I’ve recently started to challenge myself to put my spin on classic dishes. Understand the basics better then recreate with my twist. Could be anything from baking, to roasting or beautiful home cooking like this dish.

Again, this dish was made from scratch after walking in from work. I’m making this point as I often hear people say ‘they don’t have time for cooking’, I will always have time for cooking as it’s a great way of switching off.

Ingredients-

A couple glugs of olive oil, 1 onion finely diced. roughly 900g (or two supermarket trays of minced beef), 125ml of red wine, 1 tbsp of plain flour, 2 or 3 tbsp of tomato purée, 400ml of rich beef stock, 4 / 5 sprigs of thyme (leaves skinned for the sprigs), a nice amount of Worcestershire sauce to suit your taste but I’d say I used 2 tbsp( I will leave the amount to yourself as it’s your taste buds), a nice cup of frozen peas, a good amount salt & pepper (again leaving the amount to you), – mashed potatoes – I used 7 potatoes boiled and mashed with butter and milk plus pepper to create a creamy mash to cover the flavoursome beef, plus grated cheese and cracked pepper to finish the dish.

Method

This is as simple as it gets….you always have time to make meals from scratch !!

Add some of the olive oil to a heavy based pan. Once it’s hot start to fry off your onions.

After 5 minutes the onions will have started to caramelise. Remove these from the pan with a slotted spoon.

Add a little more olive oil to the pan. Once it’s hot add in your beef mince to brown the meat. You will have to do this in batches as not to overcrowd the pan. If you overcrowd the pan all you will do it poach / stew the meat. We want to brown it quickly by frying it.

The meat will brown in 4 / 5 minutes or so.

As you have to do this in batches, these cane be add to the same bowl as the onions and set aside whilst you brown the rest of the mince.

Add all the ingredients back the pan including any meat juices. Scrape any caramelised bits into the meat and onion mix. Add 125ml of red wine ❤️.

As you add the red wine give the ingredients a good mix ensuring they are coated with the red wine.

Add a tbsp of plain flour. This will be your thickening agent for your beautiful thick meaty gravy.

Give the pan a good stir and then add the tomato purée.

To intensify the flavour, I’ve used two Knorr stock cubes in 400ml of water. This is optional of course but I like the richness of the gravy.

Add in the thyme and season well.

Followed by your frozen peas.

Reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes or so. The gravy will thicken and the flavours will intensify. Add the Worcestershire sauce, again adjust the quantity to suit you, as mentioned I used 2 tbsp spoons. Whilst this is simmering put on your potatoes to make the mashed potatoes.

Once you’re have with the flavours of the rich beef mince transfer it to pie dish.

Spoon on your mashed potatoes and if your want to be all cheffy use a fork to create peaks on the top.

Add a handful of grated cheese and season with pepper.

To finish the dish place it under the grill for 8 / 10 minutes to brown off the top to give you a nice cheesy crust.

At this point I didn’t know whether to break the crust or ‘hang it in the Louvre’ !!!!

I have to say, this was beautiful. The gravy was insane, I do believe using two stock cubes makes the difference!

I served mine with some white cabbage.

Enough for leftovers tomorrow!!

Thank you for reading my ramblings.

Recently I’ve been advising work colleagues with curry making. If I can inspire just one person I’m happy. Plus at the weekend I received a WhatsApp message from a friend using my ‘tikka masala’ recipe which I posted in here……I can’t tell you how much that meant to me ❤️

Thank you 🙏