Potatoes, who needs 'em?

  Hands up if you remember what I was about to have for supper yesterday? That's right, a carb reduced shepherd's pie. And carb reduced meant no mash potato and no flour (to thicken the mince). A little ingenuity was called for, and the results... Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

  First of all, as the Banting way is high fat and low carb, I went for a mix of minced lamb and pork, both of which are nice and fatty. Ordinarily, the flour binds nicely with the fat to make a creamy sauce, instead it was just a rich gravy, but wow! it was rich. To make sure there was plenty of flavour, as well as plenty of fibre, I had added loads of vegetables.

Served with cavalo nero, salad and kimchi. Stunning!

  The meat was browned gently in a little olive oil then removed. In went the onions to soften followed by carrots, parsnip, courgette and this was all allowed to sweat, soften more and drop liquid so when I put the meat back in (with some garlic and parsley) there was already a nice sauce to stew the meat in, but to be sure, I put in about 250ml of chicken stock from my freezer. This was allowed to stew for hours so the end result was really tender meat with loads of veg in the most unctuous gravy. But there's more.

  As there were no potatoes, I tried a cauliflower mash instead. Having not done one before and not knowing how it would marry with the mince, I stayed simple. This meant steaming the cauliflower until very soft then blitzing it with a stick blender, adding only egg yolk and goats cheese before piping it on top and baking it in the oven.

  The management, who happens to be a harsh critic, gave it a massive thumbs up and licked her plate clean. The only reason neither of us had seconds is because I had made a generous starter of asparagus and crispy bacon but this means there's loads of leftovers. How delightful.

Kirk out

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