Shepherdess Pie with Lentils

Shepherdess pie or shepherdless pie is a vegetarian shepherds pie, mine has a glorious red lentil & fennel ragu under a crispy mashed potato lid.

What is a Shepherdless Pie?

I often mock our need to assert control over what dishes are called and what they contain.

It is amusing and often quite daft. However, I am equally susceptible to these urges on occasions.

That occasion is shepherds pie, cottage pie, Cumberland pie, and this vegetarian lentil pie.

I feel myself getting all sorts of peeved and occasionally even tut out loud when these names are inappropriately used. Raging I tell ya, raging lol!

Shepherds pie contains lamb, cottage pie contains beef, Cumberland pie contains either meat but has a cheese and breadcrumb topping on top of the mash.

The latter used to be a game pie but the name seems to have been hijacked in some time during the 20th century.

Then we have this barnstormer of an offering that is occasionally named shepherdless pie which makes me giggle.

It is a relative newbie to the stable of ultimate British comfort food recipes. But it is essentially a meatless version of the shepherd’s pie.

Ingredient Advice.

This vegetarian shepherdess pie needs a stonkingly good mashed potato topping.

That needs you to choose the right potatoes, something floury or mealy like King Edwards, Maris Piper, Russet or Idaho.

Then you need to add a not inconsiderably amount of butter at them. I go for nigh on 20% of the weight of potatoes in this recipe.

You need not pipe them on, I like to do this as it increases the surface area. That means more ridges, more ridges means more crispy bits and the crispy bits are the best bits!

Aside from that the other ingredients are pretty self explanatory.

I use red lentils for this recipe but you could easily swap them out for green or brown lentils in much the same way as you can in my lentil bolognese.

Making In A Single Baking Dish

This recipe makes two individual pies.

I use two gratin dishes that are 15cm by 10cm by 3cm deep, they hold around 450ml of water. For my American readers that is 6″ by 4″ by 1.5″ which is a capacity of just under 2 cups.

You can cook this in a single baking dish if you like, although I would try not to increase the depth too much.

You could use a 25cm by 15cm dish (8″ x 10″) of the same depth to get the same ratio of filling to mash.

If you wanted to go round you could use either a 20cm (8″) diameter dish that is 3cm (just under 1.25″) deep or a 15cm (6″) dish that is 4cm (just over 1.5″) deep.