Potatoes for mashing (up to a kilo, but enough to make a covering for the pie dish you use)

Cheddar or Red Leicester cheese

Worcester sauce

Optional extras: 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, a teaspoon of dried oregano

What to do.

Chop the carrots into dice and boil for 10 minutes in water with the beef stock cube dissolved into it.

Peel, slice and boil the potatoes for 15-20 minutes ready for mashing.

Sweat the onion for five minutes in olive oil or butter (or a mix of both)

Add the garlic, cover and leave on a very low heat for another five minutes.

Stir the miced beef into the onion/garlic mix and allow to brown.

Tip the meat, onion and garlic into a ceramic dish.

Add the tomatoes and oregano (if using), stir well.

Pour the carrots and the stock they've boiled in into the mixture, stir well.

Cover the whole lot with mashed potatoes, leave a small "steam hole" inthe centre of the mash.

Fork over the surface of the mash to leave ridges in a random pattern (this helps to get a crispy surface in the oven)

Sprinkle cheese on top.

Whack the lot into the oven at Gas 5 (190C/375F) for a hour and a half (it will quite happily sit there for another hour or so without overcooking if necessary).

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To drink? Whatever you fancy, it's cottage pie, for goodness sake. I believe that Jeffrey Archer recommended Krug champagne with shepherd's pie, so I guess it'll do for this as well.